“Death is a Dialogue between / The Spirit and the Dust,” writes poet Emily Dickinson. Living is a daily conversation with death, and through art, we continue that dialogue with mortality, loss, and our own humanity. In Spirit & Dust, artists working across various disciplines—from photography and sculpture to poetry and dance—seek to create space for care and connection in confronting questions of death and dying. What do we gather from our grief? How is this knowledge embodied, and what can art provide for this relationship? What can death teach us about what it means to be alive?

The process of creating art serves as a mirror for thinking about dying as a verb, where time is experienced as cyclical rather than linear. Each artist’s medium of choice in Spirit & Dust experiments with how we can deepen our relationship with the process of dying, such as through abstraction in photography, blank space in poetry, the ephemerality of dance, and the fallibility of materials in sculpture. 

Spirit & Dust is on view concurrently with Experiencing Veterans and Artists Collaborations (EVAC) in the corridor space, which pairs veterans’ stories with original printmaking.

Curated by Diane Callahan and Michelle Burdine

Participating Artists: Kristina Arnold, Mary Jo Bole, Michelle Burdine, Diane Callahan, Elvira Clayton, Barbara Fant, Ton’nea Green, Kari Gunter-Seymour, Dana Lynn Harper, Ian Hersko, Gee Horton, Laura Larson, Tracy Longley-Cook, Michael J. Morris, Christian O’Keeffe, Paul O’Keeffe, Chantal Wnuk, Melissa Vogley Woods

Support for this project comes from the Mellon Foundation through The Ohio State University Office of Academic Affairs.

Promo Image Art by Michelle Burdine. Promo Design by Nancy Hohl.
 

Free Public Programming

We hope you’ll join us during our free public programs this fall! There will also be an audio guide for the full exhibition located at the Urban Arts Space front desk. You’re welcome to schedule a guided curator tour with Diane Callahan at quotidianwriter@gmail.com.

Events at Urban Arts Space

Opening Reception
featuring a durational performance from Michael J. Morris
Friday, October 16, 2026, 5–7 PM

Celebrate the opening of the exhibition with the artists and enjoy light refreshments. The performance by Michael J. Morris will take place from 5–7 p.m. throughout the lower gallery—feel free to stop and observe as you explore the exhibition.

stone, bone, bruise, and breath is a durational performance created and performed by Michael J. Morris. A body and a large piece of limestone move together through the gallery in subtle and quietly shifting configurations. Inspired in part by the widespread tradition of marking the graves of the dead with stones, it is a dance between what is fleeting and what is enduring, the limited time of living and dying along with the deep geological time of the more-than-human world. The preparation and performance of the piece is also an extended meditation on the ways that what we carry—including our grief—changes us, increasing some capacities while also diminishing others.

Stories We Carry: A Storytelling Circle with The Grief Club
Thursday, October 22, 6–8 PM

We all carry stories. Some we tell often. Some we have never said out loud. Some we are still learning how to understand.

Stories We Carry is a community storytelling circle created by The Grief Club in partnership with Urban Arts Space, inviting participants to slow down and share a story that has stayed with them.

Through guided prompts and intentional conversation, we’ll create space for personal narratives, memories, reflections, poetry, spoken word, and the experiences that have shaped us.

This is not a performance. It is not an open mic.

It is an invitation to share, listen, witness, and connect.

Come with a story. Come with a memory. Come simply to listen.

Whatever you carry or are curious about, there is room for it here.

Stories can be about:

• Grief & loss
• Love & relationships
• Family
• Motherhood
• Identity
• Joy
• Becoming
• Life transitions
• Resilience
• A person who changed you
• A moment you will never forget
• Something you're still learning to understand
• A story you've never had the space to tell
   

Participants do not have to share to participate.

The Grief Club is a community-centered organization creating intentional spaces for people to explore grief, loss, healing, and the many emotions that accompany change.

Founded by Cortland Mullins following the loss of her mother, The Grief Club creates experiences that make room for honest conversations around grief while recognizing that grief is not limited to death. Through gatherings, storytelling experiences, workshops, and community conversations, The Grief Club invites people to connect, reflect, and feel less alone in what they carry.

Artist Commune: Death Café
Saturday, October 24, 2–5 PM

At a death café, attendees are encouraged to share what’s on their mind about death in a nonjudgmental, secular environment while enjoying complimentary coffee, tea, and cake. Death Café is an international nonprofit movement with the mission “to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives.” These conversations remove the stigma surrounding the topic of death and dying.

Using these discussions as inspiration, attendees will then be invited to participate in a zine-making workshop with local poet Ty Williams. We’ll reflect on questions like “What makes me feel most alive?” and “What do I want my life to look like?” to craft meaningful mini publications that reflect how we hope to make the most of our time on Earth.

The Death Café model was developed by Jon Underwood and Sue Barsky Reid, based on the ideas of Bernard Crettaz.

Ty J. Williams is a poet, essayist, zinemaker, musician, and educator living and working in Columbus, Ohio. He graduated from The Ohio State University with a degree in Creative Writing and History. In addition to Sad-Dad poems, Ty’s writing explores Indigenous history, social justice and mental health. His work has been published in Sonder Midwest, Black Bough Poetry, Columbus Alive, Common Ground, Mosaic Magazine, 68to05.com and more. Ty has judged yearly for the James Thurber Prize for American Humor since 2023. Ty was a finalist for the 2022 Arthur Rense Poetry Prize by the American Academy of Poets.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Dying
Thursday, November 5, 6–8 PM

This panel discussion will feature speakers from death-related professions, organizations, and artistic backgrounds, including Spirit & Dust co-curator and artist Michelle Burdine. Although the panelists come from different walks of life, the intersections between their worlds speak to the complexities within the realm of death and dying. What We Talk About When We Talk About Dying honors individual expertise and experiences, whether through a veteran’s understanding of war or how personal loss changes what a photographer sees. 

