A Place To Pause 2022

June 17th - August 31st, 2022

As we entered the second year of the Covid-19 Pandemic, a worldwide effort to combat the virus with vaccinations, home testing and shelter-in-place was implemented with the hope of lowering the risk of infections and curtailing human losses and suffering. I began planning a third piece titled “A Place to Pause” to be installed in downtown Olympia at Childhood’s End Gallery. I hoped this piece could be experienced as a massive inversion to the heaviness and fears we had carried around inside us during the pandemic. The design emerged as a gigantic “floral cloud” hung from the ceiling near the entrance of the gallery. More than 350 brightly colored fresh flower garlands offered an organic shape that visitors could sit and pause underneath.

I turned to the community to help fund and produce the garlands necessary to complete this project.  A GoFundMe campaign was promoted at the beginning of April 2022 and was managed by Erika Naficy, studio assistant, who coordinated raising $7,300 dollars. I quickly learned that we would exceed the targeted goal and have to turn away people who wanted to help.

All of the garlands were hand strung by members of the South Sound community who came and worked in my studio for three hours sessions over a five-week period. There was a total of 50 volunteers who worked to string the 350 garlands. In these sessions multiple conversations emerged about creating community, advocating for the arts, and supporting and reconnecting with one another during a very difficult time in history. It became very clear to me that offering community engaged art projects became part of how we healed from the horrible disruption that the pandemic caused in all of our lives.

Olympia’s Poet Laureate, Ashly McBunch, authored a poem, A Pause Request, which was printed by a local business; copies were available at the site and free to all visitors. 

I hope that as we try to engage in a new normal, we take time to pause in our lives, giving ourselves the chance to value and appreciate the connections we all have to a worldwide community and to help ourselves transform our grief through beauty and experience.