I LOVE MAPS !!!!!!!!!

I am very attracted to maps – I believe it is an outgrowth of my xenophilia. Maps of any sort interest me, and I have created them in many media. I used a map as the basis of my final project for my Master’s Degree in Art Therapy at Wayne State University, and I will describe that soon in a post to this blog – it was constructed from plywood. I have also painted maps and created contour maps in art classes I have taught.

My most ambitious map by far however is a 10 foot tapestry that I wove on my Swedish floor loom. I learned how to weave while Bill was working at Volvo in Gothenberg, Sweden, and then bought a loom there before we came back to the States. I’ll get deeper into weaving soon too, but for now I will do my best to stay on track about this woven map, because this past weekend I got a very lovely package in the mail from a University in Europe, and I want to talk about that now.

I chose a Swedish tapestry technique Rollaken which is used for rug making. I set off weaving the map at great speed, but later began to slow down. I have other looms beside the behemoth one, as most weavers do, so I had other projects going besides the map. Gradually I slowed down, and it seemed like I was stalled in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for months. The tapestry was on my loom for over two years. We moved three times with it still on there. Eventually I finished it and then spent a couple of months finishing off the front side of the piece. It turned out very beautiful. Of course the design was created by a Master far more talented than I will ever be, but I enjoyed interpreting God’s design in yarn.

I loaned it to the International Institute in Detroit for several months and they hung it behind the desk in their foyer. It was also displayed at the Michigan State Fair in the Community Arts Building. I am very proud of it. When I built a website for my art business http://www.greatwallsmurals.com , I devoted a page of the website to the mural.

A couple of months ago, I got an Email from Utrecht University in the Netherlands from graduate student, Dorottya Nagy who was writing her thesis on the migration of Christian Chinese people to Hungary and Romania. Dorottya believes that people create communities just like weavers make tapestry – that the intermingling of peoples around the planet creates a human tapestry. She had seen my tapestry on the Internet – our latest and greatest weaving device- and she asked me for permission to use my world map tapestry for the cover of her thesis. I was thrilled!

Of course I gave her my permission and emailed her digital photos of the finished tapestry and also photos of the backside of the piece- which is unfinished so all the tails of the yarn are hanging out. I asked her to please send me a copy of her thesis when it was finished, and she agreed.

So this past Saturday I was at the pool at our apartments and Bill showed up with a package – it was the book! Dorottya did such a great job with the book – she used a portion of the front of my tapestry for the front cover, and she used the same portion of the backside of the tapestry for the back cover. Now how clever is that? She also had a bookmark made which uses the entire width of the tapestry. It has her name and the book’s name in the left corner and she attributes the map to me in the other corner. She also gives credit to me inside the front of the book. Classy and well done. She is an incredibly devoted scholar – she learned how to speak Mandarin so she could interview people in person for her research!

It is very cool too that Bill and I have lived in Holland not so far from Utrecht. I actually bought a small tapestry loom in Holland. I also studied weaving next door in Belgium – so it is such a sweet journey that I learned my craft there in that part of the world, and now my work has been published there. I am very, very pleased.

The Diversity Is Our Strength Mural

In the summer of 1995 I was volunteering at Freedom House, a wonderful place in Detroit, Michigan that offers shelter to political refugees from all over the world. It is a non-denominational organization which is nurtured by the Catholic church in Detroit as well as many other religious and secular organizations. I spent 2 1/2 years there. It was a great experience in my life so far, and it lead to a PEAK experience for me - the coordinating of the mural at Los Galanes Restaurant in Detroit's southwest section. That area of Detroit is the Latino area for the city, and like the Latin countries, there are many murals in the community.

I had located Freedom House while I was completing a Master's Degree in Art Therapy at Wayne State University in Detroit. Because Art Therapy can be a non-verbal experience - "A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words" kind of thing for both the client and the therapist, I had deduced that Art Therapy would be perfect for working with Political Refugees. Then to my delight, I found out that Detroit had a shelter for that community. You can ask in the far-flung regions of the world, and people will tell you about Freedom House, but the vast majority of people in Michigan have never heard of it. Anyway, I will expound and elaborate on Freedom House, in another posting - back to the mural. In my research for my thesis: "Mapping the World:Art Therapy with Political Refugees", I spoke to the director of a similar shelter in Toronto, Canada, and she told me they had done a mural as a community project. It was when I mentioned it to the director at Freedom House, Janet Rey, that Janet decided it would be a great idea for us to do in Detroit. So, she asked me to do one, then she found the wall and a gang of us did it. One of my best friends, Sharon O'Hara-Bruce agreed to ride shotgun with me, and Elizabeth Medallin also coordinated it with us. It was just like they said in the movie "Field of Dreams" - "If You Build It, They Will Come"- we backed my van filled with paint and brushes up to the wall every day for five weeks, and people appeared and painted. We had over 70 people of such fabulous diversity and beauty contribute to the mural. For a lot more details - go to my website: http://www.greatwallsmurals.com and click on Mural Journal.