Three women go on a pandemic-motivated online quest for creative collaboration. Will they be able to create an art piece while far away from each other?
“We instantly resonated with each other around a startling observation: nature was responding to the change of pace the lockdown imposed on humans – and her message was (and is) one of healing. This piece is our celebration of her response. Yet it asks: and now? Are you still listening?”
Beth painted “Her”, Mariabruna wrote the poem, Shelley created the vessels. Nature put in our hands pieces of “Her” that fit organically into the piece. Some asked for decoration, like the leaves; others, like the kelp, only wished to be draped. They are a statement of the interconnection that unites us all, and our only hope for healing.
About this video
In this video, the three collaborators tell the story behind the piece. When everything went silent in lockdown, Mariabruna — artist and poet — found that the stillness let her listen to nature differently, and the world answered: dolphins returning to harbors where they hadn’t been seen in decades. Her poem “She Who Responds,” born of a dream, became the foundation of the work. Shelley, a natural-fiber artist on Hawai’i Island, sculpted vessels of palm sheath fiber, soaked and hand-stitched into forms that shift as they dry; Beth painted the figure of “Her” — Gaia — on thin handmade paper that melds into the fiber so the palm texture shows through.
Working across islands and continents by video call, the three “popcorned” ideas without censoring: waxed quail eggs, a nest, a small clay “two-legged” figure nestled in a window of leather, hair that became water filled with dolphins and fish. What began as a pandemic collaboration became, in their words, a sisterhood — and a piece with a job to do: to keep asking whether we are still listening.
