100 Days: A Flax Storytelling Project
Located Online and at Plat 2B in the Elmwood Cemetery Community Garden
June 15th through the Autumn Equinox
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or continue below for project description
The next project I’ll be working on will be the 100-day Elmwood Cemetery Community Garden Flax Project. From June 15th through the Autumn Equinox, I’ll be growing a small plot of flax at the community garden from seed, while processing 100-year-old dowry flax from the rural Mühlviertel region in Austria. This project grew out of my course with Andrea Myklebust at the Marshfield School of Weaving, the scholarship offered by Kate Smith’s Textile Study Collection Scholarship Fund and my subsequent connection to a global network of flax spinners brought together by Christiane Seufferlein. With the goal of promoting flax textile culture, the artists in her guild offer to receive, process and make new works from the remaining antique flax dowries gifted by elders in Christiane’s community.
Each day, I’ll post writing, mini-essays, reading lists, flax-culture history, independent scholarship and reflections on art-making, community-organizing, material-culture and living within complex systems. Content will be dependent on how the growing season progresses and all the chance learning, exploration and tangential curiosities that emerge along the way. Do you have to read daily or be here for all 100 days? Absolutely not! Life is busy!
This project is structured so that as many as want to participate can join, at the level of and frequency of participation that makes sense for their particular circumstances and interest. Everyone who joins commits to be a contributing member in some way and there are lots of ways of contributing.
Writing/documentation will be published on a password-protected portion of my website and I am making this writing and scholarship available as a thank you to anyone who participates in this flax tending/growing/community-building project in any way.
The Why’s of this Online Cohort
In addition to my regular paid work, I take on at least one significant (and often significantly quixotic) pro-bono community-based art or curation project each year. Pro-bono might mean that I am not compensated at all or it might mean that I am taking a gamble on a community artwork or process-based project that I know in advance has very little likelihood of generating any profit and might wind up in the red. The Flax Project and participating at the Elmwood Community Garden is this year’s gamble.
I choose these projects after careful reflection, with the goal of amplifying an underutilized or under-acknowledged community resource here in Central Vermont. Over the last ten years, I’ve gotten better at understanding my own process, pacing and capacity and try to choose something within my wheelhouse that fills an unmet community request.
Over the last ten years, my Vermont-based projects have included:
-Building and organizing a pop-up weaving studio and backstrap loom lending library at Studio Place Arts
-Developing and running a free weekly playgroup based on pediatrician Emmi Pickler's theories of infant development and attachment the Barre UU church
-Helping to volunteer-curating one of the Vermont Weaver's Guild biannual shows at a local community art center
-Reimagining the children's room at the Aldrich Public Library and collaborating with the Barre Promise Community to renovate and reinvigorate the basement space
-Developing a fine-crafts handwork curriculum at the Montessori School of Central Vermont
-Curating an exhibit that showcased decades of handwork made by the librarians at the Aldrich Public Library
Involvement in community organizing projects has historically been possible because I ran a small, part-time private psychotherapy practice and was not dependent on my art income. In the winter of 2021, following years of working mostly via telemedicine due to the pandemic, I started planning to close my practice. I was not completely burnt out, but could feel that the daily work of joining clients in their experiences of struggle, trauma and healing–while physically separated from my own support networks and chosen family–was changing my experience of being in the world. It also took a toll on my family. By spring of 2022, after ensuring that all the folks who relied on me were safely transitioned to new care plans, I shifted my attention (and budget) to working solely as an artist.
As a “transition project,” I did one last big volunteer push. I participated in the 2022 Central Vermont Refugee Action Network's March Art Marathon. For thirty days, I wrote mini-essays and documented the weaving of a new blanket for my Receiving Blanket series. Anyone who contributed any amount of money to CVRAN was granted access to a private portion of my website and followed along with the daily updates. The blanket that was woven throughout that process is shown below. Made from local wool from Calais that I handspun and dyed myself, it recently came back to me after a months-long exhibit at RiverArts for their “Home and How We Make It” exhibition.
I found that I enjoyed the structure of a daily writing/photo project and the unexpected community that grew up around the supporters. Neighbors who had never spoken to me at length about my work started to understand how the parts of my life and art practice are connected. Fellow artists began to understand the concepts and techniques behind my projects. Folks who only knew me as a mental health provider saw a different side of my expertise. New fiber enthusiasts learned about the technical aspects of the design and studio management process. I remembered how beneficial pursuing emergent curiosities and scheduled writing time is to my arts practice. I also finally edited and organized some of those hundreds of photos that had been hanging out on my phone, eating up storage.
So I’m trying this again. This time, a little longer. 100 days—the traditional growing season for flax. And with a new fiber. And with a gardening plot in a new location, seeds from Andrea Myklebust. and the unused flax dowries of three rural Austrian women, each born about 100 years ago, (on average, give or take.) New plants. Old flax. Three names: Rosa, Juliane, Ana.
How to Support and Access the Project
There are all kinds of contributions that make this project richer. Some long-time artist-friends and collaborators of mine have received invites and will offer their questions, knowledge and perspectives. Some garden/community friends have also received invites as a thank you for garden tips, tool-borrowing or promises to water and weed while I’m at my wood-firings this summer.
If you would like to provide support financially, you can do so via Patreon for a recurring or one-time contribution of support, Venmo for one-time support or popping by the studio during open hours. There are no specified tiers and this support goes to cover the cost of the garden plot, supplies and time spent writing, photographing, videoing and documenting. The more support that is offered by this storytelling/storylearning learning community, the more ambitious I can be and (possibly?) host some informal in-person gatherings throughout the season at my studio or onsite. I am not selling items I’m growing in the garden—the flax patch is a demonstration project. If it results in fiber that I can weave with—great! I may be able to use it in my weaving. As a complete newbie to flax cultivation, I am not counting my chickens.
The garden is not its own financial entity, gardeners lease their plots from the city. If you would like to support the garden, you can make a donation to the City of Barre and specify that it is for the Elmwood Cemetery Community Garden. (No online option, go retro with a check, a stamp and an envelope.) Any amount of support gets you through the door. Have you contributed? Use this contact form to let me know you! If financial support does not make sense for you and you would like to follow long, please be in touch! I will send you a list of other (non-financial) ways to be in service and we will find something that matches your skills and abilities. Everyone who contributes to the growing of this online/actual garden community in a way that meets some of the project’s needs and objectives will be gifted with the password to follow long!
Again, once I receive word of your intention to help in some manner, I will get in touch and say thank you with the password!