The first is called Mater Matrix Mother and Medium and was commissioned by Seattle Public utilities to increase awareness and conservation of local streams and watersheds.
The artist met with different groups of citizens and had them crochet blue patterns, which she then combined to form a "river." The river begins by rising out of an actual stream in an urban forest located in Seattle.
(Abbey and Will, with whom I stayed in Seattle)
(little drops of rain in the river)
Eventually, the river returns once again to the same stream bed from which it originated, but it does so in a place where the water has run dry. Just as the stream peters out, the crochet trains off with a single thread.
Another similar project occurred at Faith Lutheran in Seattle (where Abbey, featured above, is a pastor). In this project, parishioners were encouraged to bring rocks to church which had some meaning to them. An artist gathered the rocks and created a pattern in which to utilize them for a mosaic. Parishioners continued to be part of the project by gluing the rocks to netting on which the pattern was laid out. The artist later came back and filled in the cracks with grout. The whole mosaic was placed in the frame of a old doorway that was no longer being used after a renovation. Member of the congregation can (and did) point out the rocks they contributed and glued.
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Rebecca, our roving, unsalaried priest at St. James', did a sermon not long ago that featured her bringing in rocks that she has gathered from meditative times spent walking along the rural shores of the Snake River. Having lots of congregation members bring in rocks, then having an artist create a mural with them, seems like an easy and powerful way of helping everyone feel the satisfaction of contributing to making beauty together from pieces of beauty identified individually in moments of reflection.
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