Bi-national Art Show in tandem with Post-Commodity’s Repellent Fence

This October, I was lucky enough to hop on a train and head out to Arizona to be part of the first bi-national art show in Douglas, Arizona/Agua Prieta, Sonora. The show featured exhibitions, a bi-national art walk, and incredible artists’ talks on working in liminal spaces. Mending Patriotism quilts were featured on both sides of the border. The quilts were on display at the Migrant Resource Center in Agua Prieta, right next to the border wall.

Later the same day, we got to see the first ever performance of both faldas together in the plaza in Douglas, Arizona. It was an emotional moment.

This bi-national art show was in conjunction with the installation of Repellent Fence, a land art piece by Post-Commodity Art Collective. Raven Chacon, Cristobal Martinez, and  Kade L. Twist spoke about their piece, which featured gigantic balloons spanning laterally across the border, as a metaphorical suture across the land. It was a treat to be involved in several days of inflating, tying down, and transporting these enormous seeing eyes.

I heard people who see the border every day say that it changed how they looked at the fence.

Many thanks to Jenea Sanchez for her incredible coordination of the show, to Post-Commodity for their diligent work over the past 8 years (!) to make their installation a reality.

Spiral: Quilting with Teens

This summer, an amazing group of people came together for one month of learning from the land and each other at Spiral: Young Women's Permaculture Intensive at the glorious Dig In Farm. At Spiral, we invited teens to study permaculture design, wilderness awareness, and social justice.

Besides being one of the most fun, challenging, and rewarding summers of my life, Spiral was also a think-tank for looking at how women and minorities are represented in permaculture and the environmental movement at large. We experimented with how to incorporate social justice and equity teachings into the permaculture curriculum.

As part of this exploration, we worked with clothing from the US-Mexico border to connect on a tactile level with the experiences of border crossing and immigration. We learned about labor in our food system, farm worker's rights, and globalization. Together, we darned holes in migrants clothes and set about designing a quilt. 

Our finished quilt features a women's bra and old-fashioned panties, both found in the desert, against a backdrop of abstract rolling hills formed from large pieces of the clothing. We chose to keep many pieces of the clothing whole or large -- a button here, a pocket there -- so that viewers could recognize the former clothing.

Beyond this, we explored our roles as change-makers in our own communities. The first step in permaculture design is drawn-out observation. We saw that if we apply this to community change-making, we are best suited to making regenerative designs for the communities within which we are already locals!

Many thanks to all the Spiral-ers 2015!

Workshop at Cafe on A's Acuña Gallery and Cultural Center, Oxnard

Workshop participants explore the "carpet shoes" used by migrants to cover up footprints while crossing the US-Mexico border.

It was a great honor to offer a workshop recently at the Cafe on A's Acuña Gallery and Cultural Center in Oxnard. The workshop was offered to members of the Oxnard Multicultural Mental Health Coalition (OMMH), a group of amazing activists, business owners, mental health workers, and city employees, among other things. These individuals are working to create access to community-defined, culturally appropriate mental health services for under-served Oxnard residents.

Armando Vazquez, one of the directors of Cafe on A and OMMH.

This workshop was the first of a series exploring how community-driven, participatory art and music can contribute to mental health. It included a discussion of US-Mexico border crossings, exploring clothing collected from the border, darning holes in migrants' clothes, and dyeing yarn with locally grown dyes.

Telling the story of where the clothes were collected.

OMMH members shared reactions to encountering the migrants' clothing, and offered personal stories of family migration experiences. 

Sharing stories of the border and reactions to the migrants' clothes.

Participants darned holes in migrants' clothes as part of an ongoing effort to create a patchwork "darned quilt" from the clothes. One participant pointed out a hole that had been darned by someone before these shorts were ever found in the desert!

Shorts collected on the US-Mexico border with a hole mended by BOTH the original owner and a workshop participant.

The original darning, in white, with the new darning around it, sewn with cochineal-dyed yarn (sometimes it comes purple!). 

As part of an ongoing exploration into de-colonizing our fibers, we discussed how we can localize our fiber sources and the labor for them by creating micro-enterprises in Ventura County. We especially focused on cochineal harvesting for natural dyeing, and got to do a test pot with locally-grown cochineal.

Looking at the "tea bag" of cochineal in the dye vat.

Locally-harvested cochineal, which grows on Opuntia species of cacti, like the one in the background.

As the yarn comes out...

The beautiful results! Cochineal has been valuable for centuries for giving this amazing red.

Looking closer at the cochineal beetle.

Getting ready to darn a hole in migrants' clothes with yarn dyed with cochineal.

We enjoyed a potluck and cake for one of the youngest members' 13th birthday!

Happy birthday!

Many thanks to Armando and Debbie, directors of Cafe on A, for organizing this workshop! So many important connections were made.

