process
These quilt-like fabric installations use the social medium of local sewing-circles as an environment for volunteers to feel at home, familiar, and at ease with a new creative experience.
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Fabric Donations
Every project has a call for fabric from the local city. We ask for non-strechy, colorful fabrics. This is one way for local participants to add their personal story to the final piece.
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Sewing Days
Sewing Days are open to the public. No experience is necessary! Everyone is welcomed and there is no pressure to make anything. The goal is to connect and to be part of the project in any way suited to the volunteer. I teach people how to sew and learn about the machines. All ages, all abilities, we make the machine work for our bodies and our experience level.
We laugh, talk, connect, sew, pin, trim… we come together.
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Community connection
Working with the local institution that is supporting the project, I emphasize the importance of local community connection. This includes institutional connections, citizen connections and an active pursuit of the underserved communities that are traditionally looked over. Finding ways to make a greater local network within a local community.
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Celebration of Community
We make the project together. This means a collective creative experience. These works are time-capsules of the city at that moment. Together people add their stories and personal histories through fabric and conversation. At the end I hope every participant has the opportunity to celebrate their contribution and say…
“I helped make that”
Because the works are made from locally donated fabrics, and sewn together by local community members, the overarching goal is to increase the community’s sense of public engagement and ownership.
The “artist” is not one person, but rather a network of participants and spectators.
The pieces nudge people to let go of their hierarchical understandings of craft vs. art, and embrace sewing and community participation as a way to find their role in the project.
Being the “artist” becomes fluid and collective, paralleling craft history in which most artists remain anonymous, yet the artistry and significance of their work transcends individual identity.
Rye Arts Center - Metropolis Sunrise
Oranje group from Brugge, Belgium - Happy Coincidences / Triennale Brugge
In pursuing the goal of engaging individuals and groups in the mystery of creation, the impulse of local citizens and artists to volunteer entangles them in smaller tasks that welcome rather than intimidate.
From material collection to construction and exhibition, community volunteers participate in ways that require collaboration and conversation…conversation about city, community, craft, architecture and art.