AV (Audio Visual)

AV (Audio Visual) was an extraordinary event held over the weekend of May 1/2/3, 2026 showcasing artworks by twelve artists local to the Ojai Valley and installed indoors and outdoors at a private residential property. Presented by Black Barn Sessions in collaboration with the Ojai Music Festival, the show highlights the intersection of visual art and sound. I worked with each artist to create a custom audio composition that was played through speakers alongside the installation.

The show was curated by Will Thomas, Christopher Noxon and Chris Hacker.

Below are individual videos of each piece along with a description of the processes and concepts behind creating the art work and the audio.

*For the most optimal experience, listen with good headphones or speakers.

For more information on each artist visit their IG handle.

1. Carol Shaw-Sutton - Womb Room

Carol transformed an old stone wine cellar into an immersive Womb Room. She installed multiple layers of textiles on the walls and floors creating a comforting space. She placed a stunning large egg made of feathers as the installation’s centerpiece.

For the audio, I blended deep water sounds recorded in a pool, a distant sub-sonic heartbeat and plaintive piano chords to evoke a peaceful and embryonic experience.

@carolshawsutton

2. Bhagvati Khalsa - Composition for Objects

Bhagvati creates beautiful ceramic objects in a variety of different colors, textures and patterns. Some are conical porcelain shapes, some are solid, and some are hollow orbs with beads inside. All of them create wonderful sounds when tapped, brushed or shaken.

My accompanying audio piece was built by “playing” Bhagvati’s ceramics (aside from the bass drum).

The objects were installed on a table with sand to create an elevated zen garden and organized in what might be called a “sculptural score”. Meaning, the placement of the objects represented the audio composition.

The piece begins with airy sounds for the sand. A sonic through-line is a continuous low bass drum represented by large half circles placed down the middle of the table. The objects are initially placed randomly as the sounds from the objects are introduced in a random playing style. As you reach the center of the table, the objects are placed in a strict grid as you hear the sounds lock into a rhythmic pattern. Then the objects become random again, as does the sound, and everything dissipates back down to just the bass drum and sand.

The score and audio reads from left to right and then ping-pongs back right to left. Speakers were placed on each side of the table so when seated on a bench, the sound travels across the stereo field as it moves through the score.

@bk.clay

3. Joel Fox - Wind Constellations 1/2/3

Joel builds these spinning sculptures by designing and creating the shapes with a 3D printer. He then assembles the shapes on rods with opposing magnets that keep them separated and floating. The movement is seamless and playful.

Since the sculptures are synthetic, graphic and modular, I used my modular synth to build the audio. Joel installed three sculptures within the trees on the property so I created three distinct sound qualities - percussive, swells, and tonal. Each quality has three separate tracks.

Each track in the audio is rhythmically independent of each other. The tempos speed up and slow down just like the layers on the spinners fluctuate when they rotate in the wind.

@joeldepartment

4. Christopher Noxon - Sonic Blooms

Christopher usually paints on two dimensional surfaces but this show was an opportunity to expand into sculpture. Given the audio visual theme, he decided to paint speaker horns with vibrant colors and botanical themes and assemble them as floral blooms in an area of the garden that was full of native spring wildflowers.

Using PA speakers traditionally used to broadcast announcements in institutional settings, we were inspired to create audio centered on the human voice, with the composition separated into distinct parts assigned to each “bloom”. The blooms were placed among the garden and when sitting in a central position, the voices are heard from all different directions.

At first they’re singing in short, tonal bursts as if they’re all speaking to one another. Then they slowly begin singing with longer sustained notes in harmony, merging into a floral choir. With vocals provided by Christopher’s daughter Eliza Noxon, the effect was magical, whimsical and rich with emotion.

@noxonart

5. Brittany Sanders - Thought Forms (Some Thoughts)

This piece is made up of six digital prints on canvas and is inspired by the color theories in Annie Besant’s book Thought Forms. The panels act as a visual score to the composition with each being one minute in length for a total of six minutes.

Each horizontal line represents a measure with a 6/4 meter. The rhythmic / visual pattern is built as rectangular boxes and is the same on each panel - as is the melodic sequence. Brittany assigned a color to each note, making the top line notes / colors the same. The only element that changes from panel to panel is the base color as well as the bass note drone in the audio.

The base color blends with the top tones to create new colors. And the bass note drone creates different chord structures that become new sonic colors for each minute of the piece.

The sound is deliberately mechanical with a fast attack and decay to represent the graphic stops and starts of the rectangles.

@brittanysandersstudio

6. Marie McKenzie - Listening in Laguna

This beautifully textured painting was inspired by a freediving expedition in Laguna Beach, California. Marie was underwater within the kelp forest and experiencing the beauty while taking photos. I was on the surface in a kayak with recording equipment and two hydrophones capturing the underwater sounds of the kelp and the ocean. The results were unexpected with the underwater recordings filled with pops and static-like noises.

