We are living in a time of collective, complicated, and unresolved grief.
Interwoven was a community sanctuary for our global sorrow. 

In the center, a casket made of willow, handwoven on site with weaver Moonbeam Marie Gardebring, dedicated to our collective loss, uncertainty, and interconnected humanity. On the surrounding walls, collages interweaving life and death created by artist and spiritual chaplain Ellie Douglass.

Hundreds of community members spent time in reflection and join in events throughout the exhibition sharing expressions of grief, from mourning to celebration, through poetry, music, movement, and ritual.

Thank you to all who joined in and shared your reflections and offerings throughout the month.

Join in the Interwoven Vigil livestream
online Sept. 25-28:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82096306912

EXHIBITION

september 1st – 30th

 

Interwoven was on view Sept 1-30, 2020


Enjoy this virtual online gallery of the exhibition and events.

Artists
Moonbeam Marie Gardebring – weaving
Ellie Douglass
 – collage

Collaborators
Ross Taylor,
Howard Peller, Brian Svoboda,
Kevin Kinnamon, Blaine Alward,
David Levitt, Sam Randall

Mouse over images for artist bios.

Community members were invited to visit as long and as often as they would like to Sit. Reflect. Journal. Light a candle. Join in an artist-led origami ritual. Create or bring an offering for the casket or candle altar. Offerings may be made online below as well.

All emotions are welcome — from despair to compassion, anger to hope — whether for illness and death, racial or gender violence, coronavirus, environmental crisis, political oppression, or other personal loss or difficulty.

We are interwoven with dignity, beauty, and sacredness. 

Through community, may greater compassion, awareness, and healing arise. 

Handcut collages in the exhibition are by Ellie Douglass. See below for the full virtual gallery. To learn more about her work and to purchase prints and select originals, visit artoftransitions.com
go to artoftransitions.com
Moonbeam Marie Gardebring devotes her days to breathing and weaving beauty. Her experience with a rare, life-threatening autoimmune condition feeds her life with embodied living, artistry, and purposeful dying. She believes in casket weaving as a restorative way to embrace love, grief, truth, and the threshold of death in community. Rooted in Moonbeam’s personal journey with dying, Interwoven offers a new shared grief ritual and safe space for communal grieving and healing during the Covid-19 pandemic, and a brave space to confront the systemic injustices that fracture our communities. To connect with Moonbeam, visit weave&wimble.
go to weaveandwimble.com
Ellie Douglass is a contemplative artist, poet, and interfaith hospice chaplain. Inspired by her work in hospice, she is dedicated to using art and poetry to work with fear, grief, and uncertainty around death and dying. Through hand-cut collages and short verse poems, she aims to reveal the interconnection between life and death. By invoking the intuitive, cyclical mind, Ellie believes art has the potential to lessen suffering by revealing the beauty and sacredness of transition.

To learn more about Ellie's work and to purchase prints and select orginals of her collages, visit her website: Art of Transitions.
go to artoftransitions.com

Open Hours
Tuesday        12-4pm
Wednesday   4-8pm
Thursday        4-8pm
Friday             12-4pm
Saturday       10-3pm
Sunday           12-4pm
> or click to schedule a private visit.

Visitation is free. Masks are required. Social distancing and capacity limits are being observed for public health precautions.


We invite you to visit as long and as often as you would like. Sit. Reflect. Journal. Light a candle. Join in an artist-led origami ritual. Create or bring an offering for the casket or candle altar. Offerings may be made online below as well.

All emotions are welcome — from despair to compassion, anger to hope — whether for illness and death, racial or gender violence, coronavirus, environmental crisis, political oppression, or other personal loss or difficulty.

We are interwoven with dignity, beauty, and sacredness. 

Through community,
may greater compassion, awareness, and healing arise.


Artists
Moonbeam Marie Gardebring – weaving
Ellie Douglass
 – collage

Collaborators
Ross Taylor,
Howard Peller, Brian Svoboda, Kevin Kinnamon, Blaine Alward, David Levitt, Sam Randall

