About this project

"C'ood: a democracy experiment" is an outdoor participatory project about searching for the common good. I'm building this walk through environment for ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, to be installed from September 22 to October 10, 2010. It will be in the heart of downtown at Calder Plaza, Grand Rapids' City Hall, right next to a monumental sculpture by Alexander Calder. My work was selected for this prestigious sight by the curators at Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. The ArtPrize event is in it's second year and it's large prize for one art project of $250.000 draws artists from all over the world to compete. Check out their site, artprize.org for all the details.

My project this year is an outdoor environment. Viewers enter a circular tunnel, 24' in diameter and reaching 10' in height, that is covered with free-form weaving. Viewers walk around inside the weaving or move into a central open space. The tunnel structure is made of metal arches covered with fencing attached to a wood floor. T-shirts donated from all over Michigan are cut up then woven into this structure. Texts from the shirts are recorded on the floor. Each of 5 entrances into the tunnel is woven with one color of T-shirt. As the weaving merges around and over the tunnel, the colors intermix. The central open space is surrounded by the structure and the mulitcolor weaving. By navigating the unfamiliar space and moving among the other viewers, one participates in the experiment of how we reach the common good in our communal culture.

This project came out of what I submitted last year. "Escape/Return Excape/Regresso" was an immigration tunnel woven out of donated T-shirts from Latin American countries. It aimed to unite the Anglo and Latino communities in an expression of an epic migration of people. The tunnel was 12' long, 7.5' high and 9' wide and made of fencing that supported the weaving. See photos of last year's project on my website, margaretparkerstudio.com. This year I'm building on that structural idea to make a more complex environment. I'm also concentrating on Michigan which has struggled over the last several years, just like the rest of the country, and is looking for a new vision of itself. Art can help make those new visions. They can be made out of simple materials and everyone can be involved in the making. Art can come from every little village and town, from ordinary people leading their regular lives. This project sees the beauty in this communal search for our common good.

The project is under way! We have collected about 150 T-shirts that say "Michigan" or the name of a city or town in Michigan. We need 300 altogether. You may donate a T-shirt to the project by mailing it to: Margaret Parker Studio, 210 S. Ashley St., Ann Arbor, MI, 48104.

Volunteers are cutting up the shirts so they're ready to weave. Local businesses have donated building supplies, building space and organizational skills. The building crew, myself and two others, have just finished the floor. We're on target for our finish date so the piece can be shipped to Grand Rapids by September 14. Follow the progress on facebook at Margaret Parker Studio.

This is the largest project I've attempted and I need help funding it, from small donations to large pledges of support. The cost of materials, builders, an assistant, collecting and weaving the T-shirts, shipping and installing the piece comes to $11,728.37. The piece is partially funded but needs $4,857.33 to complete it. Like every other aspect of this project, anyone who gives through Kickstarter is a participator in the project and demonstrates their vision of the "common good".