Visiting Artist At Common Ground

I'm super excited to be invited to work on an art project with high schoolers at Common Ground High School in New Haven!  This is part of their visiting artist/artists-in-residence program and there are four other local artists who are also participating. 

I was asked to come up with a project that uses recycled materials while simultaneously bringing awareness to climate change for the students.  In my research, I discovered several examples of projects that use colored stripes chronologically ordered to visually portray long-term temperature trends, most notably The Tempestry Project, as well as Professor Ed Hawkins' Warming Stripes climate data visualization work.

I decided to create a weaving project, one I'm calling The Warming Stripes Weaving Project (WSWP), that provides a visual representation of historical temperature data for New Haven, Connecticut.  Students will collect local temperature data for a given year, match the data to a specific color, and then individually weave one year's worth of daily high temperatures.  Weavings will be displayed side by side so that viewers can determine temperature trends over time and decide for themselves whether they see evidence of climate change.

Last week, students tried out the weaving process, using different shapes and sizes of looms, and various weaving materials.

Using the fingers to beat the weft in place.

Colorful t-shirt yarns make great patterns.

Trying out a tapestry needle for weaving.

Weaving is such an accessible art form.  I love how it can be adapted to all ages, interest levels and kinds of materials.  I'm looking forward to seeing what these high schoolers can do with this project!