Click on images for artist bios

Handcut collages in the exhibition are by Ellie Douglass. See below for the full virtual gallery. To learn more about her work and to purchase prints and select originals, visit artoftransitions.com
go to artoftransitions.com
Moonbeam Marie Gardebring devotes her days to breathing and weaving beauty. Her experience with a rare, life-threatening autoimmune condition feeds her life with embodied living, artistry, and purposeful dying. She believes in casket weaving as a restorative way to embrace love, grief, truth, and the threshold of death in community. Rooted in Moonbeam’s personal journey with dying, Interwoven offers a new shared grief ritual and safe space for communal grieving and healing during the Covid-19 pandemic, and a brave space to confront the systemic injustices that fracture our communities. To connect with Moonbeam, visit weave&wimble.
go to weaveandwimble.com
Ellie Douglass is a contemplative artist, poet, and interfaith hospice chaplain. Inspired by her work in hospice, she is dedicated to using art and poetry to work with fear, grief, and uncertainty around death and dying. Through hand-cut collages and short verse poems, she aims to reveal the interconnection between life and death. By invoking the intuitive, cyclical mind, Ellie believes art has the potential to lessen suffering by revealing the beauty and sacredness of transition.

To learn more about Ellie's work and to purchase prints and select orginals of her collages, visit her website: Art of Transitions.
go to artoftransitions.com

Moonbeam Gardebring on weaving casketry

Play Video

Ellie Douglass on interweaving life and death

Play Video

EVENTS

Interwoven Community Vigil
Friday September 25  |  5pm
to
Monday September 28 |  5pm

view the vigil and programs on the livestream: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82096306912

A continuous 3-day vigil is being help Sept. 25-28 as a closing ritual to bear witness to the community offerings and our collective grief. We invite members and groups from the community to sign up for a block of time to hold vigil in whatever way you choose during the course of the 72 hours. Up to 6 people may be in the space at one time with Covid-19 precautions. 

 

>> go to the interwoven community vigil event page for more details and to sign up to participate.

Vigil Programs include:

  • Friday 9/25 7pm-10pm | Mis Hijos : outdoor video projection by multidisciplinary artist Alejandra Abad
  • Saturday 9/26 4pm-6pm |  Fergus Stone Banjo Vigil : hymns, spirituals, folk songs
  • Sunday 9/27 8am-12pm | Seated and Walking Meditation with Eon Zen Sangha with Zen Buddhist Service at 9am.
  • Sunday 9/27 5pm-10pm | Reading of the names of extinct or dying species of plants and animals

Weaving Art and Community :
A Night of Open Grief
Saturday Sept 19  |  6-8pm

Six Colorado artists and artivists will share their expressions and experiences with grief and healing in this moving virtual “performance in the round” weaving music, poetry, community, and ritual. The event will be live-streamed from the Arbor Institute. 

Jasmine Abena Colgan is an Ameri-Ghanaian artist, educator, scholar, entrepreneur and civil rights activist who was born in Colorado. Jazz is a master printer with 19th century, historical photographic printing processes including; platinum & palladium, silver and gold. Her artwork is inspired from the contemporary diaspora of mixed culture in the social world; a woman who is black and white, Irish and Ghanaian, African-American, but declares herself a part of the vitilgan race and a woman of colors and has been recognized for her efforts with her non-profit organization, Tough Skin. Colgan has been featured in publications such as PEOPLE magazine and was associated with TEDXMileHigh for Wonder: Women in Art Experience.
visit Jasmine's website
Alejandra Abad is an interdisciplinary artist born in Venezuela and partially raised in Florida. She creates honest narratives and symbolism based on a visual language that depicts fragmentation, mythology and folklore, with a penchant for dense, fantastical landscapes and abstract shapes. Her recent projects feature conceptual and collaborative pieces that work to break down the barriers between artist and audience. She uses analog and digital processes to create immersive environments that reflect her identity and values. Alejandra is currently pursuing an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices at CU Boulder and is part of the 2020-2021 Engaged Arts and Humanities Graduate Student Scholars.
go to Alejandra's website
Ájené Robinson-Figuereo is a doctoral candidate studying Philosophy at the University of Colorado Boulder. She primarily works on issues centered around critical race philosophy, bioethics, and sociopolitical philosophy. In both her art and research, Ájené has an interest in examining themes of racial-gender-class justice and its connection to present-day colonial practices.
connect with Ájené
Gwendalynn Roebke is a Black/multiracial they/them who enjoys poems, in all forms. They also take poetry to be a thing that exists in all forms, even in less romantic ways. While they are currently a student at CU on track to attend graduate school, their ultimate aspiration in life is to learn as many languages as possible to help organize a cross continental movement against anti blackness/colonialism. Gwendalynn is co-founder of BIPoC Boulder Creatives and co-hosts a monthly BIPoC poetry open-mic at Innisfree Cafe.
connect with Gwendalynn on instagram
Leila Browne is a bundle of ball moss who makes art with words, music, movement, and color based in Boulder, CO, who has represented Denver as a member of youth poetry team Minor Disturbance at Brave New Voices 2015 and 2016. They are a recent graduate of CU Boulder’s linguistics department and have plans to bring insights from sociocultural linguistics into their art, teach English abroad, and build their best queer life wherever the next few years take them.
visit Leila's soundcloud
Constance Harris is a NJ native who is currently pursuing her Masters in Dance at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her unique style is the result of over 20 years of experience in a variety of dance genres/experiences ranging from Modern, Middle Eastern forms, nightlife entertainment, improvisation, and styles based in Africanist aesthetics.
visit Constance's website

