Update and Upcoming Events
The Faith Quilts Project has provided the following update:
We now have 56 collaborative quilts completed or in progress. Thirty-five quilt-makers are working with faith communities and interfaith youth and adults on quilts that represent such diverse traditions as: African-American and Southest Asian Muslims, Baha'is, Native Americans, Mormons, Wiccans, Buddhists, Evangelical Christians, Seventh Day Adventists, Secular Humanists, Jews, and many more.
April 2006 Events
All the quilts will be shown at the Grand Exhibition at the Boston Center for the Arts' Cyclorama between April 6 and 10, 2006. From there, the quilts will be divided into smaller groups and exhibited throughout April at the Boston Public Library, the Great Hall in Codman Square (Dorchester), the Museum of the National Center for Afro-American Artists, Cloud Place (youth quilts) and at a site at Harvard yet to be determined.
First Night: Prayer Flags
On December 31st, at First Night, we will hold the first of a series of workshops to invite adults and children to create small, brightly-colored flags inspired by the ancient traditions of Nepal and Tibet where people fly strings of prayer flags from roof tops, remote ridges, and high mountain outcropings where the prayers can be picked up by the wind and carried all over the world. It is our dream that, during the grey and windy days of March 2006, we will see strings of prayer flags from local citizens flying all over the city in anticipation of the grand exhibition at the Cyclorama in April.
We are working with the Public Conversations Project on a number of opportunities for small exhibitions and dialogue events leading up to next April. There was a small exhibition of six Faith Quilts at the Peabody Essex Museum as part of the Museum's observance of September 11th. In December there will be an exhibition at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis which will include a dialogue between Faith Quilt participants and members of the Graduate School.
Description
The Faith Quilts Project is a collaborative effort among people of various faith communities in the greater Boston area to "visually express deeply held beliefs" in the form of interfaith quilts. The project will result in the creation of at least 50 quilts, which will be displayed in a series of public exhibitions, beginning in late 2003 and culminating in 2006 with a monthlong exhibition in central Boston entitled, "Faith, Arts and the Community."
History
The Faith Quilts Project is the brainchild of Clara Wainwright, a quilt maker and public celebration artist who has directed over 40 collaborative quilt making projects in the past 14 years. After viewing a PBS Frontline program in Sept. 2002 entitled, "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero," Wainwright said she was inspired to harness the power of faith to work for good through a collaborative interfaith quilt project. "The idea was to bring faith groups together to create works of art which explained their faith to the wider world, with the hope of building dialogue and understanding," she said.
Goals
The goal of the Faith Quilts Project is to create a lasting effect on interfaith relations in the Boston area. Herzig said the project hopes to leave a "legacy of dialogue" throughout the city. Since the anticipated 50 or more quilts will remain permanently with the communities who create them, they will occupy approximately 50 locations throughout the city as visual testimonies to the principles of dialogue.
Project Leadership
(Information from a Faith Quilts Project flyer)
"Clara Wainwright (lead artist) is a quilt maker and public celebration artist. She has worked with youth and adults over the past 14 years on more than 40 collaborative quilts. She is one of the founders of First Night, a New Year's Eve celebration of the arts and community. Boston's First Night has served as a model for celebrations in over 200 cities around the world.