Installation harvest visits

As a site-specific installation/research project, Threads Sown & Grown, Woven & Given, is an ephemeral and transient experience. This first phase of the installation, Threads Sown & Grown, has constantly changed - from a grid of strings marking the spacing of desks and walkways, to feathery green beds of small flax plants, to a sea of waving blue flowers. However, I have often wondered when everything would come together and feel "complete." Just a few days ago, I reconciled myself that things (windows, walls, bean plants, wheat, cover crops, and flax plants) would never synchronize their "becomings" and be what I had somehow envisioned. And then, it happened.

A volunteer and I pulled the last "desks" of flax, ready to be harvested for linen. At the last moment, I decided to try stooking the sheaves of golden flax, long strands with tousled seed boll heads, and placing the stooks on the desks of their origin. Suddenly, small human forms filled the classroom, with a taller figure at the teacher's desk. The few remaining desks of flax, left to ripen for flax seed instead of linen fibre, occupy the remaining spaces, and faint green cover crops delineate the original grid of the classroom geometry.

Just as things have come together, I have left for a holiday with my family in Ontario. I'm sad to be missing this beautiful time in the garden; however, I invite you to enjoy it before Monday or Tuesday next week, when the stooks will be gathered by The Orchard Garden team and the installation changes again. Bring your camera and send me a picture!