“Gather Wood, Gather Words’ is the fruit of collaboration focused on the action of gathering to study human rapports to one another and the Earth.  Prefacing concepts or topics with an attention to movement, the artists sought to bridge divides of manual and intellectual labor, nature and culture. Their works are equally inspired by the ceaseless women gathering wood for village cookstoves or bundling rice to bring to market as by the plants they collect or the rustle of the desert winds that fertilize the Amazon with Saharan sand. Attention to bindings leads to reflections on how words gathered as law or tradition shape human fortunes and bodies as they do the natural world.