by Leanne Thompson
photos by Alex Wisser
The Capertee Hydrology Project was in full swing at the beginning of March. The community had been gathering regularly to connect, listen and discuss multifaceted approaches investigating landscape hydration, ecosystem water retention and to build knowledge as a group. The plans for April were to extend the learning from these science and farming practice conversations by engaging both creativity and local knowledge. How could we begin to overlay our individual insights onto the broad picture being revealed about the watershed? Weaving is the perfect process, both literally and figuratively, to link these ideas together and draw in details about plant species, cultural traditions, an awareness of materials in the landscape and what we could learn about water from the resilience of the plants around us and their location.
Artist Peter Williamson and project coordinator and local legend Kerry Cook talk about the hydrology of the Capertee Valley in our first engagement in March.
However, Covid19 appeared on the scene and the weaving workshop with master weavers Lanny Mackenzie and Peter Williamson and artist Leanne Thompson was cancelled. By June, with permissions and strategies in place, we were ready to have another go. A small workshop took place with just ten enthusiastic locals, so that we could film the key techniques and then be able to share them widely online and at future events. It was a fabulous day, not only because we shared skills and learnt new techniques, but mostly due to the fact that we were weaving together much more than the materials in our hands: forming new connections, rebinding established friendships and collecting insights about our individual relationship to land and the diversity of species in the valley. This weaving workshop is only the beginning of the creative connections growing in and around the larger Capertee Hydrology and Resilient Farmer project.
The project frames wellbeing as an interdependent network between environmental health and the physical and mental health of the valley’s community. Bringing people together creatively allows for conversation to flow freely and means we are checking in on each other, encouraging support networks and opening our sense to the land around us. From our initial ten participants, the group is growing and active. A Facebook group ‘Capertee Weaving Water’ has been launched as a repository for the skills and knowledge welling up and to create a collaborative notebook of images, made objects, questions and answers on species and materials and to gather together local insights about the health and wellbeing of the valley itself. We are planning a few zoom tutorials, more small face to face events and walks.
Towards the end of the year different facets of the Capertee Hydrology project will come together in community celebrations that will include a Water Ceremony and creation of an immense ephemeral sculpture in the landscape. Leanne, Lanny, Peter, and the weaving group will be building elements for the work and encouraging everyone in the valley to be involved, by each making a simple circle that will be bound into the final work. The site chosen and the slow disintegration of the work back into the landscape will also harness and exhibit aspects of the regenerative practices being discussed in the project.
Lanny McKenzie demonstrates weaving technique
Socially distanced in the landscape
Leanne Thompson with a sample of the large scale weaving we will be making in the future!
