Public Commissions

Cookie Monster

2023

Commissioned by: Sarasota Art Museum, Sarasota, Florida, in conjunction with the exhibition Lead With a Laugh
Medium: Cedar wood, painted pine frame, zip ties, screws, gravel, hardware
Dimensions: Approximately 20 × 12 × 9 ft.
Photograph: Courtesy of the Sarasota Art Museum
Artists’ Registration Number: 2022.082.001
Exhibition History: Cookie Monster, Sarasota Art Museum, Sarasota, Florida, 2023. Curator: Virginia Shearer.

The structure was conceived using cedar harvested from our property in Germantown, New York, connecting the project to both land and lineage. By bringing that material south to Florida, Cookie Monster became a literal and symbolic bridge between the environments that shape our lives and work.

Commission Overview
Commissioned by the Sarasota Art Museum during our exhibition Lead With a Laugh. Cookie Monster offered a rare opportunity to expand our practice beyond the gallery walls and into the museum’s outdoor landscape. We envisioned an architectural sculpture that could serve simultaneously as artwork and refuge—a quiet space for reflection that embodied the passage of time, the memory of materials, and the presence of family.

Artistic Approach
While clearing the site for our new Sheds upstate, we felled several cedar trees whose scent immediately recalled our grandmother’s cedar chest. Rather than discard the wood, we sliced the trunks into circular “cookies,” each preserving the tree’s rings like fingerprints of time.

Each disk was sanded smooth and drilled by hand in our outdoor studio. With the help of our parents, we organized thousands of cedar “cookies” into panels, linking them together with zip ties to create flexible sheets of woven wood. The process mirrored textile construction—linking, looping, and binding repeated gestures until form emerged through rhythm and patience.

Once complete, the cedar panels were transported to Florida, where they were assembled on-site into a four-sided structure with two open entries and a partial canopy. Inside, a built-in bench invited visitors to rest, surrounded by shifting light that filtered through the cedar disks, creating a dynamic play of pattern, shadow, and scent.

Every surface was alive to the senses—the rough cedar grain, the rhythmic ties, the glow of filtered sunlight. The result was an environment at once monumental and intimate, assembled from thousands of individual acts of touch.

Steven-and-William-Ladd-Cookie-Monster-Commission-04.jpg

Steven-and-William-Ladd-Cookie-Monster-Commission-02.jpg

Steven-and-William-Ladd-Cookie-Monster-Commission-03.jpg

Steven-and-William-Ladd-Cookie-Monster-Commission-01.jpg

Engagement and Impact
Installed on the museum’s grounds, Cookie Monster functioned as both sculpture and shelter, a place to pause, breathe, and feel connected to the natural world. Its fragrance evoked memory; its tactility invited closeness.

Over nearly a year, the piece evolved with the Florida climate. The cedar slowly softened, its tones deepened, and the entire structure seemed to merge with its surroundings. The work became a quiet meditation on impermanence—how materials, like memories, weather with time but remain resonant in form and feeling.

Context and Legacy
Cookie Monster extends our ongoing exploration of sculptural textiles and site-based installations that invite both intimacy and contemplation. Like Right Here. Right Now. at LongHouse Reserve, it was a family collaboration, our parents’ hands (and in this case our Uncle Dave too!), labor, and stories are woven directly into its form.

This commission also marked a turning point in our dialogue with nature and time. The work embodies our shared philosophy: that the act of building, whether a home, a sculpture, or a memory, is an act of care, and that what we construct eventually finds its way back to the earth.