Weaving Together This Summer’s Art Project

Thanks to the Bertha Foundation, Lonely Worm Farm has a small grant to run an 8-week Welcome Mat Workshop this summer. I proposed this idea as a counterpoint to the polarizing imagery and slogans that have come to characterize our political moment.  Rather than the bittersweet pang or brassy hoopla of a waving flag, the welcome mat is quiet and soiled, humbly guiding visitors and inhabitants over the threshold, into a home.  It is a door marker and space maker with roots that stretch back thousands of years.  Mats made from felted tree bark have been found in Paleolithic caves. 

So how are we going to make these welcome mats? I have just come back from a three day, hands-on wondering, walking and working foray with Louisa Thompson, a set designer and textile artist who is helping develop the program. Louisa and I met at her parents’ beach house in Nantucket. We began with talking.  As the pillars of Lonely Worm Farm’s arts program are ecology and inclusion, we knew that we wanted the materials to be, for the most part, found. Either respectfully harvested from the willows, cattails and osier dogwood that grow on our land, or collected from participants’ attics and closets, clothes and textiles perhaps too worn to be used but still loved. Whether natural or manufactured, the materials should cost little in terms of money or carbon footprint, but be rich in beauty, history and utility.

The process of weaving also had to be accessible to many different types of bodies and minds, and the end product had to be universally designed.  We were inspired by the natural tapestries we found on the island:  the tangles washed up by the waves, the interplay of moss and root, branches and brambles. But we also wanted to create a durable mat that would be relatively flat.  For those in wheelchairs, a bumpy doormat can be a barrier instead of a welcome.  So how to make a flat, durable mat that wouldn’t slip and slide? That you didn’t need to be a master weaver to create? 

The old sheep fencing that winds through the trees at Lonely Worm Farm came to mind.  Wire fencing is strong and provides an easy, accessible grid.  We have plenty of scraps of fresh, non rusty fencing on site at the farm, but as we were on Nantucket, we had to buy a roll from the garden shop.  Next we went to the free table at the dump and gathered old sheets, tee shirts, jeans, yarn, and plastic packaging ribbon.  Then the backyard, where last winter’s bleached grasses and reeds were scattered on the ground.  Add some time (about four hours) and patience and we had our mats.   Here’s a picture of Louisa stepping onto hers.  Note how the blue skies and seas of Nantucket have made their mark, even though she was not consciously trying for a landscape, but simply experimenting with different weaves, patterns, and materials. 

We are pleased with our prototype, but it is just one of many possibilities. The act of weaving, of combining different strands together to create something new, can be accomplished in myriad ways. To make weaving inclusive, our studio will include many different sizes, shapes, and types of looms, along with our fencing frames.  For participants who prefer to be outdoors, we can expand the field even further, experimenting with trees, branches, snatches of wool and lichen.  The word welcome, in whatever language or languages are dear to the weaver, can be incorporated through invocation, stitching, stamping, signing.  

The goal of this workshop is to bring people together, maybe even weave them together, in a spirit of openness and experimentation. Rule followers may be drawn to making the practical, usable doormat, others may prefer a more expansive, conceptual framework.  What ties the works together will be a physical figuring and grappling with the idea of welcome.  What does it mean to be welcoming these days?  How can we practice this ancient and universal ideal?