Carole Ann Day : Stefani Workshop at Limbo Arts, Margate

Stefani Workshop at Limbo Arts, Margate

Stefani Workshop and exhibition

Stefani Workshop and Communal Exhibition @ Limbo Project Space in Margate, Saturday 8th & Sunday 9th June 2013

The Workshop explored the idea of communal making. All kinds of people came along to make a Stefani, a Greek Flower Garland that celebrates the coming of spring and invites new love into their lives. As the participants wove their Stefani, they chatted and reflected on the process of making, the significance of the flower garland and life in general. New ideas evolved from their experience of the workshop and I felt that the event was generating strands of creativity that would extend into future time like the creeping vegetation of which the Stefani are made, winding and weaving into future projects. As they spoke I recorded their voices and wove these conversations together to create a cacophony of sound, reflecting the experience of the workshop and the many life experiences that had come together to create this unique exhibition. Some also wrote secret messages on strips of rice paper and wove or incorporated these into their Stefani in various ways. The Stefani became intensely personal, intimate objects, to be felt and contemplated; they contain the memories of individuals, not just in the manner of their making, but in the messages they wrote and wove into them and in the accumulated life experience that has shaped those individuals, leaving its traces on everything they touch, everything they make.

In this moment someone weaves a strand into another strand and repeats the process until they have made a garland of leaves and flowers – this is what happens – but this is not all that happens – this is not the essence of the happening. What happens is that the memories and experiences of the many fragments of their life – the intertwined strands of their story – come together in the moment of making so that the object they create is completely unique, no-one else could possibly have made it. The form holds the memory of their making.

We hung the Stefani from woven garlands of vegetation to create an evolving communal exhibition. A beautiful expression of the memories of many makers.