2016
COMMUNIVERSITYartsfest
Weaving Princeton’s Story Through Art
Textile artist Diana Weymar is working with the entire community on a special project By Donna Adinolfe iana Weymar is a storyteller. The former Princeton resident, and the Arts Council of Princeton’s current Ann Reeves Artist-in-Residence, is using her experience as a textile artist to tell the story of Princeton, and she’s getting a lot of help from the community to do it. “Interwoven Stories: A Princeton Community Art Project” features 200 fabric threeholed lined “pages” that were handed out to be stitched by Princeton residents. Ms. Weymar turned old bedsheets into the pages on which she stitched lines, so that they resemble a notebook page. Participants, both inexperienced and experienced stitchers, were asked to embroider something historical, geographic or organizational onto a “page.” It could be their favorite spot in town, a Princeton restaurant, their home, or anything else related to Princeton. They also had the option of creating a personal page, abstract or realistic, about their interests, experiences, or personal history. Pages could include text, family history or even another language.
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“I have learned the most about art while studying creative writing at Princeton and working in film in NYC,” Ms. Weymar says. “It’s all storytelling. I stumbled upon using text with textile in 2013 when I made The John McPhee Sampler series. At the Vancouver Island School of art I took Danielle Hogan’s course ‘Art and the Language of Craft’ and it opened up a whole new world to me.” Ms. Weymar says she works exclusively with what she calls “memory materials,” which include clothing, bedsheets, linens, and fabrics that are given to her. “I inherited almost 100 pieces from my grandparents that
2016 Communiversitry