NAME: LAUREN ARI

Genre: Art + Ritual

Title: Moving Red Earth

Description: In broken times, we can embrace both hope and anger, fragmentation and creation. We can steer ourselves back from isolation to connection and community.

We all have more in common than what separates us. This collaborative art project is a celebration of breaking, connecting and inviting new growth.

Everyone will have the chance to imbue their intentions into an earthenware plate .

Using chalk pastels you may write words or images on our collective paper to represent things you wish to release from your life.

Then you will enjoy the exhilarating act of smashing your plate into shards.

I will take the shards from all of our broken plates, slake them back into wet clay, and remake them into one large plate. Our words and images will form the basis of a poem that will be fired onto its surface. This act honors and unifies our collective desire to rebuild, reconnect, and remake our lives toward wholeness.

The fired plate made from the collected shards will then itself be shattered. This new set of shards will then be lovingly glued back together. There's no attempt to hide the damage; the cracks and the repair are beautifully illuminated.

The plate will remain as a keepsake of our smashing, releasing ritual.

Text: “...growth coming only through decomposition - so these points could not become perfect configurations as long as they maintained their original form but only by shattering.” Menahem Azariah da Fano (1548 – 1620) in Yonat Elem