Pond in a Bowl
Dawn Cerny and Bristol Hayward-Hughes
June 20 – end of summer, 2026

Pond in a Bowl is an offsite outdoor sculpture and poetry garden exhibition. Email for address.

Saturday, June 20th:
Garden opens at 11 AM
Gathering from 6 PM till sundown: potluck + BYOB + readings (bring a poem to share)

Sunday: June 21st:
Garden opens at 11 AM
Midsummer celebration from 5 PM to sunset: food, birdsong music, flower crown making and, “woo woo”

June 22nd through end of summer:
Please email for address. Garden opens Sunday afternoons (hours updated weekly), and other days/times by appt.

All ages welcome. Service dogs welcome. Please note that the artworks are fragile; the garden is not fenced and it’s next to a steep slope.

Most of the garden is ADA accessible.

Seattle artists Dawn Cerny and Bristol Hayward-Hughes have collaborated to make six sculptures for Pond in a Bowl that will serve as bird feeders, pollinator rest stops and poetry kiosks. The writer and artist Ed Steck (Pittsburgh, PA) developed a series of poems that have been printed onto an edition of postcards and trifold pamphlets, which will be installed on the Cerny and Hayward-Hughes’s sculptures for visitors to take. These sculptures will carve out places to hold water, birdseed and nest-building material for the birds, animals and pollinators to take. This exhibition conceives outdoor sculptures as sites for collaboration with mutable conditions –human, animal, plant and insect; the light and the conditions of the place endlessly change. This project is tied to the environmental and social ecology of the garden or park as a place that invites hospitality, rest and survival.

Dawn Cerny’s (b. 1979, Carpinteria, CA) sculptures and drawings begin with the notion that “furniture” and “mother” are figures that secure a value (to others) for their potential to hold, display, or be absent-mindedly left with things. Putting form and color to work and entrusting no small part to contingency, these works behave like gestural understudies for a play about the day-to-day grinding weariness and joyful slapstick absurdity of human relationships—about trying to Work It Out…or not. 

Cerny has had solo institutional exhibitions at the Frye Art Museum (2025); the Seattle Art Museum (2021); the Portland Art Museum (2017); and the Henry Art Gallery (2008 and 2017). Her sculptures, works on paper, and collaborative projects have been exhibited in institutions and galleries across, including AU_PASSAGE, Paris (2025); F Gallery, Houston (2022); Cooper Cole, Toronto (2018); and MOCA, Los Angeles (2018). She is the recipient the Joan Mitchell Fellowship (2022); the Bonnie Bronson Visual Arts Fellowship (2022); the Betty Bowen Award (2020); and of two Washington State Artist Fellowships (2004 + 2017). Cerny’s works on paper and sculptures are in public collections, including The Walker Art Gallery, SFMOMA, the Frye Art Museum, the Henry Art Gallery, the Portland Art Museum, and the Seattle Art Museum. Dawn Cerny’s work has been written about in Bomb Magazine, KQED, Artforum, the International Sculpture Center Blog, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Seattle Times. Cerny received an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts in 2012.

Bristol Hayward-Hughes (b. 1992, Seattle) is a multimedia artist whose practice currently spans ceramics, glass, video, and textile. They received their BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in 2015. Working intuitively across mediums, Hayward-Hughes constructs vivid, often chaotic worlds that explore emotional contradiction, visual excess, and the subtle interplay between humor and discomfort.

At the heart of their work lies a fascination with duality—comedy and tragedy, joy and queasiness, beauty and distortion. Their pieces often evoke the sensation of being overwhelmed: by color, by pattern, by feeling. Drawing inspiration from illuminated manuscripts, medieval court jesters, religious iconography, and natural overgrowth, Hayward-Hughes creates layered compositions that feel both ancient and otherworldly, yet rooted in personal narrative.

Their process favors handcraft and tactility, emphasizing the unique properties of each material—whether the translucency of printed glass, the weight of clay, or the softness of fiber. Through this material fluency, they invite viewers to linger in contradiction: to laugh, to wince, and to revel in the surreal intensity of it all.

Pond in a Bowl is supported by Allied Arts Foundation.

Veronica is supported, in part, by Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, ArtsFund, and 4Culture/King County Lodging Tax. Free access supported by 4Culture. Fiscal sponsorship is provided by Northwest Film Forum.