The Sound Keeps Coming

Freddie Greis and Cait McCormack

Curated by Terra Keck

Opening: April 9th, 6-8 pm

Artist Talk: Announcement Forthcoming

April 9th - May 16th, 2026

“The temple bell stops–

but the sound keeps coming

out of the flowers.” 

- Matsuo Basho

Field Projects presents “The Sound Keeps Coming,” a two person exhibition featuring the work of Philadelphia-based artist Cait McCormack and New York-based artist Freddie Greis.

“The Sounds Keeps Coming” explores life and meaning amongst The Emptiness, seen from the perspective of the memory-keeping creatures who exist there, between the far flung moments of being. Which is to say, in less poetic terms, that this exhibition is about us; remembering and reminding.

Artists Freddie Greis and Cait McCormack both uniquely work with concepts of memory (treasured and yearned for), the frail splendor of existence (sparkling and insistent), and inspire in viewers a sense of precious vastness that helps one find footing in the absurdity of our reality. The exhibition features works made with velvet, foraged pigments, crochet, paper mache, collage, glitter and oil on shaped canvas, elements that allude to a tactile sense of time, and a layering of micro-enganglements in service to a larger whole. Within the gallery, Greis’ works act as amorphous evolving portals to distant points of clarity, the golden stones in our pockets that we return to as the void prickles up our backs. McCormack’s shadow creatures and cradled “Blorbs” (informal/affectionate) are the artifacts and inhabitants that traverse these portals, the farmers and ferryman of a quantum Summerland, bringing with them evidence of their travels in nostalgic grief stones and memory meteorites. 

Inspired by the work of 17th century poet Matsuo Basho, the title alludes to a deeper question “Am I the temple or am I the flower?” The answer is “yes,” but more than that, we are the reverberating sound and the breathless listener. An incredible harmonic resonance of all. Oh, what beauty.

McCormack’s work externalizes experiences with mental illness, dysmorphia, and assault, producing a taxonomy of emotive vessels. Exploring queerness, isolation, and existential dread through an uncanny, sometimes humorous lens, they contemplate societal reluctance to legitimize gendered craft and regard crochet as a behavioral response to apocalyptic conditions. Inspired by folkloric botanical motifs, institutional osteological displays, sci-fi/body horror cinema, and an abundance of time spent alone with an overactive imagination, each object is an unraveling relic of a thought, tethered to a surface and made viewable at a distance. The hand-crocheted cotton thread is dredged in glues and foraged pigments and is then fashioned into sculptural forms. The transformative act of generating and stiffening each unit into a static composition, recontextualizing moments of despair and rage as ornate, provocative, or comical specimens. Heavily obscured by overgrowths of crocheted string, fibrous vines, and lace-like flowers, the integrity of these objects is reinforced by complex networks, just as we are all strengthened by the calcified scars of a lifetime of experiences. These particular sculptures express my internal trepidations as a queer person existing in a volatile world and contribute to an ongoing conversation surrounding hierarchy, craft, trauma, and ecology.

Freddie Greis

Freddie Greis was born in 1990, grew up in Madison NJ, and currently lives in New York City. He received his BFA from Cornell University in 2012 and his MFA from Hunter College in 2019. He has shown work in New York and New Jersey. In 2021, he sold 100 paintings for 100 dollars each (or less) as part of an affordable art project. His work explores experiences of nature, memory, humor, and spirituality.

Greis tries to make paintings that belong in the kind of future he desires. A future where nihilistic and relentless competition is no longer rewarded. One where the purpose of life extends beyond mere survival and accumulation. A life full of meaning and in communion with nature.

Painting provides a place of freedom to explore feelings lacking in everyday life: stillness, optimism, emotional vulnerability, and equanimity. It also provides a space to explore intellectually dubious or odd ideas: animal consciousness, mystical experiences, dream recall, and more. Greis is interested in exploring all of these things in order to reveal an underlying union between oneself and the entire world around us. To experience that union is to be unburdened from perpetual churn of interiority and anxiety. In short, he wants to elicit an experience of deep relief, bewilderment, and wonder.

1. Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver (the entire book, especially read just before bed after a devastating day)

2. The Work of Alfred Jarry, The founder of ‘Pataphysics. Entry points include Exploits & Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician, Caesar-Antichrist, and Black Minutes of Memorial Sand.

3. That feeling of standing in the middle of the street at 4am, before even the delivery trucks make their way into the city. The longer you stand there, the more absurd the sidewalk feels. You have never seen the trees on your street from this angle.

4. A coincidence, however suspicious.

5. Returning to your hometown. That chili’s used to be a bank. That parking lot was your elementary school. But the library is still here, the overhead lighting still buzzes with same furiously insistent tone.