Andover Mending: Healing and Resilience

Mending, the act of repairing or healing, has often been seen as women’s contribution to resilience and longevity. In nature, the spider embodies creative, feminine energy and spirit.  Spiders also highlight light and shadow, encouraging transformation from within.  We are drawn to the idea that healing first begins with the self, and only then can it radiate out into the world.

In 2021 and 2022 we had been producing public art projects on Main Street transforming large fences and plazas into spaces of pause, wonder, and meditation on our relationship to nature’s life cycles. These kinds of projects added vibrancy to our main street, inviting pedestrians to take another look at what may have become a familiar and ignored space and to imagine a new possibility or new way of looking at our downtown as a center for creativity, joy, and community. 

With this project, we hoped to continue that conversation with our fellow residents. Specifically, as year 3 of the COVID pandemic unfurls, we hoped to highlight the interconnectedness in the community with the spider web and also bring focus to embracing and loving the parts of ourselves we feel are broken or less than perfect, as part and parcel of the healing process.

In partnership with the Andover Center for History & Culture, we created a public art installation featuring woven elements, metal and wood sculpture, and a live performance activation inside a series of empty storefront windows on Main Street in downtown Andover.

In order to express the ideas of healing and feminine resilience, we transformed 3 store windows on Main Street into a fiber, wood, and metal environmental treasure-box installation. Our environment embraced the Japanese traditions of Kintsugi, bringing in larger split and broken branches, gilding their wood fibers at the wounds with gold colored (brass) foil, and embracing the beauty of the brokenness. Within this gilded woodland environment, we used fine gold colored wire to weave a spider web. The web highlights our interconnectedness, beginning in the center and radiating outward.  For a spider, the web creates a whole safe space for patiently waiting.

During the 11-week installation period, in order to bring an additional sense of life, mystery and change to the windows, we activated the installation with a durational performance three times. The subtle, strange performance was its own invitation to re-examine life as it is, explore darkness and transmutation and re-engage nature and our humanity in new and perhaps more meaningful ways. Each activation lasted 3 hours, giving passersby the opportunity to observe for as long or short an amount of time as they like.

We are immensely grateful to our supporters. Thank you!

Individuals
Susan and David McCready, Rebecca Backman and Stephen Cotton, Andrea Enman, Andrew McQuide and Beth Biggee, Myra Jean Prelle, Susan Smith, Jessica and David Bunting

Regional Companies
Trinity Design

Grants
This program is supported in part by a grant from the Andover Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.