This workshop was made possible with the support of Cal State Channel Islands Center for Community Engagement - another hearty thank you to Pilar Pacheco!

Last but not at all least, many thanks to Elibet Valencia for these superb photos.

xo
Juna

Dyeing and Darning Workshop Series - a residency at Cal State Channel Islands

It was a pleasure to do a week-long residency at Cal State University Channel Islands in Camarillo in conjunction with their Cesar Chavez week celebrations. Thank you to Pilar Pacheco of the Center for Community Engagement who made this possible!

The workshops brought together the stories of border crossings and quilts made from migrants clothes. We explored the concept of re-localizing our fiber resources and the traditional skill of darning to mend a hole. We dyed wool with cochineal beetles, darned holes in clothes collected on the border, and discussed how migration and the strength of our local economies are interrelated.

Looking at the cochineal beetle, a source for a brilliant red dye - this jar is filled with cochineal imported from Peru.

The concept of localizing our fiber resources comes to us by way of Rebecca Burgess and Fibershed, a movement that began in northern California as a means to re-establish localized fiber infrastructure, skills, and inspiration. For one year, Rebecca wore only clothing that had been grown, processed, and made within 150 miles of her home. An important part of her work is to connect growers with artisans and mills that can process raw materials into wearable goods. Every year that we outsource these industries we lose more of the infrastructure to create our own products here in the U.S.

The dye vat with Navajo churro sheep yarn inside (one of the oldest breeds of domesticated sheep), and a jar of locally-harvested cochineal beetle in the background.

The tie-in here for me with migration involves Americans taking responsibility for the health of our own communities -- physically, spiritually, and economically. Re-localizing our fiber knowledge and resources means we can rely less on destructive trade relationships while creating models for community self-sufficiency and sustainability. Plus, working with wool and natural dyes is beautiful and addictively fun!

The finished yarn dyed with cochineal!

Beyond brainstorming our potential to create locally-produced clothes and fiber goods, we also practiced our mending skills. Darning is a way to mend a hole (especially in fibers that are knitted or woven). It is essentially creating a tiny weaving over the hole that ends up being even stronger than the surrounding material. I originally learned to do this from the wise old lineage of Youtube, and you can learn to darn too, here. You just need a needle, yarn, and a lightbulb (really!).

CSUCI students darned holes in clothing collected from migrant trails on the US-Mexico border. 

As we worked with the migrants' clothing, we discussed what it felt like to sew on this material and transform it. Many students described feelings of awe and humility. Their finished squares will be sewn together to become a giant crazy quilt of mended holes in migrants' clothes.

Students discussed their reactions to handling migrants' clothing from the border while actively transforming this charged material. The shirt above was found on a migrant trail and reads "Intelligent, On Time".

A student's finished piece! These squares will later be combined into a large crazy quilt showing many people's contributions.

Thankfully, this work is continuing next week with a workshop at the Cafe on A/Acuna Gallery and Cultural Center, an amazing hub for community organizing and activism in Oxnard. This workshop is open to the public! We will gather from 6-8pm on Friday, April 24th to dye, darn, and discuss our local fibershed. Please RSVP if you are coming: mending.patriotism@gmail.com. 

So many thanks to the amazing artist Molly Brolin, who came to assist and took these beautiful pictures.

Thanks again to Cal State University Channel Islands, the single largest supporter of this project, and to the students who wholeheartedly participated in these workshops.

Announcing a month-long course in sustainability and justice activism

This summer, Mending Patriotism is traveling east!

For a month this July, young women will gather from across the country to learn about farming, sustainable design, and art activism.

Mending Patriotism will serve as an experiential art project and case study for justice activism at Spiral, a month-long, residential permaculture course for young women (ages 15-18) in western Massachusetts.

The program aims to empower young women through regenerative agriculture - we'll be farming, cooking, learning design, and building life-long relationships in a community of leaders. Throughout all this, we'll be learning permaculture, a design process that helps people create systems (be they agricultural, social, financial, or other) that nourish the earth, care for people, and bring a more just world into being.

Growing dinner. (photo by Grace Oedel)

Over the course of a month, we will work as a team to quilt, sew, and dye pieces of clothing left behind by migrants attempting to cross the US-Mexico border. Through this work, we will explore the connections between a globalized economy, agriculture, social and environmental justice, migration, and “women’s work”. The project will offer Spiral participants a way to engage with both social justice and art as important elements of a resilient culture.

A quilt made from migrants' clothes.

...and we will have fun! Do you know a young woman who might like to have an amazing summer, learn to bake bread, carve a spoon, swim in a lake, and laugh while working side-by-side with new friends?

Give us a hoot! Spaces are filling up fast. To find out more about the program, visit http://www.diginfarm.com/program/.

