Issue link: http://maconmagazine.uberflip.com/i/1184230
A P R I L / M AY 2 0 1 9 M A C O N M A G A Z I N E . C O M 1 1 7 What's the favorite thing you've ever created? One of the favorite things Jeni and I created isn't a work of art. We conceived and cofounded the Socially Engaged Craft Collective with two close friends. The group of artists produce a diverse range of socially-engaged art projects, rooted in the history of craft objects and materials. The collective has grown to grown to represent artists in all US time zones, producing major exhibitions in Portland, Oregon and Tallahassee, Florida. As a group, the artists have presented and lectured on social engagement at conferences and published a book about socially-engaged craft. We will host another conference and exhibition later this month in Minneapolis. What's the best advice you ever had about how to be more creative? Don't limit what you believe it means to be creative. It can be drawing, painting or ceramics, but it can also be building a kid's tree house in the back yard or something as simple as making a sandwich. For us, art is life and we don't draw a distinction between the two. What is your dream project? This is an exciting question—of course we both have some ideas. The Macon Flowers Project was a big dream and bringing this project to reality has been very fulfilling. In this moment our dream would be to have every person in Macon visit Mill Hill to make a flower with us before the end of the workshops! What is the Macon Flowers Project? Macon Flowers is the main project that we have been working on over the course of our residency at Mill Hill. For this project, the idea is that every single person who lives, works in, or has a connection to Macon is invited to Mill Hill to come and make flowers with us. For months now we have been hosting flower-making workshops. It's an opportunity for people to get to know others in their community and to visit and see the changes and growth happening in Mill Hill. Flowers grow and blossom, just like our neighborhood is and will continue to do. The flowers are being fired and will be used as part of a large-scale, outdoor, public art installation that will be installed this summer around the Mill Hill Community Arts Center. How has your residency at Mill Hill East Macon Arts Village impacted your creative pursuits? It helped us see the value in working collaboratively with each other as well as the real meaning and impact of working in a community. We are very excited for the future here and can't wait to continue to watch Mill Hill grow. We'll both always have a strong connection and sense of home here. Tell me about your new exhibit at Macon Arts Gallery. Our exhibition, Commemorate Macon, will feature our collaborative, handmade porcelain plates. The commemorative plates will include original imagery of people, places, and things that are important to Macon's past and present. Some plates will feature well-known scenes from around Macon, such as the mounds at the Ocmulgee Mounds or Rose Hill Cemetery. There will also be Maconites and other less obvious representations of Macon such as train tracks, cherry blossoms, and even jam pups will also be featured on the plates. As a way to widen our views of Macon, we also reached out to the public and accepted submissions for commemorations, which have been exciting to receive. We work with mostly our own photographs and digitally alter them into line drawings, which over the course of a number of steps are eventually stenciled and screen-printed onto the plates. There will be over 40 porcelain plates with recognizable imagery of Macon in the exhibition. About Mill Hill Mill Hill: East Macon Arts Village is a revitalization effort that seeks to develop an artist village in historic Fort Hawkins, addressing blight and fostering economic opportunity in Macon's first neighborhood. The project is anchored by the beautifully renovated 1920s Mill Hill Community Arts Center located at 217 Clinton Street and managed by the Macon Arts Alliance.