Experiences over Explanation

Artist Kaya Eccles and a facilitator working at Jump the Moon studio in Logan, Utah, USA

Some experiences don’t have a shorthand. 

Before preferences can be named, before decisions can be made, an experience has to be legible - and not everything becomes legible through explanation.

This is especially true in supported studio environments, where explanation can sometimes outpace recognition.

I’ve seen this clearly in moments where an experience had to be entered before it could be understood. In one instance, I worked with an artist, Richard (also known as Ricky), who happened to be deaf, unable to speak, and on the autism spectrum. He had just been awarded the opportunity to present his work in a public exhibition. There was no shared vocabulary available to explain what that opportunity entailed. Language—at least as much as I was equipped with—could not carry the meaning of what was unfolding.

So instead, I focused on crafting opportunities for him to enter the experience. I made shelves that mirrored what he already did in the studio - draping a drawing from the wall to the table surface and leaving space for him to place selected plastic animals from a familiar collection. I prepared several of these shelves so he could arrange his tableaus as he wished, understanding the space as dedicated to sharing his work and his continued authorship within it.

A photograph from Ricky's submission for a solo exhibition.

Richard, or Ricky, arranging groups of plastic animals on large oil pastel drawings of his. 2007

Visitors at CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, NY, USA looking at Ricky's installation. 2007

Ricky posing by his work on opening night. 2007

There was no verbal bridge available. No abstract framing that could stand in for the experience itself.

Only after inhabiting the space - after seeing his work take form in the world - could a meaningful question exist:

Is this something you want to do again?

That question matters. But it doesn’t always come first.

This is where facilitation is often misunderstood. From the outside, it can look like a decision is being made for someone. In reality, what’s being offered is orientation - a way into an experience that has no shorthand.

The facilitator isn’t authoring the outcome. They’re constructing conditions where authorship becomes legible - felt before it can be named.

Once an experience has been lived, it carries information forward. Preferences begin to form. Decisions become possible. Return - or refusal - starts to mean something.

In this way, experience doesn’t replace agency. It creates the ground on which agency can stand.

There’s an ethical clarity here that’s worth naming.

If we limit people only to what they already know, we quietly limit the range of experiences available to them. Part of our role as facilitators is to help expand an artist’s possibilities - not by directing outcomes, but by recognizing when an opportunity needs to be illustrated rather than explained.

The skill lies in knowing how and when to make those possibilities legible, and in shaping experiences in ways that can be recognized, entered, and responded to by each artist.

Not all invitations can be described in advance. Some have to be entered once, together, before they can become legible enough to be accepted or declined.