Impermanence Practice Group
participatory fiber arts project

DURATION/Size

1 year

date/location

October 2019 - October 2020
East Lake Library; Sumner Library; Zoom; Textile Center, Minneapolis

materials

inherited linens and sewing notions/supplies; plant material; found objects from East Lake Street and the Midtown Greenway

Summary

This project is grounded in working in collaboration with and in response to what is around me - materials, people, space. Impermanence Practice Group started with my late grandmothers' table linens on which I imprinted cedar and culinary sage from my yard. Working in community at East Lake Library and briefly at Sumner Library, I invited patrons and staff to physically create the project alongside me as we discussed personal and social change. Through direct action, stories exchanged and breath shared (before we couldn’t share breath anymore), we sewed and cut; made, unmade, and remade an abstract garment, then a coat, a cape. We both experienced and enacted change, not knowing the fate of our materials. A hole was cut, to later be mended.

In March 2020 the urgent interests of public health paused public engagement and the project shifted into a meditation on pandemic solitude. I worked at home, alone. Then as the Minneapolis uprising began (in my neighborhood, right around the corner from the East Lake Library where the project began), the practice continued with smoke in the lungs of buildings and bodies and books; ears ringing with hovering helicopters; eyes weary from staying up all night; wallets overflowing with generosity; hearts set on making change. You can follow my response to these changing conditions in the visual documentation.

The making period was from October 2019 - June 2020; The exhibition at Textile Center ran from July - October 2020.