Before Dreams Are The Last Place We Find You
September 7 – November 2, 2025
Lydia Cheshewalla is an Osage ephemeral artist from Oklahoma, living and working in motion throughout the Great Plains ecoregion. Through the creation of site-specific land art and ephemeral installations grounded in Indigenous land stewardship practices and kinship pedagogies, Lydia engages in multivocal conversations about place and relationship.
Before Dreams Are The Last Place We Find You is on view at Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods from September 7 – November 2, 2025. This exhibition is an ephemeral, site-specific installation by Cheshewalla, created during her August residency at the Center for Humans & Nature in Libertyville, Illinois.
Cheshewalla’s practice is built on an ethos that views all beings as sacred, with their own agency, and with a right to complete their cycle of life and death. She works mainly with naturally shed material and seeds that are ready for collecting. At the end of installations, each being is returned to its original place in nature where it was gathered, closing the circle of creation.
A selection of Cheshewalla’s work will be published by the digital branch of Humans & Nature Press. The Digital Press celebrates diverse sources of wisdom about what it means to be human in an interconnected world.
Photo Credits: Erin Williams, Katherine Kassouf Cummings
Exhibition Materials
View the Exhibition Guide to learn more about the exhibition.
Get Into the Groove
As you tour the gallery, supplement your experience with music inspired by the themes of Before Dreams Are The Last Place We Find You curated by Brushwood Center’s Director of Music, Parker Nelson. Simply scan the following QR code with your smartphone to access the playlist – no subscription required.
About Lydia Cheshewalla
Artist
Lydia Cheshewalla is an Osage ephemeral artist from Oklahoma, living and working in motion throughout the Great Plains ecoregion. Through the creation of site-specific land art and ephemeral installations grounded in Indigenous land stewardship practices and kinship pedagogies, Lydia engages in multivocal conversations about place and relationship. Her work has been shown at Generator Space, the Union for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE), Comfort Station, Harold Washington Library, the Center for Native Futures, and Elmhurst Art Museum (Chicago, IL) among others. She is currently filling the bucket with water to see if it leaks and is often found standing in fields.
Artist Statement
Working with kin gathered from places called home, installations become multi-vocal sites of conversation that tell simultaneous stories of ecology, relationship, and self-location. Collaborating within the limitations of season, cycle, and change, the emergent work is always dictated by the needs and realities of time, place, and ecosystem. Every kin participating in the creation of the art has its own story, agency, and right to return. As such, every collaborator and its point of origin is logged, both in physical location for its post-install return, as well as in emotional memory which tells the stories of how relationship came to be.
Photo credit: Erin Williams
Exhibition Events
Opening Reception and Artist Talk
September 7, 2025
1:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods
Exhibition Partner: The Center for Humans & Nature
The Center for Humans & Nature is an ideas hub. Humans & Nature Press shares ideas that build community and inspire action. Humans & Nature Farm is a place where ideas take root. The Center is a place to experience human connection with nature and consider our responsibilities to the whole community of life. Forty miles north of Chicago, the Center is home to breathtakingly beautiful prairie, savanna, wetland, woodland, ravine, and riparian ecosystems.
Before Dreams Are The Last Place We Find You was created during Lydia Cheshewalla’s Stories from the land residency. Stories from the land is a seasonal residency through Humans & Nature Press Digital, by invitation only. Each resident creates a piece of work based on their experience with the land at Humans & Nature Farm. A selection of Cheshewalla’s work will be published by the digital branch of Humans & Nature Press. The Digital Press celebrates diverse sources of wisdom about what it means to be human in an interconnected world.
