ICON Magazine, Article by Federico Bernocchi, 2024

It Sounds Like Love

The entire floor is the artwork. Visitors are invited into an immersive, grounding experience oriented toward the Earth.
Remove your shoes, step onto the piece, and engage with a field of etched-glass images—each formed by the sound vibrations of unsprouted seeds.

This space invites you to slow down, tune in, and experience through your senses: feel, smell, listen, and be present with what emerges.

“Everything in the world has a spirit, released by its sound.”
—Carolyn Forché, Blue Hour

It Sounds Like Love has been part of interdisciplinary art and science outreach at:

MIT, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Audubon Center Ohio, Harvey Mudd College, Denison University, Ohio Wesleyan University, Kenyon College, Ohio State University, Otterbein University, John Logan High School, and Hartford Middle School.

The exhibition’s materiality, glass panels set within traditional Japanese tatami mats made of rice straw and soft rush grass, interweaves the artist’s autobiography. Born and raised in Japan for seventeen years, the artist’s story also reaches back to Ohio, tracing a maternal lineage that includes her grandmother’s work in glass art and childhood summers spent along the waters of Lake Erie.

Each unique, primordial form on the glass was created using suminagashi, the Japanese art of floating ink. The process begins with 22 concentric circles of deep black ink (sumi) floating on water—here, moved not by hand, but by the sound vibrations of seeds.

It Sounds Like Love is an act of reciprocity—a response to the harm we have inflicted on the Earth. It is an offering, inviting us to slow down and listen deeply as we move among the seeds’ messages that surround us—echoes of the intelligence held by our more-than-human kin. If we linger, these nine local seeds—Wild Bergamot, Big Bluestem, Echinacea, Little Bluestem, Dogbane, Switchgrass, Milkweed, and Black-eyed Susan—have much to teach us about ourselves.

Curator: Janice Glowski, The Frank Museum of Art

From Art to Action

Community based interactive events that bring the art to life

Media

Watch these three short films created by directors inspired by “It Sounds Like Love”:

"Resonance," 2022, a short film by Sophie Ansel (director), based on and inspired by the "It Sounds Like Love" immersive installation by Cadine Navarro

Environmental Professionals Network Promo Video, Documentation by Bill Walker 2022. Starting with a seed, this experience allows visitors to connect with the energetic frequencies of native Ohio prairie seeds. What results is an astonishing shift in perspective around our relationship to land and to self.

When The Art Is The Floor, 2022 By Bill Walker And Terry Hermsen, 2022. A film about Cadine Navarro's "It Sounds Like Love" exhibition

Conference with **Dr Robin Wall Kimmerer** for “The Grammar of Animacy” at Otterbein University, Columbus, Ohio, 2022

Community outreach and networking has been generously supported by the Ohio Land-based residency, and has included many invited guests such as The Ohio State’s Andean Music Ensemble, singer song writer LeAnn Erikson, and unique Lakota blessing ceremonies held by Chief Ramon (Tigre) Perez, community leader from Saltillo, Mexico, and Sundance friends.

The work was also featured in the Environmental Professionals Group (EPN); watch the video here; at the Seed Savers Exchange; or in an interview by the Stinner Climate Ambassadors here.

It Sounds Like Love en español

Middle school students have responded with poetry, and depicted in this film by Terry Hermsen and Bill Walker: Seeds of Poetry