Brotman Forum Archives

From ravers to art partners: The journey of FriendsWithYou

Sara Butler on Aug 1 2025

This summer, Samuel (Sam) Borkson and Arturo (Tury) Sandoval III transformed the Brotman Forum into a lofty dreamscape with Little Cloud Sky. Forty thermoplastic cloud structures symbolizing peace unity fill the space, meticulously molded and mapped out on the ceiling using 3D programming. We talked with the artist duo—who go by the moniker FriendsWithYou—about their practice and partnership.

For the “Little Cloud Sky” exhibition, 40 thermoplastic clouds hang from the Brotman Forum’s ceiling. Could you take us through the process of making these clouds?

Sam: This cloud is our iconic symbol for peace and unification between humans and the natural world. We have been developing this icon for a few decades. We have made them all in different ways, from animated to inflatable. And now, these will be molded so they can stay happy and strong in the SAM lobby for a couple of years.

Tury: The process of installing the Little Cloud is always fun. We have to carefully simulate the space in a 3D program, and then we scale and place the clouds in the space to carefully craft the experience that we imagine. The Little Clouds are very simple and this makes it extra important to place them in the space exactly as we imagine it.

I would love to hear Little Cloud’s origin story. Has the character’s design, or meaning, transformed over the years?

Sam: Little Cloud is one of our main icons of FriendsWithYou. At the center of our practice is healing and a redesign of modern connectivity and ritual. So Little Cloud is a symbol of that for us. A world unifier. A model for light and peace.

Tury: Another core idea behind the Little Cloud is that nature is conspiring to help us. This idea that it is humans versus the natural is such a bad way to frame our existence—we believe the opposite. Nature is FriendsWithYou. We are all contained within the natural sphere and this is something to be in awe of, and a little reminder of this condition could be as simple as thinking of clouds as our little friends.

Speaking of origin stories: how did the two of you meet? What led to your collaboration and the start of FriendsWithYou?

Sam: Some magic telepathy. From the jump we had a shared vision of art as experience and a healing tool. Playing with fine art as an entry way to cultural engineering and playing and experimenting was something we really have always enjoyed. Twenty three years later and we are still learning, growing, and building our dreams, one at a time.

Tury: We met in our teenage years—early in our college days we were ravers. I think that we had a shared arrested development that helped us hold on to this sense of wonder, this kid-like enthusiasm, a sense of trusting that there is more to existence than adulthood promises. I think those were the shared conditions.

Then, when we started to hang out together and make art, we came to the realization that we wanted to make art that was democratic and experiential; we wanted to make art that was new, structurally new. This drove us to make many, many experiments, finding and looking for ways to develop and design modern ways to create communal experiences. We have been working together now for almost 25 years—it’s like a true brotherhood at this point. I feel blessed to have Sam as my partner and as my brother, mirror, and art collaborator.

You’ve been creating art about connection and community building since 2002. Those concepts have always been important, but they proved even more critical during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. How did stay-at-home orders and social distancing influence your art?

Sam: As the world becomes smaller we can reach more like-minded people. We started FriendsWithYou as an antidote for isolation, and we are so happy we get to do this work in all the mediums we play with. The world can be hard but there is so much beauty, so much magic. We just focus on highlighting that and building an ever-expanding garden as far and as wide as possible.

Tury: Yeah, that was a wild twist in the story… we took the time to focus and make art in our studio, as well as keep developing ideas to deploy once the pandemic was over. Soon after the stay-at-home order got implemented we made a pact that we would share a social bubble and we started going to the studio. All the art assistants were home but Sam and I were going in by ourselves, and we would spend the entire day painting and thinking and developing ideas.

Part of your artistic statement is to “create modern modes of spirituality.” What does contemporary spirituality look like to you? How is it woven into your practice?

Sam: We are uncovering it work by work. We created an overarching conceptual religion which we rename Earth to OCEAN to connect us to ourselves and our natural world beyond all borders. We are all connected.

Tury: Art is the way we interpret and make tangible the ethereal, the ideas and concepts just beyond comprehension to all of us. This is what is so fascinating about art: the myth making. Everything gets reimagined, redesigned, updated, etc. at a constant pace. Why is mythology anchored on such dogmatic tradition? Why is it not being redesigned with new symbols, new figuration that takes the core ideas that are timeless but reimagines them for our modern time? This has been the center of our work.

Accessibility is another guiding tenet of your art. How does Pop art engage folks who may have previously felt intimidated by or left out of the art world?

Sam: We open our art and make a pathway for everyone. Experience and relational aesthetics helps us to engage everyone who comes across it.

Tury: We want to make sure that the work we do is tangible and accessible to everyone, independent of if they have a deep historical knowledge of art. We hope that the work we do is available to everyone. This is why we use simple popular language to convey this, rather than lofty spiritual ideas.

Since the Brotman Forum does not require paid admission to the museum, “Little Cloud Sky” aims to increase accessibility and introduce more folks to this style of art. What do you hope visitors take away from their experience with the installation?

Sam: We want anyone that comes to be joyful and hopefully the optimism of the Little Cloud Sky is infectious.

