It is a season of engagement in community-based art projects --projects initiated by others. I am luxuriating in being a helper and consultant, rather than the instigator and organizer, for a change.
Recently, I helped the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre to hang art from the WEAVE project (a drop-in art group at a women's resource centre). Nicola Sampson did a great job of putting the work together and negotiating to present it with BIG presence at the Roundhouse Community Centre. It looked great and the participanting artists who came to the opening seemed so proud to see their work. The volunteers from the corporate sponsor, Business Objects, were fantastically generous and flexible. The show came down today, so I spent a few hours helping them to put all of the pieces away. Nicola said that the WEAVE project had helped her to reclaim generosity and sympathy after a time of feeling allienated from others. I wonder what her next big project will be? In the meantime I will be thinking over a few pieces that I bought at the show. (I will scan a couple for here tomorrow.) They are mostly about alienation, come to think of it.
Next, I will be helping Doris Buttignole and Centre A to present La Couverture Vivante/ The Living Blanket . My job in this international project is to coordinate the involvement of a mirriad of women's groups in the downtown eastside to encourage their involvement in making textile art squares that will link them to an international network of women, women's groups; knowledge and story. There is a wonderful energy around the project which unfortunately will only have a two week exhibition. Thankfully there is a lot more time to host the workshops at various site in the DTES. I will start those in 2 weeks. Watch for appeals for fabric scraps and notions.
Finally, I am occupying my hands (and the hands of others) with a commission to make a bookwork based on the last set of drawings, texts and paintings by Diana Kemble. An edition of 50, each of the 23 pages is folded a couple times and glued, also some thread and a bead.... it will be my handwork for a time. I've started to take it with me to meetings and to pull it out while waiting for baking or during phone calls.
Thus, occupied.
I have in my head and in notes, a couple of art projects that I want to initiate and promote soon. For now, though, I get to think about them and wonder if they will be as interesting or successful as these that others have put into action.
YOU ARE SUCH AN O.T. (still)!!!
Posted by: Sari | October 01, 2008 at 06:51 PM