Over the course of the last few weeks, dozens of students, faculty, and staff have taken part in creating an “Identity Tapestry” of the Westover community, a mixed media participatory installation that spans a wall of Westover’s Schumacher Gallery. The collective work of art — formally known as “An Homage to Identity Tapestry” — was created with the consent and under the inspiration and guidance of the artist Mary Corey March, who generously donated her intellectual property and time with this installation.

Day by day, individuals would visit the Gallery and each would carefully pull a length of thick string — selected from a choice of varying lengths and colors — across the gallery wall, each wrapping their strings around nails that were connected to a series of more than 150 statements that express and reflect aspects of individuals’ identities and self-perception written by members of the Westover community themselves. The path that each string follows would vary as the community member would select statements to connect to ones that best reflect their own view of themselves.

The growing collection of strings — each one weighted at one end to a small, smooth stone — form a complex set of geometrical patterns that zig and zag and intertwine across a 20-foot-long space. Some of the statements are linked by 20 or more strings; others are linked by only one or two. Provocatively, one statement — “I know where my life will take me in the future” — has had no strings connected to it over the course of the tapestry’s creation.

As an introduction for the installation, Mary Corey March, a fiber-based artist based in San Francisco, spoke to the Westover community January 21 in an all-school virtual presentation about her life and work as an artist, specifically focusing in particular on her creation of a series of identity tapestries and other community-based artworks. March’s work with Westover was coordinated by teachers Ali Hildebrand and Caleb Portfolio as Co-Directors of the Schumacher Gallery.

March has overseen more than a dozen iterations of the Identity Tapestries since 2008 around the world — including a number installed across the United States as well as in Switzerland and Japan; two more installations are planned in China in the near future.

As March describes her work, “The piece begins as a blank wall of statements that may be part of identity. Participants select a color of yarn to represent them and wrap it around each statement that identifies them. No statements contradict, some are simple and many are challenging. Intersections between people and patterns become apparent in the weaving. Each person leaves their yarn with its anchoring stone as a mark of their identity as a part of this complex Identity Tapestry, which is itself a portrait of that particular group of people in that time and place.”

In March’s Artist Statement that accompanied “An Homage to Identity Tapestry,” she notes, “Though I work in many mediums, fiber and fiber techniques appear throughout my work. Individual fibers become lines for drawing and ways to create connections between objects or ideas, to literally tie things together … Process has always been important to me and I usually make it notable in the work if not visible in real time. The labor of the handmade, the texture and layers, the improvisations and fumbles are all important expressions of humanity to me, especially in the face of the digital world.”

In March’s January 21st presentation to the Westover community, the artist said, “Empathy is something that is really important to me and something I put into my work in every way I can,” describing her artwork as a form of storytelling. “When you know other people’s story, it’s really hard to hate.”

We were surprised by how many people identified (along with us) on certain tags. There are things that we all experience, even if we think we are alone … We all have different lives, but we are connected in these intersections of experience.

As part of March’s presentation, the community broke into smaller discussion groups to share their ideas about creating statements reflecting identity and perceptions about themselves. Those statements were gathered and were used in the creation of the installation on labels. As March herself noted earlier in her presentation, “I find ways to make labels without conforming to labels.”

The statements ranged from basic identifications about gender — “I am a man” … “I am a woman” … “I define my own gender” — to reflections about race — “My race affects my life everyday” … “My race is important to me” … “I have been treated differently from others because of my race” … — to a wider range of statements exploring body image, emotions, life experiences, personal traits and interests, beliefs, fears, and aspirations.

As one travels along the installation, a wide variety of statements are revealed to the viewer:

• I trust myself
• I have an illness you cannot see
• I am very emotional
• I am proud of whom I have become
• I am an athlete
• I like to make food
• I am a parent
• I like to daydream
• I am a listener
• I am an animal person
• Someone other than my parents have helped shape my life
• I have different beliefs than my family
• I want proof before I believe in anything
• My heritage doesn’t define me
• People underestimate me

In discussions led by advisors, students shared a variety of observations about their responses to the community project that were summarized by several of the discussions’ participants:

It made us realize that you never know someone’s internal thoughts. We realized that you can never judge a book by its cover because you don’t know what they have been through.”

We think it was a meaningful community project and it reflects how connected we are, even though we are all so far apart.

Even students who have been studying remotely this year — and so could not be on campus to visit the installation and add their own identity strings to it — were able to take part in the community project. Instead, they could use an electronic form to anonymously select the statements that they felt best reflect their identities. The forms were then printed and left at the installation, where volunteers would follow them as guides to connect strings to the statements listed on each form.

Students from the “Change Makers” elective visited the gallery in early March to explore and discuss the installation, examining both its physical qualities as a work of art, as well the way connections within the diverse community were revealed with the wide-ranging statements about identity.

The installation will continue to be on display in the Gallery — perhaps gathering additional strings of connection and identity — through March 19.

“An Homage To Identity Tapestry” Has Been Reproduced With Permission By The Artist Mary Corey March. Requests For Reproducing The Work May Be Made Through March’s Website: Marymarch.Com/Contact.Php

 Photographs Of “An Homage To Identity Tapestry” Are A School Project Inspired By “Identity Tapestry” By Artist Mary Corey March; Marymarch.Com/Identity-Tapestry-Gallery.Php