"Crochet: Meditation and Creativity" a featured artist demonstration at ART+SOUL Oakland, City Hall, August 4, 2012
Creativity Makes Us Kin.
Oakland’s 12th Annual ART+SOUL Festival included huge, site-specific art exhibitions and installations within City Hall and the City Council chambers. Works were created by celebrated Oakland and East Bay artists including Eddie Colla, Namita Kapoor, Oakland-based American Steel Studios artist Jane Elliot, John W. Wood, two de Young Museum Artist Fellow and Artist-in-Residence alumni artists Todd Thomas Brown and Ramekon O’Arwisters, Masako Miyazaki, Mayumi Hamanaka, Taro Hattori and internationally renowned, Oakland-based artist Tracey Snelling.
In my social-art practice, collaborative, community-based art projects are combined with folk-art traditions and techniques to foster and support a culture of collaboration and team-building in a relaxing, affirming, and meditative environment, in which participants can access their creativity. Crochet Jam provides a heightened state of relaxation that reduces stress and anxiety, promoting creative thinking and problem-solving. Art heals—it's a bridge that unites people and cultures.
The goal is to quickly and easily engage participants in a relaxed and creative state by transforming cloth strips into large
tapestries using the folk-art tradition of rag-rug making. Materials are provided and no attempt is made to direct the creativity outcome
of the project. Instruction in basic crocheting is provided.