Capertee Weaving Water Project is a long-term community project linking landscape hydration, farming practices, local species, creative work and community engagement.
After months of intimate weaving workshops, in November 2020, the entire Capertee Valley community were invited to help create a large landscape-based woven sculpture over two consecutive weekends. Everyone was asked to weave a ‘circle’ from natural materials and then come along to the site at Umbiella farm to ‘bind’ their circle into the growing work. Along the way and within Covid restrictions, a steady stream of people were involved in the weaving. They came from the valley, town, the city and other regions and helped bring the idea of a land sculpture into being.
Even though Weaving Water is an ephemeral sculpture, over time the work will serve a pragmatic purpose in line with regenerative farming principles. It has been positioned along the contour highlighted by the work Draw The Line and it will laterally distribute and slow down water and promote banded vegetation while it breaks back down to the earth. The woody structural elements should keep the livestock off while other plants have an opportunity to get going. By early 2021, it had shaken off some of the exuberant vitality and joy of its making and is still becoming something else; windswept, inhabited and growing. A slow and contemplative space of possibility in the midst of the paddock.
This work has resulted from collaboration with master weavers Peter Williamson and Lanny Mackenzie. There are many foraging and making hands involved - Capertee Valley Landcare, Cementa, Umbrella Farm, other artists including , Georgie Pollard, Diego Bonetto, Peter Swain, Alex Wisser, Laura Fisher, Lucas Ihlein and so many community members and happy interested visitors.
Weaving Water illuminated photo credit: Alex Wisser