All of this will take place at the glorious Dig In Farm, a 10-acre perennial farmstead and forest, located in western Massachusetts. 

Huge challah! I can almost smell it... (photo by Grace Oedel)

Blueberries harvested with a hand rake! (photo by Grace Oedel)

Holding your clothes in my hands...

The end of 2014 was so full and inspiring. We returned to the U.S., gave a workshop at a university, schemed about future plans, and held the first dance performance in a skirt made from migrants' clothes.

We were so honored and had so much FUN working with the wonderful people at Cal State Channel Islands (CSUCI) to put on a workshop for their students in conjunction with a campus visit by the remarkable author Luis Alberto Urrea (who writes on growing up in Tijuana and is basically a stand-up comedian).

We got to see one of the skirts in action for the first time, as she was danced in by the student Ballet Folklorico group for the entire CSUCI campus. This skirt is one of Las Dos Hermanas, two Mexican folk dance skirts made from migrants' clothing.

Goyo Coyolicatzi Cortes, of the Ballet Folklorico de Channel Islands, performs in the "American Sister" falda.

The student-led Ballet Folklorico de CI choreographed a dance for the falda that featured 4 different regional styles of dance and costume from Mexico: from Sinaloa, Jalisco, and Veracruz. Such an amazing performance!

We also held a workshop at CSUCI. 30 students came together to discuss border crossings, the structural causes of immigration, and of course, to work with the clothes collected from migrants' trails in the desert.

In all of the Mending Patriotism workshops, the hope is to give people the chance to encounter a border. We sit together, we raise questions, and we tell our stories. Not everyone at first thinks they have a relationship with the border. For some -- who have never seen the US-Mexico border first-hand -- it is an opportunity to touch the physical evidence of the journeys that take place across the border and continue within the US.

At the CSUCI workshop, the students did some writing to reflect on how it felt to encounter these clothes. They touched on themes of human rights, being divided from family members, bafflement at how these clothes came to be where they were found, and messages of alliance & support.

Here are some excerpts from their responses to the prompt "Holding your clothes in my hands..."

***
Here I hold a beige bra. It looks like it has been in the desert for such a long time. Threads, holes, dirt and cuts all over it. This could belong to a mother, a sister, aunt. Who is dead or maybe alive nobody really knows. This drape left behind symbolizes a dream, a dream to make it to the land that would bring them a better future. Could this woman be a victim of rape? Why was her bra left behind? We don’t know but we do know that her biggest goal was to make it across the desert. This item symbolizes hope, courage, fear, strength, obstacles, sadness, crying, thirst, hunger, tiredness, feelings of being lost, it represents someone who hoped to one day find better opportunities, it represents a long journey that may or may not have been accomplished.

***

I wish I could take in your family of three

or do you even have children that will always be a mystery to me

I look at your green shirt

But where are you? Somewhere in the dirt?

You should be home after work

with your family not lost in the desert

Holding your clothes in my hand I am lost for words

***

Al tener su ropa en mis manos siento su amor, su desesperacion, su fuerza, sus ganas, y sobre todo siento su esperanza. Entiendo que su camino no ha sido nada facil, que esta decision no se tomo libremente, ni de un dia para otro. Talvez esta manana al partir de su casa, su esposa, su madre, su abuela o su hija fue la que le puso la bufanda. Talvez la bufanda la uso para proteger a su bebe. Quiero que sepa que sus motivos de cruzar, los que hayan sido no seran olvidados...y usted donde quiera que se encuentre no sera olvidada...la tierra que penetra la bufanda es nuestra de todo humano, no es mia, ni de el o de ella, es del universo. Este universo es de todos. Yo se que donde quiera que usted se encuentre a llegado a tener la felicidad que anela.

***

Looking down and seeing that tattered -- whatever it was-- a shirt, pants, handkerchief -- my stomach ached. It dropped so low I never thought I would get it back. The reds and whites of the cloth stood out to me like blood on a canvas. A canvas of your life. Your blood. Your cloth, yet not you. My stomach in knots and my mind in a daze, going back and forth over a dozen scenarios. Horrible scenes of you in this clothing no longer here, but always with me. Your clothes in my hands scream to me from somewhere else that hits home. Looking down again there is no clothes; only a life that never had a chance to live.

***

Holding your clothes in my hand

It’s light.

I somehow expected it to weigh down my arms

It looks heavy, sitting in front of me

This scrap of something that once was.

Was this a sweater? Meant to keep you warm at night?

But too hot in the day’s sun?

Was this your child’s

Their child’s?

I’m not sure what pattern this used to be

Parts look like an arrow, pointing in whichever direction it turns

Parts look like an outstretched wings of a bird.

You know the kind that was drawn as a child

A simple soft ‘V’ against the backdrop

Not really looking like a bird at all

to another person.