Selected Community-engaged artworks

     In the spring of 2012, I began to work on an outdoor installation. Our grapevine, which had enfolded our deck for twenty years, had suffered a great shock due to a very early bout of warm weather, followed by a heavy frost. All of the growth that had begun this year, had died. Despite all of the tests we did to determine if the vine had any life in it, we could find none. Spring had come to the rest of my yard, but the vine remained dry and brown. I was inspired to make an artwork out of the vine. For this artwork, I invited people I knew to make or to find a small object that they would associate with a prayer (milagro) and then hang it on the vine.

     The goal was to cover the vine with visual representations of an entire, diverse community of prayers. Objects came from all over Sarnia, where I live, from London, where the artwork now resides, and from as far away as South Africa!

     In July of that year, the vine sprouted back to life. This natural act became symbolic of healing and the vine became a living metaphor.

     After a year and a half, I brought the installation indoors and fashioned it into a prayer shawl, inspired by the shawls that some church groups make in prayer for those who are in need.