Beth Bradfish's Sound Sculptures

Composer and sound artist Beth Bradfish will be presenting Light Behind the Light, a sound sculpture installation at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum.

January 22 Update: The Kalamazoo Valley Museum is now open on selected days! Guests will be required to pre-register for pre-determined visitation dates and times: Tuesdays and Thursdays for 90-minute visiting times from 10-11:30 a.m. for 10 guests per session. The sign up will be available at the Museum website at kalamazoomuseum.org.

About the Sculpture

From the artist’s statement:

All that we cannot see and feel; All that we can

For a moment we come together and consider how we are all connected even during a time of isolation and distancing.

As visitors walk within four rows of huge summer screens, they will hear the sounds of nature, voices speaking, bells and the hum of life. These sounds vibrate through the screens as well as the glass wall behind the screens: Echoing the experience we first had this spring of sheltering behind the glass and screens of our windows at home.

The screens and glass will have electronics attached that transform them into speakers of sorts – allowing visitors to feel vibrations as well as hear them.

About the Artist

Beth Bradfish is a composer and sound artist whose goal is to bring her audience as close to sound as possible – like a musician holding a cello to his or her heart. Beth’s work was commissioned (2013) by Access Contemporary Music as part of the Open House Chicago celebration of the Chicago Architectural Foundation. Her work has also been performed at Spectrum NYC, Constellation (Chicago), Issue Project Room (NYC) and she was selected as a featured composer in the Oscillations series of Experimental Sound Studio.

She is a past president of Chicago Composers’ Consortium, serves on the board of Experimental Sound Studio, and has taught as an artist in residence at the School of the Art Institute Chicago. Beth has been awarded an artist’s residency fellowship at Ragdale and a Field/Work residency with the Chicago Artists Coalition. She was recently awarded a New Works Residency for 2018 with Harvestworks New Media (NYC), an Individual Artist Support grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs, Chicago (DCASE), and sponsorship at High Concept Labs (Chicago). She received her MFA in Music Composition from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2015.