Tury: I hope people smile. I hope visitors get to have a moment of joy when they raise their gaze up to the heavens and see a cluster of Little Clouds smiling back at them. I hope they get a sense that is all going to be alright… I hope they giggle, I hope they take a deep breath.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Photo by Chloe Collyer

“From Rooted to Airy”: Middle Fork Makes Way For FriendsWithYou Commission

Rachel Eggers on Feb 4 2025

After eight years on view and countless imaginations inspired, this week John Grade’s Middle Fork is being deinstalled from the Seattle Art Museum’s Brotman Forum. And that means something new will soon be taking residence in the soaring entrance lobby of the museum, which is a community space free to the public to enjoy without a ticket. Margo Vansynghel of The Seattle Times broke the news today that it will be a new commission from FriendsWithYou, the internationally celebrated LA-based duo of Samuel (Sam) Borkson and Arturo (Tury) Sandoval III. Little Cloud Sky (2025) will debut on June 27 and be on view for at least two years.

The new work is curated by José Carlos Diaz, SAM’s Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art, who told Vansynghel that “the beauty of [FriendsWithYou’s] work is that it creates really uplifting atmospheres.” Little Cloud Sky (2025) is composed of 40 sculptures of the artists’ signature “Little Cloud” character, each custom made of plastic, four feet wide, and suspended from the ceiling of the Brotman Forum. The work is designed to spread positivity and inspire a sense of connection, encouraging museum visitors to reflect on the beauty of togetherness and the power of joy and nature. While versions of this interior skyscape have been displayed in cities around the world, including Las Vegas, Miami, Tokyo, and London, this is a brand-new iteration and the artists’ first long-term museum installation.

“Sam and Tury create Pop-inspired projects across the globe where visual joy takes center stage,” says Diaz. “We cannot wait to see our lofty entrance come to life with FriendsWithYou’s uplifting work that reminds us of the magic in public spaces and the boundless power of collective happiness. As visitors are captivated by the smiling clouds floating above their heads, we hope they will feel the sense of optimism in the atmosphere.”

The “Little Cloud” character serves as a symbol of peace and connectivity and can be found throughout the artists’ work. In August 2024, London’s Covent Garden featured Little Cloud World, an installation with 40 inflatable “Little Cloud” characters. In January 2024, Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park hosted an iteration of Little Cloud Sky, accompanied by a large-scale parade, “The Happy Dancing Rainbow Alliance,” featuring FriendsWithYou’s iconic characters.

FriendsWithYou’s work has been exhibited around the world. Their latest work, The BAND, an interactive performance-based installation featuring five large-scale autonomous robots, is currently on view at the Cleveland Public Library. In Miami Beach, the artists have a permanent public artwork 50-foot-tall sculpture titled Starchild, commissioned by The City of Miami Beach. FriendsWithYou has had recent projects in Covent Gardens in London, MOCA LA, the Telfair Museum in Savannah, the Dallas Contemporary as well as several gallery shows in Japan and Hong Kong.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM’s Associate Director of Public Relations

Photos: Arturo Sandoval III and Samuel Borkson in front of Little Cloud World in Covent Garden, 2024, Courtesy of FriendsWithYou. Rendering of “Little Cloud,” 2024, Courtesy of FriendsWithYou.

Make Like a Tree: It’s Time to Say Goodbye to John Grade’s Middle Fork

Rachel Eggers on Oct 12 2024

Since February 10, 2017, a dynamic, 105-foot sculpture of a tree created by Seattle-based artist John Grade has graced the Seattle Art Museum’s main entrance lobby, greeting each visitor that walks through the doors. Recently, the museum announced that the work will be deinstalled from the Brotman Forum in early 2025 after eight years on view. The last day for visitors to experience Middle Fork at SAM is February 2, 2025. Margo Vansynghel of The Seattle Times broke the news, noting that the “beloved” artwork has welcomed more than a million visitors in its time at SAM.

The highly detailed sculpture was created by Grade, his team, and over 3,000 volunteers using a plaster cast of a 150-year-old western hemlock tree in the Cascade Mountains east of Seattle. The cast was used as a mold to assemble a new tree from nearly one million reclaimed cedar segments. Suspended horizontally from the museum’s ceiling and above the viewer, Grade’s sculpture offers a mesmerizing new perspective on a familiar form, and its collaborative energy has made it a symbol of Seattle’s arts community.

“We bid a fond farewell to Middle Fork,” says Scott Stulen, SAM’s Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO. “For the last eight years, this sculpture has inspired awe and delight in every visitor to the museum. John Grade’s deep appreciation for the interconnectedness of nature and people in the Pacific Northwest has reflected our mission to connect art to life these past years. We look forward, along with everyone else, to see the next part of its journey.”

Middle Fork (2014–2017) was first conceived at MadArt Studio, a Seattle gallery from 2009–2024, and debuted there in January 2015. Following that, it was included in the WONDER exhibition at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC (November 13, 2015–May 13, 2016) and was displayed at the 2017 Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland. At SAM, the sculpture was presented in its largest iteration yet, more than doubling from its previous length of 50 feet to 105 feet. Grade’s intention has always been to continue the sculpture’s growth to match the length of the living tree that it is based on, 140 feet. Eventually, he plans to bring the sculpture back to the forest, allowing it to decompose and return to the earth at the base of that original tree.

Middle Fork is only the second installation to make a home in the Brotman Forum. The first was Inopportune: Stage One (2004) by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang. The large-scale installation featured nine Ford Taurus cars that appeared to be arrested in an animated sequence of explosions via numerous LED light tubes. It was on view at SAM as part of the expansion of its downtown building on May 5, 2007. The installation closed on January 19, 2016.

The Brotman Forum will welcome a new installation in June 2025, to be announced at a later date. From a massive tree, where do you think the museum will go next?

– Rachel Eggers, SAM’s Associate Director of Public Relations

Photos: Middle Fork, 2014–2017, John Grade, American, b. 1970, cedar, 105 ft. long x 30 ft. diameter, Seattle Art Museum commission, Photo: Ben Benschneider.