Shelley Spector

Shelley Spector has been invited to bring her traveling workshop & exhibition Village to a small community run space in Montreal, Canada from August 16-19. The project is a collaborative visual art piece in which Shelley will teach a workshop for participants to make a simple sewn fabric object that is historically connected to ideas of hope and new beginnings. The workshop will precede a temporary exhibit/installation of all of the pieces participants create side by side with work from past workshops and exhibits, totaling over 200 pieces to date.

Shelley’s project, Mariposa, which is Spanish for butterfly, comes from the brand label on an old woolen blanket from which she is creating a sculpture. She is unraveling the blanket row by row and winding the wool onto hundreds of handmade wooden spools. This artistic action of metamorphosis mirrors the slow process of change in nature and is not social change in itself but a model for transformation, which requires time, tenacity, focus, and the ability to let go.