Sumi Sound Print Workshop with Nelly Kate

Join artist Nelly Kate for a process-based workshop exploring sound, surface, and mark-making through cymatics and the Japanese art of sumīnagāshi, the ancient technique of ink marbling. In sumīnagāshi, sumi ink is gently floated on still water and coaxed into spontaneous patterns before transferring to paper. At once delicate and dynamic, these forms embody fluidity, impermanence, and listening.

By bringing together this ancient technique with the scientific phenomenon of cymatics, a new process emerges that fosters subtle awareness of the resonance and form of sound waves.

In this session, participants will activate ink and water through sonic vibration, experimenting with sound as both a phenomenon and a catalyst. What happens when sound becomes form? What might we learn by responding to sound through tactile process, gesture, and attentiveness?

Inspired by the Still in Sound exhibition’s investigations of sound’s unseen presence and its call to attune to resonance beyond the audible, this workshop invites you to slow down, sonically engage, and make visible the ways vibration shapes experience.​

All materials will be provided; no previous printmaking or musical experience required.

The program costs $20 for adults, $10 for seniors, and $5 (materials fee) for CSM members. Program costs include Museum admission for the day. Registration is required to attend in person at the Clyfford Still Museum. Registration will open soon.

About Artist Kelly Nate

Nelly Kate (she/her) is a late-Deaf sound artist who was raised in the American South. Her work takes the form of installation, performance, and print.

Over the past decade, Nelly has experienced fluctuations between late-deafness and hearing. This informs her creative research and insistence upon slowness, the awkwardness of inclusion, collaboration, and repetition.

In 2015, Nelly turned her focus to inaudible sound—exploring captions, sonic visualizations, and haptics. During her MFA candidacy at Cranbrook Academy of Art (Print Media ‘21), she developed a technique for utilizing sumīnagāshi marbling and fluid cymatics to make ‘sound prints’.

Some of her favorite opportunities to-date include contributing to disability-led projects, Language of Lunacy (2025) and ‘…derelict in uncharted space…’ (2023) in Melbourne, Australia; residencies at Haystack’s Open Studio, Walkaway House, Wedding Cake House; performances at MIT, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Mint Museum, and Mattress Factory; lectures/workshops at Parsons School of Design, Virginia Commonwealth University, American University, Portland Art Museum, and The American University of Paris.

She’s currently a creative director with MIT Spatial Sound Lab and co-organizer of Boston Spatial Sound Community salons.