 

Fathers Writing Through Grief with Just Dads
Saturday, November 7, 12–2 PM

Most of us were taught to carry it quietly. To keep moving. To be the one who holds it together while everyone else falls apart. So grief settles somewhere in the body and stays there— unnamed, unspoken, passed down.

Fathers Writing Through Grief exists to interrupt that inheritance.

This afternoon brings together the Spirit & Dust exhibition through the lens of grief, loss, and ancestral roots, guided prompts from the Just Dads Journal, and a booklet designed to walk you through what's hard to say out loud. We'll write about those who have passed—and about the living losses we rarely permit ourselves to mourn.

You don't have to be a writer. You don't have to share. You only have to show up and be honest on the page. This is a guided writing workshop led by Just Dads founder Brent Sigley as well as David Dixon, a father, author, and veteran.

Just Dads equips and empowers fathers with community, emotional regulation skills, and practical tools to stay grounded, strengthen relationships, and build stable futures for their families.

Death Over Dinner
Thursday, November 12, 6:30–8:30 PM

In this closing reception, guests will participate in facilitated conversations about end-of-life concerns while sharing a meal together. Visitors are encouraged to bring a loved one to join in a candid, welcoming conversation about death and what it means to be alive. 

The evening will begin with a poetry reading from Atlas, a Columbus-based poet and co-founder of The Grief Club, a community organization dedicated to creating intentional spaces for people to explore grief and healing. 

This is a free event with a provided buffet, but the gallery can only accommodate 50 attendees, so please RSVP at the link above.

Atlas is a Columbus-based poet, storyteller, educator, and U.S. Air Force veteran whose work explores grief, Black masculinity, fatherhood, intimacy, memory, and the complicated search for home. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University and is the co-founder of The Grief Club, a community organization that creates spaces for people to process loss through storytelling and collective care. His current manuscript, holy even now, examines what remains sacred in a life shaped by love, survival, inheritance, and loss. Through poetry, Atlas invites Black men and boys to encounter themselves beyond what they have endured and to imagine healing as something practiced in community.

Death Over Dinner is a global initiative founded by author Michael Hebb and co-founder Angel Grant to transform how society approaches the conversation around mortality. Launched as an interactive online platform, the organization provides free tools, curated reading materials, and guided prompts that empower individuals to host dinner parties aimed at discussing end-of-life planning and personal wishes in a comfortable, meaningful setting. Since its inception, the initiative has inspired hundreds of thousands of gatherings worldwide. 

Events in the Community

Buckeye Talks on Tap
“Our Bodies as Monsters: Reflecting on Mortality” with Professor Sara Crosby
Tuesday, October 6 at 5:30 PM
Bucci’s Italian Scratch Kitchen on Ohio State’s Marion Campus 

It’s not easy to be a body. Most of us go about our day and don’t really think about it too much. But illness forces us to consider it. And when we do, what do we make of it? How do we cope with embodiment? With mortality? With mental illness? With disordered appetite and desire? One genre that helps is horror, which has allowed us to represent and theorize illness and embodiment throughout human history.

Ohio State Marion Professor Sara Crosby will lead an interactive conversation about monstrous depictions of illness and aging across literature and film, where our own bodies are a source of horror. From Frankenstein and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe to movies like The Substance and The Fly, we will consider how we’ve externalized our fear of death.

Part of the Buckeye Talks on Tap series on The Ohio State University's Marion campus.

Pickerington Death Café 
Sunday, October 11, 1–2 PM
Pickerington Public Library 

Join us for an open, thoughtful conversation about death in a welcoming space facilitated by Spirit & Dust co-curator Diane Callahan. Death Café is a facilitated discussion where people—regardless of background or belief—come together to share perspectives, ask questions, and reflect on the meaning and reality of death. This is not a grief support group or counseling session but rather an opportunity to explore a topic that touches all lives. Tea and cupcakes will be provided. 

The Death Café model was developed by Jon Underwood and Sue Barsky Reid, based on the ideas of Bernard Crettaz.
 

Mansfield Death Café 
Monday, November 2, 12:30–1:30 PM
Pearl Conard Gallery 

Join us for an open, thoughtful conversation about death in a welcoming space facilitated by Spirit & Dust co-curator Diane Callahan. Death Café is a facilitated discussion where people—regardless of background or belief—come together to share perspectives, ask questions, and reflect on the meaning and reality of death. This is not a grief support group or counseling session but rather an opportunity to explore a topic that touches all lives. Tea and cupcakes will be provided. 

The Death Café model was developed by Jon Underwood and Sue Barsky Reid, based on the ideas of Bernard Crettaz.

Visiting Urban Arts Space

50 W. Town St., Ste. 130
Columbus, OH 43215
Located in the historic Lazarus Building in downtown Columbus.

Admission to our exhibitions and programs is free!

View this map for parking garage options, with street parking on Rich, Front, and Wall Street, or go to our Accessibility page for bike or bus directions.

• Columbus Commons Parking Garage (Always has ample parking on the upper floors)
• Ohio Statehouse Parking Garage (Enter from westbound Broad Street or Third Street—we recommend this garage when accessibility is a concern)
• Riffe Center Parking Garage (Enter from Front Street)
   

Gallery Hours
Tuesday: 11:00 AM–6:00 PM
Wednesday: 11:00 AM–6:00 PM
Thursday: 11:00 AM–8:00 PM
Friday: 11:00 AM–6:00 PM
Saturday: 11:00 AM–6:00 PM

Open later for the events listed above!