Common Threads: Weaving Community through Collaborative Eco-Art

by Sharon Kallis, Jenny Craig (Read by)

Overview

A guide to creating community-based art installations using green waste, invasive species and natural materials

Disposing of unwanted natural materials can be expensive and time-consuming, or it can present a tremendous opportunity for creating collaborative eco-art. Invasive-species control, green-waste management, urban gardening, and traditional crafts can all be brought together to strengthen community relationships and foster responsible land stewardship. Simple, easily taught, creative techniques applied with shared purpose become the modern-day equivalent of a barn raising or a quilting bee.

Common Threads is a unique guide to engaging community members in communal handwork for the greater good. Sharon Kallis provides a wealth of ideas for:

• Working with unwanted natural materials, with an emphasis on green waste and invasive species
• Visualizing projects that celebrate the human element while crafting works of art or environmental remediation
• Creating opportunities for individuals to connect with nature in a unique, meditative, yet community-oriented way

Combining detailed, step-by-step instructions with tips for successful process and an overview of completed projects, Common Threads is a different kind of weaving book. This inspirational guide is designed to help artists and activists foster community, build empowerment, and develop a do-it-together attitude while planning and implementing works of collaborative eco-art.

Sharon Kallis is a Vancouver artist who specializes in working with unwanted natural materials. Involving community in connecting traditional hand techniques with invasive species and garden waste, she creates site-specific installations that become ecological interventions. Her recent projects include The Urban Weaver Project, Aberthau: flax=food+fibre, and working closely with fiber artists, park ecologists, First Nations basket weavers, and others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781550925715
Publisher:	New Society Publishers
Publication date:	11/01/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	40 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Sharon Kallis is a Vancouver artist who specializes in working with unwanted natural materials. Involving community in connecting traditional hand techniques with invasive species and garden waste, she creates site-specific installations that become ecological interventions. Through her work, Sharon has engaged with groups and studied plants and techniques across North America, as well as in Central America and Europe. Some of her recent projects include leading The Urban Weaver Project, Aberthau: flax=food+fibre, and working closely with fiber artists, park ecologists, First Nations basket weavers and others.

Sharon Kallis is a Vancouver artist who specializes in working with unwanted natural materials. Involving community in connecting traditional hand techniques with invasive species and garden waste, she creates site-specific installations that become ecological interventions.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Places
Chapter 1: Work With What You Have at Hand
Chapter 2: Building for Change From the Ground Up
Chapter 3: Placemaking for Community

People
Chapter 4: Why Impermanence Matters
Chapter 5: Weaving Community Milestones
Chapter 6: Celebrations of Honor and Respect
Chapter 7: Common Threads

Plants
Chapter 8: Working with Invasive Plant Species
Chapter 9: Techniques
Chapter 10: Designing Group Projects
Chapter 11: Green Waste Logistics, Funding and Public Park Partnership

Endnotes
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

" Common Threads offers inventive means for individuals to reconnect with nature and community through interaction with weeds and wastelands; to come in from the wilderness, as it were, by immersion in it...outlining opportunities for nourishing spirit as well as land through sustainable creative practice."
— India Flint (indiaflint.com)

"Sharon illustrates a role of the artist in society that lives out the spiritual and social metaphors of her craft processes: weaving and spinning elegant projects from the people, plants and politics of her local urban culture. Always resourceful and encouraging, her work presents a framework for communities to explore a re-evaluation of their environment, gain real skills, solve problems and celebrate at the same time. Thank you Sharon."
— Alastair Heseltine, artist and weaver

"With Common Threads Sharon Kallis makes a significant contribution to the growing body of writing on the value of the arts and cultural practices in sustainability. A wonderfully accessible book, effortlessly weaving together complex ideas with multiple voices and aspects of creative practice, the craft of making, the wisdom of local economies and ecologies — all situated within a nexus of community building. Situated in and foregrounding the trajectory of sci-arts collaboration in and around Vancouver, this is a timely and engaging addition to the documentation of Canadian EcoArt practice."
— Beth Carruthers, Artist / Scholar / Curator and Consultant — Culture, Community + Environmental Change, and author, Mapping the Terrain of Contemporary EcoArt Practice and Collaboration

"An extraordinary field guide, compendium and manual for the uninitiated, initiated, discerning citizen artists or creative types of any nature. Nature being the key word, as we are part and parcel of it. Sharon Kallis' volume of research may seem overwhelming at first but dig into it and there are rich rewards. Those who experience reading (and using) this book will be inspired to live and collaborate with others and the environment in ways beneficial to us and the environment. This book provokes a commitment to the process and actualities of improving our communal existence, our individual lives and that of this planet we call home."
— Jayce Salloum, media artist, recipient of the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts, 2014

"This is a gem of a book, innovative in the subjects it covers, inspiring in the philosophies it embraces, full of down-to-earth practical "how-to" advice, and a joy to read. Sharon Kallis is a true artist in every sense; she weaves together the projects, the people, the materials, and the images with quiet enthusiasm, respect and skill."
— Nancy J. Turner, Distinguished Professor and Hakai Professor of Ethnoecology, Universityof Victoria and author, Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge

"In Common Threads , artist Sharon Kallis shows us how to weave together not just plants but people. An exciting marriage of collaborative art and sustainable practices, this one-of-a-kind guide will resonate with educators, community activists, and engaged citizens alike. Brava!"
— Tim Grant, co-editor, Green Teacher magazine, and co-author, Teaching Green: The Elementary Years and Greening School Grounds (greenteacher.com)

Editorial Reviews

10/06/2014
The life of an ecologically-minded artist need not be a lonely pursuit. Vancouver, B.C., artist Kallis argues that the environment needs armies of people who can manipulate and repurpose invasive plants and natural detritus to create something striking. This book works as a serious guide for those who want to “up-purpose green waste” and create eco-art pieces for their communities. Kallis provides examples from her own extensive work with different kinds of eco-activism and crafts in a variety of public arenas. Some projects are architectural in nature, such as woven fences defining a newly refurbished local public commons; others are ingeniously functional, as when a crocheted net of invasive ivy provides much-needed temporary erosion control. One small woven sculpture, a “willow spinning wheel,” acts as a fleeting memorial. Each object is worked on by many hands and appreciated by many eyes, and then left to its own devices. While the book is occasionally as dry as spent cedar bark, it’s a must-read for those pursuing eco-art and eco-activism. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly