Nearly 700 quilt squares made by community members will be on display this week at Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art this week as part of No More Violence Week.
The Threads of Connection is on display at the museum through April 12 with a reception that day at 5:30 p.m.
Ellie Weber, the museum’s education director, said the Threads of Connection is a three-year collaboration through No More Violence Week.
It started as a partnership through the No More Violence Week led by the Square with 12-inch by 12-inch squares for community members to draw on or paint at three drop-in locations with prompts about kindness, safety, healing, connection, action and community.
Weber said they quickly realized the project’s power during the first year and looking at the upcoming 10th anniversary of No More Violence Week, which is this year, they realized there could be more participation, “to try to create more opportunity for voice in the prevention of violence through this projects of making a quilt square.”
In the second year, they continued the drop-in locations but added 20 workshops with community groups to create nearly 700 squares over those two years.
This year, volunteers with quilters guilds stitched those squares together to make a massive community quilt.
Weber said that a goal of No More Violence Week is to create opportunities, resources and education on preventing violence in the community and the Threads of Connection project gives people a voice.
The project is anonymous as the Square “wanted people to feel like they could safely express themselves,” but she knows that they had participants ranging at least from 4 to 92 years old.
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She said their thought for the project was, “how to we provide the community to see the prevention of violence through a material that is soft like a quit. The metaphor of being wrapped in a quilt or the idea that it can be a sense of protection, a sense of comfort, a sense of warmth, so the positive side of when we have no more violence in our communities. The threads, the title Threads of Connection, is coming from the material, but also the concept behind the piece. We are stitching literally all of these pieces back together into one big monumental quilt and that we are all connected. And sometimes it’s just that thin line of connection that’s really also delicate but it can be really strong at the same time.”
The Square partnered with the Great Falls Public Library, Arden G, Hill Memorial Library and Cascade County Juvenile Detention Center for the project and the workshop groups included the Great Falls Rescue Mission Cameron Family Center, YWCA, Senior Center, Alliance for Youth, PGS Curative Art Collective, PGS Senior Art Class, Youth Court, AWARE, Easterseals-Goodwill.
The squares have been assembled into multiple panels by many volunteers including Falls Quilt Guild, Lewistown Quilters Guild, Kay Silk, Suzy Smith, Mary Fry, Alee Tyler and Julie Freshly.
“Many, many hands have been a part of it,” Weber said.
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The squares have been stitched into large panel and many of the groups want their pieces back, so Weber those panels will be redistributed to those organizations and their participants can continued to view those works.
“The power of that coming back together is going to be very different than if we had displayed them in panels on the walls traditionally more like a quilt would be displayed in a fine art setting. I think the context of presenting in one long running quilt that takes over a whole hallway that people will get to walk around and see every square still really changes the intention of the piece and then it gets pieced back out and redistributed throughout the city sorta indefinitely,” Weber said.
Freshly helped stitch the panels together and is the secretary for Partnering for Prevention, an organizing group of No More Violence Week.
She said she got involved in Threads of Connection because she loves art and that with so many squares, “it’s a really good representation of the community.”
“Unfortunately, I think all of our lives have been touched in some way by violence and it’s just good to have an outlet to express that,” she said.
Her granddaughter’s kindergarten class made squares that are grouped in a panel.
Having the nearly 700 squares stitched together for the No More Violence Week display will take awhile for visitors to look at and be “a very powerful thing I think.”
Sarah Justice, the Square’s executive director, said the project’s goal is “to show the community that we come together to help stop violence. Help people heal from violence.”
The Square offers several programs during the events, including art and movement, she said, which are “ways to express feelings and emotions without acting out, it’s a great way to heal. Healing and art go hand in hand.”
With the quilt on display, “what you’re going to see is some raw imagery. You’re going to see hope and beauty. You’re going to see things that aren’t so beautiful, so you get a chance to really experience and feel like you’re a part of these people’s experience.”
Justice said that, “my wish for people is to always share your voice, speak up, and that’s’ what’s happened with these quilt squares. It’s beautiful.”
Over her three years with the Threads of Connection project, Weber said what’s she’s seen and would share with the community is that, “kindness to ourselves and to others has really been a foundation of the project and the root of no more violence. This idea that we can start the prevention of violence within ourselves in our own experiences and then how we relate and connect to others in the community, whether we know them or we do not, through kindness is a really simple foundation of that prevention and that you are connected. We are all connected to people we don’t know and even if it is someone we do know that we don’t always know how those connections play out, or thread together honestly.”
These interviews are part of a collaboration by The Electric, REP Space and No More Violence Week.
