This fall, multimedia artist Leah Crosby is joining Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts and Agriculture (PMRCAA) and bringing a practice grown from a background in caregiving, sound, attention and human connection. Crosby’s work spans performance, machines, text, and sculptural objects, but always circles back to one central theme: how we care for one another and for the world around us.
“I have been a paid caregiver my entire life in various different capacities,” Crosby explains. “I’m a licensed massage therapist. I’ve been a nanny. I was the end-of-life caregiver for a very dear chosen family member who had terminal brain cancer.”
Crosby’s artistic inquiries often center on the boundaries of caregiving, how relationships shift when care is both deeply personal and contractually defined. Their work grapples with experiences such as raising other people’s children or supporting extended family through illness and death, asking what it means to offer love and attention within those structures. From there, their practice expands outward, considering how we might also extend care to the land and to one another.
That experience shapes not only the subject matter of Crosby’s projects, but also the way they begin. “As an artist, I work more conceptually, where I start with questions and ideas and then use whatever medium makes sense. So sometimes that’s sculpture, sometimes that’s performance. But at PMRCAA, I’ll be working in sound.”
“I’m very interested in what happens when your time and attention has a monetary value associated with it,” they note. At PMRCAA, this inquiry will take the form of “deep listening and having conversations with natural sound as being a way of caring for the landscape and engaging with surroundings differently and deeply.”
That kind of conceptual framework runs through Crosby’s broader body of work. A project that involved artist books, for example, used small, intimate materials to open up big questions. “I have a series of artists’ books that are folded inside of band aids,” says Crosby “These are about the physical responses to caring for someone else’s infant.” Crosby sells these small books in a vending machine, and in doing so asks viewers to confront caregiving’s mix of intimacy and transaction. “You have to pay to get my opinion about what it’s like to take care of someone else’s baby,” says Crosby.
This layered approach is grounded in Crosby’s history and background as a dancer and performer. “My undergraduate degree was in dance,” they explain. “I was working as a dancer, choreographer, performer for a number of years, as a community dance educator on Martha’s Vineyard.” Later, Crosby relocated to Seattle, where their practice began to shift away from movement and increasingly toward visual and interdisciplinary forms. “I do feel like my work was getting more and more visual and felt less and less like dance.”
The pandemic accelerated this shift. “There was a total reframe,” says Crosby. “My whole life was based on creating events to bring people together for live performances. It was an interesting creative container to work in.” That transition ultimately led Crosby to pursue graduate study at the Penny Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan, and later, a research and teaching fellowship with the Arts Initiative.
Even as their practice evolved, the thread of caregiving never left. When Crosby heard about the residency through colleagues, the fit was immediate.
As part of their residency, Crosby will lead a Sound Walk, on October 16, 2025 from 3-5 p.m. A sound walk is an immersive event designed to center listening as a practice of care. Participants begin with grounding exercises before being introduced to different approaches for noticing and interpreting sound. From there, the group walks together, tuning into the surrounding environment, and concludes with shared reflection.
In addition to the sound walk, Crosby will participate in the Open Studio event at Pine Meadow Ranch on November 6, 2025, from 4-6 p.m., as part of the Roundhouse Foundation’s Open Studios series.
The Open Studio will feature Crosby along with fellow residents Andrew Paul Keiper and Margot Boyer-Dry. The event is free and open to the public, though space is limited and registration is required.
