2021 Art Celebration at the WIllowbrook Community Garden | Photo Credit: D. Alexander Trent
We’re thrilled to kick off our very first community engagement workshop this weekend for our Getty PST Art project: We are the Harvest! One of our incredible lead artists, Michelle Glass, will be spearheading a community-engaged project that addresses themes of food insecurity, climate change, and environmental justice. Over the next four months, she will be collecting stories related to the theme of food sovereignty in our South LA legacy neighborhoods, including Willowbrook, Fremont, and South Central. This fall, we expect to unveil a community-rooted tapestry at several neighborhood events and PST partner sites.
Talented lead artist Michelle Glass will lead natural dye workshops in different neighborhoods of South LA, teaching local residents how to create beautiful dye colors from materials found in nature. Over each three-workshop series, she’ll collaborate with youth and adults to tell the stories of local residents using materials and colors that authentically represent each community. Through this process, we hope that participants will gain insight into natural dye textile color production, the significance of plant dyes, and how dye affects different types of textiles, such as cotton, wool, and linen. Glass will then gather multicolored cloth from our workshops and stitch together a collaborative tapestry that will conceptually showcase the color stories of South Los Angeles.
Alongside this map, artist Terrick Gutierrez will collect photographs and audios of stories and digitally map out and uplift community gardens, urban farms, farmers’ markets, and other food/ climate justice spaces in South Los Angeles. Together, the tapestry and map will honor South LA green spaces and preserve the color palette of food grown in local community gardens, while highlighting shared intergenerational geographical, social, and cultural histories of community members in South LA.
We’re excited to spotlight South LA as a vibrant creative and cultural beacon! If you are a Willowbrook resident or have the capacity to attend, please stop by this weekend!
