Weaving Hands and Hearts

Growing up, I was connected and supported. I had a community, several actually. They taught me to share and reach out. I am a small town woman and as such, did a lot of activities. In small towns we wear all the hats and do all the things. We were the soccer team, the cross country team, actually most of us were on nearly all the teams, we played in the band, sang in chorus and were in our respective denominational church groups. My friends and I were intertwined in many circles and it was so good and- 'normal'. When I went to college and became a grown up (whatever that means) I realized that my childhood experiences weren’t actually so normal. Many people are not connected, supported or have someone to call when times are tough, if there’s special and exciting news to share or a random, weird Tuesday that needs to be discussed and processed aloud, with a friend. When it occurred to me just how many issues that disconnect could do to people, I was beyond frustrated. Supporting children, elderly, those with mental illness and anyone feeling lonely in their life is important to me and should be important to all of us. I am a fiery and passionate person, so when there is frustration, that fire is lit to do something. I am an educator, artist and changemaker. I naturally see patterns of connectivity and seek to grow that. This realization and that spark was my initiation into becoming more of what I am meant to be. A connector, an instigator, a deviant thinking artist who forges ahead with scissors and paintbrush in hand and a troupe of friends and family beside me. Each one carries their own creative dreams and materials for systemic change too. We always seem to start with conversation and the basics and end with something miraculous and unique and stories to remember. 

The story I wrote a proposal in response to a call for public art in 2017 that propelled me in a way I couldn’t have fathomed prior to it happening. For the project, each artist had $500 to do a public artwork on a chain linked fence in Spearfish, SD. It was amazing and through the process, I was able to connect to 3 different community groups. We did mini-lessons and material prep sessions where all participants created their own aesthetics to keep. The mini-lessons were focused on legends and stories and star knowledge inspired by my Lakota heritage. At one of the mini lessons, participants each scissor-cut their own shapes for mixed media landscapes. They interacted with their materials and each other, making personal artworks and deeper friendships. Each personal image is visually related to the final community artworks. That adventure gave me what I was looking for; shared space, creative place-making, and new or deepening relationships with people in the communities I grew up in and am still connected to. 

In 2018, I did another set of 4 fence panels installed in my hometown of Lead, SD. These two installations helped me move the project forward and connect to 6 different communities across South Dakota over the past 4 years. In 2019, the third summer of Linking Fences, I was able to build a team and work in 3 communities weaving hands and hearts together as community groups cut through fabric and raw materials to prepare. One of my artist assistants is a hot air balloon pilot and through her networks, she acquired for the installations every color of hot air balloon fabric in the rainbow including black and white too! 

Art is meditative as well as connective. Volunteers skillfully wielded many pairs of scissors to  cut football field lengths of fabric to weave into the sunset colored skies of the landscapes we installed on the fences. For the land in the imagery, I chose to use strips of recycled denim jeans. Not only for accessibility of this material, but for the weight of the fabric. Weaving that hefty fabric representing the ground felt dense enough to be the earth. Everyone wears pants, so a call for that material was another way of connecting many more people to the artworks and to gather through collective generosity. Our shears cut 1000’s of strips of pants and wove them too. The process was tedious, but therapeutic in both the cutting and the weaving. Each community had multiple touch points throughout the project as we worked. I set up mini-lessons with diverse groups in each town. We worked with children in schools, local Boys and Girls Club, elderly at an assisted living facility, church parishioners in the basement of the church I grew up in, children at the summer program for a Recreation Center where I teach yoga and art lessons, special needs adults in a community living center, at-risk teens in a residential care center for youth with psychiatric, behavioral or educational needs, and many others over the years. We spent hours together, talking, learning, and using our hands. 

For the mini-lessons, recycled magazines, calendars, and other papers were cut into templates to weave mini woven hearts. The act of weaving was meaningful not only in doing but in cross-connecting the 3 towns. We cut and cut and cut. We taught each other lessons daily;, some were about art, some about life. Many were unintentional, but each one was important. At the fence, when we were preparing to weave the strips of denim, one of the artist assistants taught us all how to make a long strip from shorter strips by cutting holes in the ends of both pieces of fabric then looping them together. It took me so many tries to get it! We shared knowledge, stories, scissors, and time. We talked about our lives, our jobs, our loved ones and people showed up for so many reasons at the project sessions. These connections are not only deeply satisfying, but emotional. We made something together. One woman came for the entire weekend of material preparation in Lower Brule, SD, the Kul Wicasa Oyate, one of 9 reservations in the South Dakota geography. She was quiet, diligent and kind. At the end of the last day, she shared that coming to that weekend helped keep her mind off her son who’d died earlier that year. In moments like that, and there are many, the hot sun for hours during install, the blisters on thumbs from cutting strips of fabric for days are worth it. Being with people and being there for them is always worth it for me, no matter how fickle humans can be. I love this project for the way a simple pair of scissors, common materials, and open hearts together strengthen community and build connections.