Walking from Ignorance to Intimacy

The Thing to Be Known Grows with the Knowing: Walking from Ignorance to Intimacy 

In 2016, three other artists and I walked around the entire perimeter of Philadelphia in 2016, a 6-day, 103-mile journey that changed my perception of my city as well as my artistic practice. My writing has always engaged with place. Now I embrace walking as a companion medium to words. Questions that guide my work as a walker and a writer, are: Can we know and care about a place as intimately as we do a friend or loved one? Can that relationship be reciprocal? As resident artist with One Landscape, I embarked on immersive walks in wilder places, where humans are the least significant of species. At Shillim Institute in India’s Western Ghats, I explored what it means to be a guest in unfamiliar terrain. Walking in Napeague, Long Island, I experienced a seascape in constant…