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.

Two Quilts

With many thanks, we present to you...

The hard work of three weeks! 

During these weeks we collected the clothes from the desert, washed them by hand in tubs like these (note the highly-effective tools: a hose, a coke bottle attached to a broom handle and a rake)...

we sewed an enormous mexican folkdance skirt...

we cut up the clothes we collected from the desert, pinned them, and began to sew...in the final days working until we were squinting to see!

We collaborated with the folks at the rehabilitation center, CRREDA....

Ruben and Mickey.

and recorded interviews of their stories about life on the US-Mexico border...

Lola and Vanessa

and finally, we celebrated! We danced, we played music, we shared our experiences and our thanks for this amazing time to come together and create these works of art.

We present: the "Two Sisters/Las Dos Hermanas" - 2 Sister quilts in the form of traditional Mexican folk dance skirts. We started with one humongous skirt and I kid you not-- ONE DAY before the celebration cut it into two still-gigantic skirts.

The creators of "The Two Sisters/Las Dos Hermanas", from left: Ana Flor Adams, Miriam Maldonado & family, Maria Gabriela Marcos Santiago, Juana Martinez & family, Cleotilde Miss Vasquez & family, Jose Baltierres, Juan Rivas Hurtado, Jesus Marcos Santiago, Martin Galvar, Rosalinda Sagaste Chavez & family, Juan Vargas, Jesus Hernesto Dessens Velarde, Juna Rosales Muller, Miguel Angel Munguia Valenzuela, Ernesto Franco, Aracely Gonzalez Marquez, Juan Cayetano Marcos Santiago, Jocabed Gallegos, Maria Vicenta Santiago Isabel & family, Maribel Ruiz & family, Ruben Miranda. (Not pictured: Trinidad Anguamea Brasil, Ada Gonzalez & family, Melissa, Laila Rosales Muller, Vanessa Teran, Pedro Reyna Gomez, Maria "Lola" Dolores, Rigoberto Noperi Hernandes, Gabriela Garcia, Hector Hortega.)

The Sister on the left is completely finished, and will return with Juna to Ojai to be shared. The other Sister will stay in Agua Prieta, where the sewing group at DouglaPrieta wishes to complete it! 

Gabi chair-modeling the almost-complete falda.

The Two Sisters getting ready for the big night.

We hope to track the stories of the Two Sisters as each one travels, is shown, and is danced in on both sides of the border. In this way, we can also symbolically track the experience of families divided by borders, as they are parted and reunited over time.

We experienced an outpouring of joy at our celebration as each participant stood up to introduce themselves and share the story of how these quilts came to be. As the night went on, we feasted on Chicken Tinga tacos and pineapple juice lovingly prepared for days by the women of DouglaPrieta.

And we danced. The finished skirt was worn by woman after woman, girl after girl, as some of the more experienced dancers showed us how to work a falda.

Borders are places of division. They are also places where two things meet: places of coming together. As the project moves forward, we come back to the US with amazing new friends and a new experience of the kinds of connection that are possible between our two countries.

SO many people were involved in creating these Sisters. From the sewing bees in Ojai, Portland, and Agua Prieta, to the funding from friends and family all over the country, to the loan of a camera, to the ride to the airport shuttle, to the messages of support from so many. In particular we wish to thank the folks at Frontera de Cristo, DouglaPrieta, and CRREDA, for keeping us fed, sheltered, and in the right places, and for whole-heartedly diving in to participate.

Stay tuned. We have a video to edit, quilts in process, workshops on the horizon...and we can't wait to share them with you!

wow,
Juna & friends

It's On

We're in the thick of it! Every morning we gather to work with the migrants' clothes -- washing, cutting, pinning and sewing. We've also been hard at work eating snacks (pineapple with chamoy sauce, homemade tamales, chiltepin peppers, sweet membrillo, jujubes, you know).

In all, there are about 10 of us sewing at DouglaPrieta Trabajan. Lots of kids come and help too.

The DouglaPrieta power team: Trini, Pedro, Cliotilde, Laila, Ada Lizet, Miriam, Rosalinda, Maribel & the girls, Juana, Juna, and Ada. Not pictured: Vanessa, Vicenta, and Vicenta's amazing kids!

When we first gathered two weeks ago, we discussed different designs we wanted to make using the clothes. We threw around quilt design ideas-- the emblematic volcano that lies east of Agua Prieta, footprints to represent the migrant trails, the Mexican flag. 

