Bring your old negatives and slides to a sewing bee event at the Durham Arts Council at 1pm on October 24th. With the help of visual artist Elizabeth Stone, sew your film strips into a large scale community art piece! This sewing bee will be held as part of the “I REMEMBER PROJECT: Collected Memories / Shared Histories”. Montana artist Elizabeth Stone will be an artist in residence for the month of October at Cassilhaus in Chapel Hill. With division so strong in our country right now, Stone has been thinking about what defines a community and how we gather together in meaningful ways. The sharing of stories is often at the core of human connection, and as a photographer Stone knows that photographs have the power to connect as well as to divide. She cares about the connection.

I REMEMBER will provide an opportunity for the greater Chapel Hill, Durham and Hillsborough, North Carolina communities to participate, pause and reconsider the many perspectives of a shared experience, sparked by the power of family photographs. During her time at the Cassilhaus residency, Stone will create a unique large scale dimensional work from donated photographic materials that are full of individual and family histories. These film materials will be collected from generations who used the camera as a means of recording life events. Negatives will also be collected from high school and college age students presently working in the wet darkroom. These donations will be sewn together to make a large sculptural tapestry – a collaborative record of the community’s identity.

In addition to the physical art piece, each donated negative or slide will be copied, archived and included in a video celebrating and memorializing these numerous personal and family histories.

Contact Elizabeth Stone at elizabeth@elizabethstone.com about donating negatives and registering for the sewing bee. Space is limited. Participants need only basic hand sewing skills or the willingness to learn.