Before fully jumping into this next part of the holiday season I want to write about the great success that was common art on Thanksgiving Eve. As I had wanted to take on a bigger project with everyone for a while, I challenged myself to come up with an art activity that would engage almost the whole community around thanksgiving. While I have led one or two tables in artmaking and pulled community members in, I had not yet attempted to engage as many people as possible. This was also a good challenge for me as one of the biggest things I am continually working on is “pulling people in” to the artmaking process. I feel joy when I am able to have someone who doesn’t often engage in the art, create something.

I decided for this Thanksgiving artwork to make a mural of a dinner table.

I printed out some common images of Thanksgiving foods and gathered different colored pieces of paper. There were many elements to creating the table. I needed help gluing square pieces of cut paper to cardboard to make a tablecloth, help coloring in and then cutting out the Thanksgiving foods, and people to lend me their hands to trace so I could cut them out and place them at the table all together. Pulling all of these elements together may seem overwhelming, but each individual element allowed for different amounts of engagement. I found this to be the perfect way to pull as much of the community in as I could. Some people who sat at the tables could help me color in pages. Other people who may be already engaged in some of the other artmaking going on that day still could participate by allowing me to trace their hand and sign it for me. If coloring wasn’t someone’s thing, they could help cut out the colored images or the hands.

This mural was an incredible learning experience, which taught me how to meet people where they are and have them join in the collective artmaking. In the end it was wonderful to all gather around an image we had created. Even those who were simply viewing our mural became a part of the project, because art needs people to look at it. Not only was the process a great collaboration within the many areas of common art, but also the final product was a beautiful representation of our space and  community. We were all a part of that table.

–Marielle Carpentier