A Clearing
Collaboration with Benjamin Smith
What is A Clearing? A space opened within everyday life where we can listen, gather and imagine differently.
A Clearing brings the Splice-Cream Truck into use as an intimate installation and mobile gallery, making room for connection, conversation and expression. A collaboration between Naomi Lord and Benjamin Smith, it invites people to listen and contribute their own voices through a shared question: What brings you joy?
Produced in relation to Zygote Press’ A Clearing, named for the clearing in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, these gatherings extend Smith’s Black Classical. Developed for Zygote Press’ Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison exhibition with Literary Cleveland and Ohio Humanities, Black Classical draws on the structure and rhythms of Morrison’s Jazz. Portraits, East Cleveland voices, original music and analogue recording and playback technologies form a layered composition of people and place.
A Clearing will travel from Detroit to Nashville, opening out at key sites connected to the Underground Railroad, Black music and social history. Each stop will feature guest local artists, creating space to listen, connect and add to the voices the truck records, carries and transmits.
Making A Clearing
Places & preparation
Reclamation & installation
On the road
Black Classical
Editing & design · Editorial & conceptual development
Black Classical is an evolving body of work by Cleveland artist Benjamin Smith, bringing resident voices, portraiture, sound, print and architectural material into relation. Naomi’s contribution spans editing and design, editorial and conceptual development, literary consultancy and situated photography.
Developed through Little-Bit, the work begins with the question “What brings you joy?”. Twenty-five residents contributed to its first iteration. Vintage gaming technology, conversation and sound gather distinct perspectives without combining them into a single representative account of East Cleveland.
The artist’s book is conceived as a printed musical score, placing pixelated portraits alongside conversation fragments and photographs of former homes on Chapman and Elderwood Avenues. Informed by the structure and rhythms of Toni Morrison’s Jazz, it develops through repetition, improvisation and the return of different voices.
Presented as an installation or ‘expanded book’, the work brings together portraits, recorded voices, music, print, listening stations, vinyl, vintage audio technologies and reclaimed architectural elements. The process includes the collection, preparation and treatment of material from former homes in East Cleveland. Naomi’s photographs bring these material histories into dialogue with Smith’s portraits and recordings, allowing visitors to make connections between people, memory, music and the city.
