Along with senses of sight and sound, Carlisle invites visitors to expand and focus their present awareness by using their sense of touch, a gesture seldom allowed in museums and galleries. The installation encourages visitors to move in and out of time through her inclusion of elements of past (artifacts from installations), present (new work) and future (referencing what’s to come).

With a keen understanding of materiality expressing both cultural and personal histories, Carlisle’s  PLEASEtouch  explores and illuminates the energy of touch as a practice of present awareness while at the same time, evoking emotional memory (past experience) and questions (future understanding). New content related to the installation will be uploaded to the Artworks website during the time of the exhibition allowing the audience to continuously access the process of the work.  

Sharon Carlisle says about the installation, “With PLEASEtouch I am in dialogue with visitors on how one's sense of touch keeps one in present awareness, while also entangling with memories of one's past and wonderings about one's future.  At the same time I am offering visitors tactile experiences that are absorbed viscerally, hopefully bringing pleasure while evoking memory, and perhaps, even yearning."

"Likewise, as an object moves through time, its context as an artifact becomes more valuable and creates an art-like quality to its interpretation.”

-Jennifer Cousino, Curator of History, Loveland Museum/Gallery.