What we have borrowed from the soil must return to the soil eventually. Death is not an end, it is a returning. But it is painful nonetheless, and when scales and speeds of living and dying go awry – as they have in the present – it is insensible. Mother Nurture offers a felt way of making sense together, through collective contemplation and embodied rituals.
At 3pm:
We invite you to gather with us for ceremonial closings of Mother Nurture's circles, where we will reweave her sinews with the yarn that is soaking in oak gall and lichen dye in our gallery-lab, and rebuild her molted skin with the all the mothers that are transforming into leather across our distributed network.
At 4pm:
We will begin our silent procession for a sunset ritual at the lagoon, where we will set our griefs and our hopes afloat towards the estuary, so that they be taken out to the roiling seas.
Open Lab from 1-3pm:
Join us earlier in the day for the Open Lab, and help us prepare the yarn, the kombucha shroud, and grief medallions, for the above events.
—————- III ——————
Mother Nurture is a social sculpture that centers process and place, and invites community members to ferment, forage, grow, and dye organic materials (such as kombucha leather, mushrooms, seaweed, silk, wool, and more). We slowly co-create a living portal-chrysalis-shrine to collectively celebrate and grieve, remember and forget. The gallery space and the community of growers, foragers, artists, and social sculpture makers, become part of a pulsing distributed network of queer mothering that brings the sculpture into being through workshops, foraging trips, participatory sculpture-building, ritual performances and meditations, storytelling, and other activities.
The Arts, Cultures, and Designs of Remediation Cluster is a collective of UC Davis faculty and students (in environmental design, soil sciences, theater and dance, performance studies, and cultural studies), and community members from Yolo County. Mother Nurture was the culmination of a two-year residency that involved numerous activities engaging remediation through the interdisciplinary lens of the arts, sciences, and the humanities. The social sculpture has been exhibited previously at the International House and St. Martin’s Church in Davis, CA, and the Feminist Research Institute on the UC Davis campus.
The Davis Cluster Network included: Stephanie Maroney, Caro Novella, Anuj Vaidya, Willa Smart, Margaret Kemp, Kate Scow, Radomir Schmidt, Elizabeth Marley, Gino Forlin, NJ Mvondo, Francesca Wright, Ann Liu, Juliette Beck, Pamela Dolan, Alessa Johns, Elise Keddie.
Sculpture Design/Engineering Lead: Elizabeth Marley. Soundscape by Kevin Dockery.
Project Leads @ Pro Arts: Elizabeth Marley, Stephanie Maroney, Caro Novella, Anuj Vaidya