Community—ties that bind

I had so many ideas, most of them just terrible, that it was hard to settle on what I wanted to do about the theme "community". It seems a very abstract idea for trying to capture graphically. I tried to sort out in my own mind what makes a group of people a community. A kind of organization, for starters, whether it be formal or informal, and so I lined up my little faces in an organized grid. Then it seemed that organization isn't enough. The group becomes a community only when connections begin to be made. I was thinking about this 12 x 12 community and all the pictures we've posted of members meeting in real life, making those face to face connections, not to mention the comments and the encouragement. A connection here. A connection there.

The faces, which don't represent any real people, are individuals. You can click on this to see the faces more closely if you like—each is actually different from all the others. But taken as a whole, a community becomes an entity unto itself.

I had a lot of fun making the little faces. I drew them, then scanned them, then printed them on fabric. I painted them and stitched them to the background. I used several shades of thread to stitch them down to continue the subtly variegated look and planned to use several shades of floss for the connecting stitches. But when I was at the beach with my friends, my friend Gerrie (yes, our Gerrie) bought the last skein of a wonderful hand-dyed perle cotton that, it turned out, worked perfectly on my piece. I tried to ask politely if I could use a little of her beautiful floss, but I probably all but snatched it out of her hands! At any rate, she very kindly shared with me. Isn't that what community is all about?