Illustrating a segment of PATH’s maternal support initiative in India, Sure Start, this piece, Anticipation, is about commitment, relationships, salubrity, distance, planning ahead and anticipation. Cotton, linen, silk, glass beads and mylar are the foundation for embroidery, and needle turn appliqué. Shredded silk saris construct the women’s hair. A rupee border represents the savings required to transport a woman in labor to a safe birthing facility. Traditional Indian miniature landscape paintings and embroidery techniques inspired the composition.

The coin border is an abstraction of traditional Hindi shisha mirror embroidery (which ward off evil). Each disc is the exact size of a two rupee coin, and add up to the 200 rupees needed for transportation to a birthing facility. The reflective material also serves to engage the viewer in thinking about how their birth or that of their own child was likely well attended by competent health care workers, and how this sharply contrasts with those women that have needlessly lost their lives, 78,000 a year in India, by giving birth at home, where a million babies don’t survive their first month. This is a very personal issue since my first baby presented in a difficult breech position, and if I had lived in another time or place it is likely be that I or even my baby may not have survived the birth.

I wanted to find a Hindi poem that tied the piece to the place and reflected the concept of survival. The words disappear into the landscape purposely to draw viewers in close and to struggle a bit in deciphering the meaning. The poem, by Swami Vivekananda, is an excerpt from The Song of the Free and reads:

Before the sun, the moon, the earth,

Before the stars or comets free,

Before e’en time has had its birth,

I was, I am, and I will be.

Lotuses are the national flower of India and represent divinity, fertility, wealth, knowledge, enlightenment, caring, and spiritual promise. Peacocks are the national bird of India and represent grace, joy, beauty, love, and live near water. The peacocks here are engaged in conversation with the pregnant woman to lead her in the right direction towards good health and a future with her family. The woman’s husband reaches over their daughter, who is holding a savings bank, to add another rupee to the bank. Another pregnant woman’s mother in law also holds a savings bank. Other indigenous birds of India illustrated include black storks, green bee-eaters, and a blue rock thrush. Cows, Gau Mata, a Hindu maternal figure, graze in the landscape.

I wish PATH the greatest success in bringing about safe births in India and around the globe. This fiberwork was a true joy to create. Thank you Agency and Washington Global Health Alliance for this opportunity.

This installation, Greenbelt, is a tribute to Nobel Peace prize recipient Wangari Maathai, biologist, womens rights activist, environmentalist, and founder of The Greenbelt Movement in Kenya. Her dedication to environmental restoration by initiating the planting of over 30 million trees by African women helps stave off the continual desertification of deforested lands. Her mission not only protects resources, it limits political conflict over dwindling resources, a courageous effort for peace through political turmoil in Kenya. Maathai likes to reiterate the Kenyan motto, Harambee, which means,  pull together.

This fabric Green Belt wrapped around the trunk of a 100 year-old oak tree, at chest height (where tree caliper is measured) during the 2005 Queen Anne Treewalk, in Kinnear Park, Seattle. Images of Kenyan women planting trees are appliqued onto the fabrics with glass bead embellishments. Appliqued plants and birds of Kenya help to define the environmental context of the planters, and quotes from Dr. Maathai's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech are embroidered onto the piece. Bits of mirrors seeded into the design are meant to reflect the relevance of Maathai's vision in our own efforts to heal the earth.

Cambium Arts Resources sponsored the installation of the Green Belt at the Treewalk and at the reception for Dr. Maathai at Benaroya Symphony Hall in 2006.  The piece also won the Eco Art Contest and was published in KNOCK literary art journal of Antioch University, fall 2006.