On Piecework
Saturday (5/9) book launch, and more
We’re approaching mother’s day weekend, and it feels appropriate that this Saturday my mom will be hosting the launch of her most recent book Piecework: Ethnographies of Place. My brother Avila and I will be performing and sharing some of our own work in support of her launch, which is deeply meaningful considering that the essays in the book span our lifetime growing up with an arts educator/artist parent.
Piecework is a lively collection of intergenerational essays on how people create possibility and place through the arts, culture, and heritage. Women and children play central roles in these ethnographies and autoethnographies. Their stories and struggles, ideas and breakthroughs, affirm the exponential power of families, schools, and communities to shape their own destinies through creative action. We learn that change is a collective endeavor, shaped on the ground, with the people we know and the communities we cherish.
As you all know, the past few years have been centered on producing my first feature documentary, Matriarch— so I will be sharing scenes from the film as well as prompts around its themes for you to take home and sit with.
Reading Piecework, I’ve been thinking about the inheritance of teaching, activism and values-based work that I grew up with. In the process of building this film, I’ve been able to have conversations with many different types of folks around the world. The common through-line, is that everyone has some sort of ancestral story, or matriarch that they’d like to archive, but don’t necessarily know how.
I’ve been playing with the idea of building an archival storytelling class to share so that they can build out their own family stories, if not just for future generations of their lineages to have access to. Reading my mom’s words, I’m reminded that this is part of my own inheritance. I immediately think of what my Grandma Bruria shared with me in her studio visit interview, when she discussed the symbolism in her sculpture series, Divine Chariot.
In Wheel 4 “The Power of Many”, she states that: “On the wheel two hands are in tandem, the hub of the wheel is in full bloom, the center spoke in complete leaf. The belief in the tradition is that an idea does not come to fruition until the community embraces it”.
My mom’s impact as an arts educator is made evident by the students turned friends who have kept in touch with her across decades. I know she has impacted and will continue to impact many through her work. This book is a beautiful offering to anyone who is attempting to tie the threads of their life together, for the sake of something meaningful that stretches across generations.
If you are available, I hope you will join us this Saturday!
Love,
Reva