Nicole Killian, artist and Associate Professor in Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Graphic Design, has recently completed a project at Richmond's Institute for Contemporary Art titled "between a book and a soft place," work that explores notions of play, gathering, and reading. The piece has been generously donated to Sabot School and recently installed on the campus Quad. Formed from recycled rubber, Killian's "book cradle" now serves as an interactive, dynamic and purposeful space where students can relax, play, read and gather.


Killian will speak with the Sabot community at some point in the fall semester to discuss this design project, their other work, and Killian's uniquely expansive approach and inspiration for art-making, specifically "objects as containers for language—language that gets activated when read, passed, held, and handled." For a school deeply committed to engaged, co-constructed learning, this gift, in the artist's words "is a vivacious learning environment... a play-space for language."