New Projects
Lost Voyage Lake Eden
(Re)Happenings Festival, Black Mountain College (2026)
The Lost Voyage collective, founded by Jo Wood-Brown and Miriam Parker, builds from the individual practices of each artist in the collective, who offer their specified mediums in dialogue with each other, and for the community.
For the (Re)happenings Festival, our work begins on Lake Eden, and continues into the interior of the roundhouse. These images show our travel across the lake in a canoe, the image of which came to me in a dream.
Jo Wood-Brown, Visual artist
Miriam Parker, Performance and visual artist
Jean Carla Rodea, Interdisciplinary artist and sound designer
Alystyre Julian, Filmmaker and poet
Excavations of Canal Street Multimedia Project
The premise for Excavations of Canal Street rests on the poetic notion that the biodiversity once inherent in the land now echoes through the diversity of people who live here. Excavations is an immersive, interdisciplinary environment with paintings, installation, video, and collaboration, weaving together two Canal Street timelines—one geologic, and the other eco-social.
Walking Spiral #1 (1982)
Canal Dreams Night and Day Video (2026)
Excavations of Canal Street Installation
“Canal Dreams Night and Day” (2026), bears witness to the history of Canal Street (Manhattan) by way of dreams. The video takes a journey through time, interweaving the real and the imagined. Memory, environs and people merge in an improvised whole that speaks to the present moment. In the lens of the film, creativity pairs with nature as an elemental function transcending geo-political as well as personal boundaries. The relationship we form with the land is something ancient and futuristic experienced in the way Canal Dreams night and Day stitches time.
Video Stills
Excavations of Canal Street Installation
Through a new process, weaving twine-wire into vessels, that travel the passage of time are like collapsible, recyclable, and malleable dreams in the act of storytelling. Suspended by pulleys and animated by levers and motors, the “Ephemeral Factory” reflects both the manual and mechanical history of the factories that once lined Canal Street, as well as the baskets woven by the first peoples. “Ephemeral Factory” will serve as an immersive framework for activations by performers and viewer participants, and will eventually be a collaboration with other artists.
The physical and time-based works in plaster reflect my explorations of the beginning of time. “Walking Spiral #1” (1982) and “Making Line” (1983) are foundational elements in my video “Canal Dreams Night and Day” (2026) and reflect my archive living along Canal Street over time.
The paintings reinterpret from a contemporary female perspective, black background paintings from the "Age of Exploration," when Lower Manhattan was first colonized.
Ephemeral Factory, detail
Ephemeral Factory, domestic object, detail
The Bath painting, detail
A River Runs Through Us
On July 4, 2026, in a commemoration of the land itself, we walked water from the Hudson and East rivers back to what was once a spring fed lake (Collect Pond) part of a rich biodiverse landscape in the center of Lower Manhattan. A community activation was organized by Holes in the Wall Collective, Beth Maria, and Jo Wood-Brown. Photos and videos below are by Rhiannon Hales.
