Mater Matrix Mother & Medium: a river of fiber woven into Seattle’s urban forest

We have been studying water; where it comes from, where it goes, how we use it, how we treat it and what we need to do in the future to preserve it.  Just as we were finishing up with this project, we learned about Mandy Greer’s river of fiber project.

Trisha and I decided that we needed to invite Mandy to school, so that we could have a hands on part in her art piece.  So, we invited her and she came!  We spent a day in the studio learning to crochet with her.  We were able to add to her piece along with many other groups from our greater Seattle community.

In the end, a 200-foot-long fiber river was created.  The project celebrates the splendor of Seattle’s urban creeks and encourages stewardship of essential watersheds.  The project is exhibited at Camp Long where we were able to spend the day taking in the beauty of the fiber creation.

We also made some of our own work and left a bit of ourselves in and around Camp Long.

“When a group of people come together, using their hands in an intuitive process, a flow of ideas happens, unpreditable but always dynamic.  I want to make a spce for dialogue, allowing people to tap into their emtional memories of water and their desires and frustrations concerning our relationship to the environment.  Our hands will be knotting together ideas as we ask ourselves ‘what has happened to our sense of the sacred quality of water.’”      —Mandy Greer