Artist Gabriel Akagawa exchanges chair massages for people’s personal nature stories as a means to share a similar bond with people as they do with nature.

“For me, this is a kind of a gift and a conversation through body and touch and I’m giving that to the audience,” Akagawa said. “They give back this story that hopefully comes back to them so they can read other people’s stories and that turns into a different kind of consciousness and collaboration.”

Akagawa is not a licensed masseuse, but has learned everything from his family’s barber practice in Tokyo, Japan, which incorporates massages into their work.

“I’m just trying to have a conversation in a different way instead of having people come up to me and say ‘If I give you $5, can you give me another 10 minutes?'” Akagawa said.

For eight years, Akagawa has been collecting stories from people about their experiences with nature. He posts them on his Web site, unpacked-offset.wikispaces.com, and in his exhibit, “Unpacked/Offset” in Altgeld Hall, where he hangs printouts of them from clotheslines leading into a wall, where a power line tower is drawn.

“It began when I went from woodworking to discovering where woodworking comes from, so I was collecting stories about trees as this kind of conceptual backing of the woodworking sculptures I would produce,” Akagawa said.

Akagawa’s exhibit stresses an ecological message of conserving materials. It features crates turned into shelves, benches and gardens. Other parts of the exhibit are interactive, such as a table with an umbrella where tea was served.

The art presented in Akagawa’s exhibit came from not only him but also from a collaboration of students, staff and local artists who all shared an interest in nature and its place in the community.

One visitor of the gallery found her time there fascinating.

“I’ve been looking forward to this exhibit because I have a high interest in naturalizing and re-using, so I look at it as a utilitarian and making beauty out of a utilitarian challenge,” said Ruthann Yeaton, a staff member in the teaching and learning department at NIU.

Yeaton had also taken advantage of the offer for a chair massage.

“His technique was great,” Yeaton said. “My wrist feels much better after working at a computer all day.”

Akagawa will be offering chair massages in the Altgeld Hall gallery every Friday for the remainder of the semester.