Marie listened to the recordings while working on this oil painting and you’ll notice a little bit of yellow in the upper left corner. That’s the underside of my yellow kayak. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon.

@mariemckenzieart

7. Cassandra C. Jones - The cake I bake tastes better than Artificial Intelligence

Cassandra has been recently focusing on affirmational based artwork by applying the text to various objects. In this installation, she leaned into the domestic theme with common objects found in a kitchen. Canisters, mugs, plates, dishtowels, magnets, balloons with a home-baked cake as the centerpiece. Each affirmation plays off of the object itself with twists on topical themes and at times, subtle political statements.

She worked with Mikael Jorgensen for the sounds of birds and rain to enhance the domestic theme.

@jpegmountain

8. Mary Neville - Time Change

Mary’s painting was inspired by a road trip, driving through the night near the border of Utah and California - seeing the mountain range appear just before dawn. The painting features a photo that was taken while speeding past a brightly lit gas station. The photo was printed on 12” transparent tape and then applied to the bottom of the painting with the textures underneath showing through. The result is a propulsive feeling of motion.

For the audio, I recorded the sound of our old truck idling which defined the tempo of the piece. Mary often uses sandpaper to reveal textures and colors in her painting so we recorded the sounds of sandpaper on canvas and used that as the basis for the rhythmic elements. I then recorded passing traffic on a busy road and added a moody bass line that reinforces the darkness and motion in the painting.

@marynevilleart

9. Sally England - Floating Garden

Sally’s installation began with her choosing the pool as the site location. As a fiber artist she initially planned a large-scale knotting or weaving piece in the rectangular shape. But she ultimately arrived at the concept of using recycled pool hose and inserting wire to bend and create floating shapes. To counter the plastic material, she formed the shapes into flowers and leaves to connect back to the natural world. Floating Garden finds beauty in every day objects and unexpected places.

For the audio, I found an appropriately playful tone with a pizzicato playing style on the violin and viola. The plucking sound reminiscent of dropping objects in water. The piece starts out with various notes played randomly in free time and then slowly locks into a tempo. The strings are introduced with sustained chord swells and then finally become more lively staccato sequences. There’s a faint Japanese flavor that was perhaps subconsciously inspired by my recent trip to Osaka and Naoshima.

The violin and viola was performed by Kathleen Robertson.

@sallyenglandstudio

10. Ben Grace - Axis Anima

Ben is an artist and designer who creates lighting pieces that are both functional and sculptural. For this piece he expanded to a larger scale and created a six foot sculpture made of thin wood cut into graphic patterns. The piece is mounted on a slowly rotating base to add movement that changes as it turns and hits the light.

One of the interesting challenges of curating this show was to consider the “sonic bleed” from piece to piece. Ben’s location in the rock garden was very close to Sally’s in the pool, so I wrote Ben’s piece in a relative minor key. This ensured that if they were heard together, the sound would be complimentary. I felt the cello would fit perfectly with Ben’s wood material and along with the violin and viola of Sally’s piece, they form an involuntary string quartet.

To support the slow movement and layered nature of Ben’s piece, the cello sound is meditative with sustained, layered notes that come and go. If you have the opportunity to experiment, Floating Garden and Axis Anima work well when played simultaneously.

@bengrace.co

11. Rebecca Odes - You Are the Sky

Rebecca often works at the intersection of art and sound, so she was the perfect fit for this show. As an interdisciplinary artist, she works with light, sculpture, design, video and technology. As a musician, she experiments with sonic textures and untraditional techniques.

The sound was created entirely with acoustic and electric guitars with Rebecca playing with threads, strings, and electronic resonators. The instruments were then sent through effects to build the ethereal textures.

This beautifully immersive installation was both meditative and moving with a mountain landscape, a surreal sunset, and a video representation of the sun - or the perhaps the moon?

@rebeccamodes

12. Rosemary Hall - Flutter

When Rosemary discovered our old 1952 Ford truck, she was instantly inspired. She’s a transdisciplinary artist who works with sculpture, ceramics, sound, video, and performance. She ultimately landed on the idea of making a sculpture that resembled an insect pupa.

Rosemary welded an iron frame and covered it with a mesh fabric that was first soaked in oak galls, then layered with oak leaves and rusted iron. The tannins in the oak reacted with the oxidizing metal, transforming the water and cloth into a deep purple-black, almost navy color.

This was installed in the back of the truck with cushions and a pillow to invite people to crawl into the truck bed, lay down and experience the sound as you gaze up into the surrounding oak trees.

For the audio, we mounted four transducers on the doors and metal sides of the truck. When sound is sent to the transducers, it resonates whatever it’s touching, so the truck essentially becomes a big speaker. The transducers emphasize sub-sonic frequencies, so the piece has low sounds that shake and vibrate the whole truck. I also added some electronic flutters that sound like insects to reinforce both a mechanical and pupal experience.

@rosemaryhall