After one person had the idea of making new clothing from the migrant's discarded clothes, our task became clear: create a falda folklórica, or a traditional Mexican folk dance skirt. This kind of thing: 

The traditional folk dance costume of Jalisco.

Every region of Mexico, as well as parts of the United States and Central America, has a distinct costume, music, and style of folk dance. It made sense to the group to make a skirt because they are "very Mexican" and "represent a celebration of life". The falda folklórica's liveliness, sense of pride, and context would be in direct opposition to the material we would use to create one.

We decided to first create the skirt from old sheets, then cover it with pieces of the clothing. 

Aww. Laila was lovely our skirt-model.

The power team whipped out this skirt in no time. Now we are pinning & sewing up a storm to try to get all the pieces of clothing on before our ending celebration on Wednesday...crossing our fingers. We are hoping to have Miriam's daughter, who dances baile folklórico, show us how it's done.

We also continue to happily work with CRREDA, the rehabilitation center here in town. The afternoons are spent embroidering on the clothes with them, recording interviews, and sometimes playing unexpected baseball.

Our little outdoor spot at CRREDA.

It was such a treat to have both Laila and Vanessa come to help sew, take fotos, fold paper cranes for kids, and wander the streets at night in search of tasty food. People keep asking about them -- "when is she coming back?"

In other news, I tried cabeza for the first time (essentially cow cheeks). Verdict: delicious, and grateful they didn't tell me what it was until after I finished.

Hasta soon,

Juna & friends

Aquí estamos!

 We are in Mexico! Agua Prieta, Sonora, is our home for the next few weeks.

The border wall runs right through the city, where cars line up to show identification and cross over into Arizona. The wall in the city is double-thick, with two 18-foot high fences separated by a deep cement canal. For added security, there are surveillance cameras on towers, underground motion detectors, and agents patrolling by jeep, horse, and foot. If I stand in Mexico with my back against the wall, I am on American soil.

All this security is for "prevention through deterrence", a strategy that effectively channels migrants to the outskirts of cities and the more treacherous countryside that lies beyond them. Unfortunately, many people who take this journey are not informed about the formidable conditions they will face. To collect clothing for the project, we traveled to the border wall outside the city--a tiring but successful trip. This is what it's like:

To get to the border outside of the city, you have to drive 20 minutes down a highway lined with miniature houses of every color honoring different saints. From there, you get into the back of a truck (if you are not incognito), which will take you over a barely-there mud road, avoiding deep lakes that have sprung up overnight from the monsoons. It's better than Magic Mountain, but your butt hurts more afterwards. This part lasts for about 40 minutes. You are being watched.

From the point that the truck can't go any farther, you get out and walk. It is very hot, you walk through sand, and if you wear shorts like I did, you will have scratches all over the place. Ow. You walk in sand-bottomed arroyos if you are trying to stay out of sight. There are only a few trees that cast any shade, but under these you can sometimes find water tanks. This part lasts about an hour, until you reach the wall.

The wall is easy to climb... if you are fairly able. We found a ladder made of ropes and pipes, and sheets tied together sneaking-out style. Of course, we were there not to cross, but to collect the things that people have left behind on their many journeys.

We were lucky to find lots of clothing and items that help tell these stories, all caked with mud!

You can see in the group picture below that the border wall is wide open. These doors are usually opened during the monsoon season so that water can pass through, but we were still surprised to find them!

The group who came on the clothes-finding expedition included women from the community center, Dougla Prieta Trabajan, with whom we are working on sewing with the clothes. The others in our group are from CRREDA, a drug rehabilitation center that works to refill water tanks in the desert for those who are crossing.

Collecting clothing on migrant paths in the Sonoran desert.

With the clothing we collected, we have begun our sewing projects with the women of Dougla Prieta Trabajan. We are so grateful to work collaboratively with them--here are a few pictures of the team:

Beyond all this, we have watched rivers fall from the sky and take over the dirt streets, blow-dried baby chicks, eaten more cheese and corn than we could possibly imagine (they have "Chihuahua cheese" here, it's the BEST), "mountain biked" through the streets of Agua Prieta, gotten lost in translation, waited out thunderstorms, avoided cute but terrifying packs of dogs that chase, walked the plaza at night eating duro con verdura (verdict: weird), and seen the most beautifully-colored houses. 

To your very good adventures.

xo

Juna & friends