Collaborate in the Community
Community Arts Gallery
Seeds of Potential
July 29–August 23, 2006
Displayed in the Community Arts Gallery is a community arts project facilitated by community arts intern, Rachel Robinson called Seeds of Potential. In the gallery you will see clay seeds, envisioned and crafted by community artists, resident artists, students, staff, board members, and people altogether brand new to Clayworks ranging in age from1 to 91. Each seed is a glimpse into the potential of its maker.
Seed-making gatherings were held, in which people were presented with images and characteristics of different kinds of seeds and how they function. Everyone was asked to consider the examples from nature and form a seed out of clay that visually communicated his or her own growth and potential and to write a sentence or two about it.
Gallery View of Seeds of PotentialThe Acacia tree drawn on the wall is representative of potential realized and my own dream of Community Arts. Acacia trees like the one drawn on the wall grow in the grasslands of East Africa (among other places.) They are beautiful trees whose broad, flat crown of leaves provides shade and a respite from the sun in the heat of the day. Their seedpods are nutritious, and are eaten by animals in the dry season when other food is scarce and less nutritious. As would follow, the seeds are carried away and deposited, ready to germinate and grow into beautiful trees.
Community Arts is about facilitating art-making in its many forms, allowing the participants to realize the potential that lies within themselves as individuals and collectively in their communities. Community Arts is also about nurturing this potential, allowing it to grow from something contained, as in a seed, to something as full and beautiful as an acacia tree.