Weaving Art and Community :
A Night of Open Grief
Saturday Sept 19  |  6-8pm

Six Colorado artists and artivists will share their expressions and experiences with grief and healing in this moving virtual “performance in the round” weaving ritual, music, poetry, and community. The event will be live-streamed from the Arbor Institute.


 

Click on images for artist bios.

Jasmine Abena Colgan is an Ameri-Ghanaian artist, educator, scholar, entrepreneur and civil rights activist who was born in Colorado. Jazz is a master printer with 19th century, historical photographic printing processes including; platinum & palladium, silver and gold. Her artwork is inspired from the contemporary diaspora of mixed culture in the social world; a woman who is black and white, Irish and Ghanaian, African-American, but declares herself a part of the vitilgan race and a woman of colors and has been recognized for her efforts with her non-profit organization, Tough Skin. Colgan has been featured in publications such as PEOPLE magazine and was associated with TEDXMileHigh for Wonder: Women in Art Experience.
visit Jasmine's website
Ájené Robinson-Figuereo is a doctoral candidate studying Philosophy at the University of Colorado Boulder. She primarily works on issues centered around critical race philosophy, bioethics, and sociopolitical philosophy. In both her art and research, Ájené has an interest in examining themes of racial-gender-class justice and its connection to present-day colonial practices.
connect with Ájené
Leila Browne is a bundle of ball moss who makes art with words, music, movement, and color based in Boulder, CO, who has represented Denver as a member of youth poetry team Minor Disturbance at Brave New Voices 2015 and 2016. They are a recent graduate of CU Boulder’s linguistics department and have plans to bring insights from sociocultural linguistics into their art, teach English abroad, and build their best queer life wherever the next few years take them.
visit Leila's soundcloud
Alejandra Abad is an interdisciplinary artist born in Venezuela and partially raised in Florida. She creates honest narratives and symbolism based on a visual language that depicts fragmentation, mythology and folklore, with a penchant for dense, fantastical landscapes and abstract shapes. Her recent projects feature conceptual and collaborative pieces that work to break down the barriers between artist and audience. She uses analog and digital processes to create immersive environments that reflect her identity and values. Alejandra is currently pursuing an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices at CU Boulder and is part of the 2020-2021 Engaged Arts and Humanities Graduate Student Scholars.
go to Alejandra's website
Gwendalynn Roebke is a Black/multiracial they/them who enjoys poems, in all forms. They also take poetry to be a thing that exists in all forms, even in less romantic ways. While they are currently a student at CU on track to attend graduate school, their ultimate aspiration in life is to learn as many languages as possible to help organize a cross continental movement against anti blackness/colonialism. Gwendalynn is co-founder of BIPoC Boulder Creatives and co-hosts a monthly BIPoC poetry open-mic at Innisfree Cafe.
connect with Gwendalynn on instagram
Constance Harris is a NJ native who is currently pursuing her Masters in Dance at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her unique style is the result of over 20 years of experience in a variety of dance genres/experiences ranging from Modern, Middle Eastern forms, nightlife entertainment, improvisation, and styles based in Africanist aesthetics.
visit Constance's website

Death Cafe
Sunday Sept 13  |  2-3:30pm

A Death Cafe is a group-led discussion and safe place to come together and talk about death. It will be held in the park outside of the Arbor Institute with social distancing precautions and led by artist and Spiritual Chaplain Ellie Douglass.

 

attendance is limited and registration is required.

>> go to event page to register and view more details

VIRTUAL GALLERY
and
OFFERINGS

in honor of those who have died
and our collective grief
we offer these names and reflections
shared by the community with the deepest respect

Enter your offering here if you wish. It will be uploaded to this page later and added into the casket.

EXHIBITION LIBRARY

When death is viewed
from the intuitive, cyclical mind
the mind sees life and death
as interwoven

– Ellie Douglass