People connect to hear voices through speakers in Interactive bench by Julianne Swartz.

Aki Sasamoto prepares to tell stories from her food cart.

Allison Smith shares her oversized Windsor armchair with Judith Leeman.

Carmen Papalia leads eyes-closed walk through Cambridge Common in May 2017.

The Cambridge Common, a park and historic site near me, had seemed a space of few surprises until a few months ago. Then suddenly it became the place to spark inspiring messages by holding hands, to select story performances from a food truck, to share the seat of a gigantic chair, and to join an eyes-closed tour led by a blind artist. Those were just some of the experiences offered through Common Exchange,* with ongoing installations and scheduled events from May through September 2017. Though I missed many opportunities, the ones I experienced connected me with people, history, and hope, especially that we will keep benefitting from the arts.

Here are photos, notes, and links for what I got to do, followed by a quick summary of other features of Common Exchange.*

*”Developed to celebrate the park’s recent pathway renovations, Common Exchange is organized by guest curator Dina Deitsch and Cambridge Arts Director of Public Art Lillian Hsu. Through exhibitions, performances, installations, and the newspaper, it will reframe how we experience the historic Cambridge Common.”(quoted from Cambridge Arts website: Common Exchange Exhibition. ) For specifics about collaborations and funding, click here.

Aki Sasamoto: Food Rental

Aki Sasamoto presents Food Rental in which she operates a handmade food cart to deliver one-on-one performances for visitors to Cambridge Common.

Food Rental uses a familiar park fixture of a pushcart to dispense unexpected and often hilarious acts by the artist.

True to its context, Sasamoto features food-related projects that operate on the logic of “mis-use:”

wearing lemon glasses, playing oyster-shell castanets

and dancing with vegetable-chopping shoes.

“Food Rental lives in the space between street performance, theater, and the gallery as it explores the awkward unspoken space of public interactions.” ( This sentence and those in the captions for photos above are from page 4 in Issue 4/4 of  Common Exchange, the printed special edition newspapers stored in waterproof packets attached to benches throughout the Common. The four issues were designed by the Lesley University College of Art and Design’s Community Design Studio, headed by Rick Rawlins.)

For more about Aki Sasamoto, click here.

Allison Smith: Common Goods

Allison Smith presents a site-specific project engaging the Cambridge Common and its history within broader concepts of “the commons” as a utopian ideal and critical site of communication and exchange.

Smith presents an oversized sack-back Windsor armchair ( also called a “double Windsor”) that is large enough to encompass sitters in its sculpted saddled oval seat.

Smith’s chair will be a mobile work of public art moving into and out of public spaces throughout the summer.

The conversations prompted by Smith, explore a series of individual functional objects, like the chair itself, suggest a social and poetic response to the politics of our time.

“Smith’s chair offers a formal embrace and protected space for intimate exchanges between invited woodworkers and chance passersby.” ( This sentence and those in the captions for photos above are from page 4 in Issue 2/4 of Common Exchange.)

For more about Allison Smith, click here.

Julianne Swartz: Interactive Bench: We Complete

Sign lists audio from James Baldwin, John Donne. Walt Whitman, Bernie Sanders, Erich Fromm, Maya Angelou, Dorothy Day and many other quotable notables.

Julianne Swartz’s We Complete invites visitors to launch a soundtrack by simply sitting and holding hands.

Songs, poetry, and quotations echo from a marked bench as two people sit and touch hear-shaped plates to complete an electric circuit to run the speaker system,

manifesting connectivity in a joyous and playful encounter.

Cooperative touch performs public address.

“The system plays a soundtrack of children of various ages speaking short bursts of texts- poems, quotes, parts of songs, manifestos, and other writings on the subject of interdependence.” (This quote and most sentences in the photos above are from page 7 of Issue 1/4 of Common Exchange.)

For more about Julianne Swartz, click here.

Carmen Papalia: Blind Field Shuttle

I design experiences that allow those involved to expand their perceptual mobility and claim access to public and institutional spaces.

Often requiring trust and closeness, these engagements disorient the participant while introducing new modes of orientation that allow for perceptual and sensorial discovery.

Each walking tour, workshop, collaborative performance, public intervention, museum project and art object that I produce is a temporary system of access—a gesture that contributes to a productive understanding of accessibility.

As an open-sourcing of my own access, my work makes visible the opportunities for learning and knowing that become available through the non-visual senses.

“It is a chance to unlearn looking and to take ones first few steps into a non-visual world.” (This final sentence and all captions in the photos above are from Carmen Papalia’s artist statement.) Photos are from an “eye-opening” discussion immediately after an eyes-closed walking tour when I could not use my camera or my eyes. To witness Carmen Papalia in action, watch videos of his explorations at Gallery 344 in Cambridge, through Dec 15, 2017, or online (Getting to the Front Lobby).

Photo from a similar walk led by Carmen Papalia through the Common in May 2017

For more about Carmen Papalia, click here.

More Art and Artists in Common Exchange

Signs like this placed at points throughout the Cambridge Common offered schedule updates.

One of many banners with personal memories of Cambridge residents developed by Kelly Sherman.

One of many banners in We Were Here:memories of Cambridge Common coordinated by Kelly Sherman.

One of many musicians performing throughout the Common as part of Xaviera Simmons’ Number 22 ( Overlay)

One of many musicians performing throughout the Common as part of Xaviera Simmons’ Number 22 ( Overlay)

Banners from We Were Here: Memories of Cambridge Common are still up. and printed editions of Common Exchange newspapers are available on benches as of this post date, October 17.  Additional artists noted there are Andy Graydon, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Xaviera Simmons, Kelly Sherman, Lee Walton and Jon Rubin. For more information about how each artist related to the whole project, click here.

For an overview of Public Art programs in Cambridge click here.