This interview is also available as a zine.
“Sylvan Essence” is on view through July 31, 2025 at Silverwood Park Gallery, 2500 County Rd E, St Anthony, MN 55421.
I first met Shoshana Fink at the MCAD MFA program and was delighted to get this chance to see how Sylvan Essence had evolved from its initial installation. Below you will find a brief interview with Fink focused on this latest variation at Silverwood Park.
Sylvan Essence by Shoshana Fink
EM: Can you give a brief 2-3 sentence summary of this exhibition for those that may be new to the work?
SF: Sylvan Essence is a multi-sensory, interactive installation exploring the visual, auditory, and aromatic language of the Hoh Rainforest, a temperate rainforest situated on the ancestral lands of the Hoh and Quileute Tribes. Using image, sound, and scent from the Hoh, Sylvan Essence employs photography, sculpture, sound, and olfactory elements, allowing the viewer to see, hear, and smell the entangled web of relationships and complex conversations that make up the arboreal universe. Drawing from scientific research on plant communication, plant sensing, and tree bioacoustics, this piece coaxes the imagination to think and breathe in attunement with the trees.
Sylvan Essence by Shoshana Fink
EM: I’ve seen this work installed elsewhere, and this round gallery feels like a perfect fit. Can you talk about how you approached this unique space and the preparation it took?
SF: I wrote a detailed proposal for this exhibition which took into account how the form content of the work aligns with the mission of Silverwood Park, using art as a vehicle to explore and connect with nature. I also thought about how the piece would work in the gallery. I considered how the curvilinear architecture of the space and size of the room related to the curvilinearity and size of the work. I provided a map, to scale, demonstrating how Sylvan Essence would fit in the gallery. In addition, I reflected upon the relationship between the work and the landscape beyond, visible from a large bank of curved windows, connecting interior to exterior, imagined forest to real forest.
Photos from “Sylvan Essence” installation by Shoshana Fink
EM: What are your hopes for the multi-sensory experience of visitors to the space?
SF: My hopes are twofold. The first is one of inclusivity. Sensorily speaking, this work has many entry points and can be appreciated by people of diverse ages and abilities. Hearing-impaired and sight-impaired individuals as well as young people who like to explore through touch can access this work. One might argue that Western visual culture preferences the visual over the other senses, and I believe this leaves a lot of people out. Interestingly, I have a cousin who attended the opening who is blind — and she is not the first to experience Sylvan Essence — and she was still able to appreciate the piece.
My second hope is that, by employing multiple senses, the work transports and suspends the viewer into another space.
Detail shot from “Sylvan Essence” installation by Shoshana Fink
EM: Do you see the photographs on the wall as distinct from the installation or as a part of it? And can you talk about the creation of those photographs?
SF: The photographs on the wall are not formally part of Sylvan Essence, but they are most definitely related. Two of the three photographic images appear in the piece itself, albeit in the form of large, sheer, fabric photographs suspended from the ceiling. These photographs were made in January of 2022 during my trip to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state, and they became part of my MFA thesis at MCAD four months later. While the project has expanded since then, that trip was the genesis of everything in this project.
Detail shot from “Sylvan Essence” installation by Shoshana Fink
All photos in this article by Ellen Mueller.