The Listening Fence
TThe Listening Fence is an evolving, participatory outdoor installation that invites the public into a shared act of remembrance, release, and reciprocity. It was first installed along the back fence of the Riverside Arts Center's sculpture garden in the fall of 2025, as part of the Terrain Biennial.
I made every sheet of paper for the project by hand, each about 5 x 8 inches. Some were pulled from flax, some from recycled cotton. Most, and the ones visitors reached for most often, were made from my mother's medical records, which I pulped and remade into paper after she died. Those sheets carried the strongest responses. People seemed to sense that they were writing onto something that had already been transformed by grief, and that their own words were joining it.
Visitors were invited to respond to a simple question:
What would you like to release, remember, or offer to the world?
From a small box at the fence, they gathered paper, watercolor pencils, crayons, and twine, wrote their messages, and tied them to the hanging cords. Over the weeks, these whispers accumulated into a luminous, living wall of collective breath.
Exposed to rain, snow, wind, and sun, the papers weathered, faded, and in some cases dissolved completely. This was always part of the work: an honoring of impermanence, and of the ways our words and our losses are taken up by the larger world. At the close of the exhibition, each paper was documented and then burned in a ritual fire. The ashes will become the material for a new work.
The Listening Fence comes from my own need for comfort and witness, and from a belief that we are far less separate than we feel. Each message was a small act of remembering that we belong to one another.
I hope this project will travel and grow, carrying a shared conversation of compassion into new communities. If you would like to bring The Listening Fence to your gallery, school, or community, please get in touch.
If you visited, I would love to see your notes, images, and reflections. You can send them to me for inclusion here, or share them on Instagram with #thelisteningfence and tag @hillary_irene_johnson.
I would be remiss if I didn’t offer my deep thanks to a few people in particular here:
Joanne Iono who brilliantly runs the galleries at Riverside Art Center who offered me the invitation to participate in the Terrain Biennial at the Center. Thank you Joanne for shepherding this project from idea to reality with so much grace and generous support.
Melissa Potter who first taught me forms and ways of papermaking and community engagement which radicalized my views of what might be possible and whose own generosity of spirit makes all in her lineage proud.
Terrain Biennial in which I had long desired to participate. This was the perfect experience. I’m honored to have been part of this and that together we all held the space for tenderness and healing.
Amy Leners who was my first teacher in the magic of the papermaking world at Columbia College who was so kind and generous to let me into the space and taught me a kind of precision I still dream about. I will never forget that first day of magic and papery alchemy.
Ross Sawyers, then Chair of the Photography Department at Columbia College who facilitated and cleared the way for me to access what I needed and seem to know it even before I did.
Special heartfelt appreciation and love to my beloved husband, Matthew Johnson who makes all the things I do possible with his love and presence. Also my very dear friend Youngse Kim who is a brilliant artist and a real anam cara to me. I hope I can return the care.
Thank you. Thank you.
A Note on Absence, Transformation, and Care
If you do not see the paper on which you wrote your message represented here, please know this was not an omission.
Some of the papers transformed so completely—through water and snow and wind and soil—that there was nothing left to photograph. These messages were gathered in the fragments that remained and were burned alongside the others.
Their transformation was total.
Their essence is held.
Your heartfelt words are part of the alchemy of this work and will carry forward into what comes next this spring.
Thank you—deeply—to each of you who participated, from near and far.
I hold you all in my heart.
This work exists because it is what I, too, need most. Comfort. Reassurance. Witness.
At its center is the simple human longing to be seen, heard, and loved.
May the road rise up to meet you.
Hillary