Over and Under at Wheaton College

Last Thursday was the finale of my tenure as a Visiting Artist at Wheaton College. The project Over and Under: Weaving Together the Fabric of Our Community was a semester long collaboration where student groups and faculty worked together on a large scaffold weave. Individuals donated personal items to be woven into the tapestry resulting in a final collage of colorful individuals coming together as a whole.

The large scaffold weave was designed to be portable and was installed at either in the Balfour Center or the new Science Center cafe area. This increased the visibility and accessibility to many different student groups.

 We removed the weave from the frame and installed it between the two balconies in the student center. It will remain there until graduation. A beautiful emblem to the spirit of Wheaton!

Over and Under

 

 Over and Under: 
Weaving Together the Fabric of our Community

Today was the first of 6 community weaving events at Wheaton College in Norton MA. As part of a program sponsored by the Marshall Center for Intercultural Learning, students are invited to participate in creating a collaborative tapestry. 

We constructed a scaffold weave in between two poles that measures approximately 6 x 16 ft. It will be moved around to several campus locations over the course of the 2014 spring semester. Instruction was provided on how to prepare the materials. Everything from flags, to athletic towels, to pinstripe was cut into strips and woven.

Today we occupied the Belfour-Hood Student Center. In the coming months we'll move to the Mars Center for Science and Technology among other places.

Accompanied by music and free candy, each person had a relaxed time sharing their uniqueness and learning about others. The event garnered a lot of attention as many stopped by on their way to class or coming from picking up their mail. Our next meeting will happen again at the student center on Tuesday evening, February 25 from 5-7 pm. This time there'll be free pizza too!

It's a great benefit to have an installation over an extended period of time like this. The project has the space to grow over the expanse of a couple of months more than it can in a single afternoon. Everyone left today with lots of plans for the next time. And student facilitators will be working with interested parties to teach them how to have their materials ready to go - more time for socializing!