Staircases and Soundscapes: The Art of Emily Janowick

Purchase artist-in-residence Emily Janowick explores movement, memory and connection through sculpture, sound and paths we take. 

By Emma Ivanov 

The energy of the gallery opening was frenetic, almost frantic, but distinctly alive— art students of all stripes climbed the exhibit like a jungle gym, people munched on provided refreshments as they viewed the piece from every angle, and professors and art enthusiasts mingled and talked, both about the piece and life in general, as their voices blended with the soundscape. The artist, Emily Janowick, was among it all: laughing, having fun, beaming with pride. 

This on-campus exhibition, “Long Walk”, hosted at the Visual Arts Building’s Richard and Dolly Maass Gallery, is Janowick’s fifth exhibition since 2022, and her first at an institution, SUNY Purchase.  

The opening title for the exhibition's opening and reception, projected on the nearest wall of the Maass Gallery. Photo by Emma Ivanov.

Janowick’s first exhibition, Blood Makes the Grass Grow, was in 2022, and held at the Foyer-LA gallery in Los Angeles. It was followed by two shows in 2024, titled Chevron, hosted at International Waters in Brooklyn, and Wet Blanket, at Parent Company in New York City. Her most recent exhibition was in the Kate Werble Gallery in 2025, titled Obsession.

All focus on related themes and related materials— with Janowick confirming that the wood used throughout the years has remained the same. This was a deliberate choice, as Janowick states that “I love the way the wood is always becoming something new, holding the scars and marks of its past… Like driftwood, the materials I use are always in flux, always flexible in their becoming.”

As an artist, her “becoming” as it is put, has been a long time coming— a lifetime of art making culminating in studying painting at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, capped with a Master’s degree from Hunter College in January, 2020.

Long Walk consists of multiple parts, “using materials and ideas to move the viewer in space,” as Janowick described it. The central focus is two massive staircases made of unvarnished blond wood, leading upward toward a metaphorical second floor, crossing paths to form an X along the way. 

A front view of the main part of the exhibit: two tall staircases, forming an x on their prospective paths. Photo by Emma Ivanov.

A sound system is rigged within the sculpture, with each staircase playing corresponding nature and water sounds, recorded around Purchase during Janowick’s stay as artist in residence. Beyond the sculptural elements, two televisions on the far wall show a time-lapse of plants growing and a sunset, viewed from over a parking lot.

The walk Janowick frequently took from a tree near the Commons to the gallery during her stay as Purchase’s Artist In Residence inspired the piece. This path to the gallery is printed in zine form and handed out at the bottleneck of the gallery’s main entrance, meant as a sort of guide through the artwork and the process of its creation. 

Together the elements center the exhibition on movement and the paths people take both through the gallery and life. This was felt powerfully by other artists in attendance. The art itself creates a kind of “…a spiritual space, especially with the sounds… it creates a kind of intimacy,” according to Marilla Cubberley, an artist and friend of Janowick.

The presence is looming and entrancing, demanding some kind of gentle attention from anyone who steps within the gallery. How Oskar Peacock, a filmmaker and friend of Janowick, puts it, there’s “something very romantic about it… we are all walking home.” 

Emily Janowick, the creator of Long Walk, taken while posing on the artwork itself. Photo by Emma Ivanov

The piece was made in collaboration with Janowick’s family— her daughter, Shiloh Blue, a sound art engineer and Purchase alum, and her child Jaden, a Purchase student studying sculpture. Life, and art, to Janowick, “is not just about the product,” but about who you create with, how it can bring others together, and how that experience is priceless. 

There are many long walks in life, literal and metaphorical, and, the most important one, according to Janowick, “The long walk of life after one visits the show.” Implying that this artwork, too, is just another stop along the way.

Long Walk by Emily Janowick is being exhibited in the Richard and Dolly Maass Gallery in the Visual Arts Building from August 28th to September 23rd. Her previous work can be seen at https://emilyjanowick.com