The Project Room and the Solstenen project opened last Thursday July 14th with a crush of warm feelings from supporters and people excited about the new energetic art space on Capital Hill. I saw many people I’ve met through my crochet parties from the past few years, many artist friends and art supporters, and some people just curious about the lively activity going on inside!

Thank you to everyone who stopped by, and for some really generous donations of new materials to work with (some very special handmade garments/linens I’m looking forward to dyeing and deconstructing and reconstructing!)

One thing I hadn’t realized until people started coming in and I was setting them in motion crocheting; usually at crochet parties I am a lot farther along in a project and I have an agenda/need (“need more thick ropes, need round parts, need ruffles”). This crochet party was essentially the very first stitch of this new work, literally. I was shrugging my shoulders, ‘the concepts are developing, so please just enjoy crocheting’, was about all I could say. Take pleasure in the materials, think of it as doodling or drawing, just play. Usually this messing around for me is done alone, in private. The first shrug of my shoulders, I felt a bit vulnerable, ‘shouldn’t I know?!’. No. It all starts this way, all generative work, not knowing. Especially with this work, I want to fend off the external and internal impetuous to ‘know’ everything, especially with the environmental installation component of the project to take place in Iceland. I want to respond intuitively to a place I find; yes, with thread and ropes of time spent where I came from, like the baggage we literally and figuratively drag everywhere. But still to push and push to stay in the moment of the environment.

So thank you everyone for just diving in; it seemed people were excited to just be with the process and be with each other.

This is what it looks like to give birth to a baby and open an experimental art center in the course of 30 days!

Thank you Project Room family Van Nostrands and Smiths!

There is a subtext to many of my discussions about this project of mine, about blending daily life, family and a passion for ideas and making. I really feel quite privileged to get to watch Jess Van Nostrand kick ass at this delicate dance we do to carve out a place where we can do what we need to do feed our work.

Much gratitude! And please join me again on Tuesday July 19th, 3:30-7:30pm, as we do it all again!

The Project Room

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