Indiana high school's art project highlights refugee crisis

CLARKSVILLE, Ind. (AP) - Through a recent art project, students at a local high school have worked one stitch at a time to raise awareness of the struggles faced by refugees across the world.

For months, the fine arts department at Our Lady of Providence High School in Clarksville has been involved in an international art initiative called 25 Million Stitches to bring attention to the global refugee crisis. The local project features hand-stitched work by Providence students and other community members, and the arts department recently set up panels for students to stitch on before the start of class. The panels will be mailed to California to become part of a tapestry featuring more than 2,000 artists.

The idea behind the art initiative is that each stitch represents an individual who has been forced to flee their country as a result of war, genocide, poverty, natural disasters, violence and other threats. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there were an estimated 25.9 million refugees worldwide in 2018, so the initiative aims to collect at least 25 million stitches to represent the scale of the refugee crisis.

When Donna Burden, art teacher at Providence, was informed of the 25 Million Stitches project, she was immediately inspired to work with her own students on the initiative. Students have worked on the panels in her 3-D art classes and the school's art club, and she eventually opened up the project so that anybody could work on a panel.

The California artist behind the initiative mailed the fabric to the school, Burden said, and students started working on the panels in the fall. The school is preparing to mail off the panels, but before they say goodbye to their artwork, the panels will be exhibited from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday at Providence's administrative corridor. The big art piece will be on display in California later this year.

Burden describes the project as 'œartful service.'ť

'œIt's using your God-given skills and talents to benefit the community and the world around you - it's doing good in the name of art, basically,'ť she said.

Burden said she didn't know much about sewing or embroidery when she started the project - her skills extended to attaching a button or sewing a straight line on a sewing machine- so she was learning with the students throughout the project, and she often learned new stitches from her students. Few of the students had experience with sewing, she said.

All of the panels are hand-stitched so that artists can have a personal connection with each stitch, Burden said.

'œYou can kind of meditate on each life that you're representing,'ť she said. 'œIf you go through the sewing machine, you can go so fast that you don't really have a connection with the stitches, and you want to connect with the stitches. The more stitches that you have, the more lives you are representing.'ť

Burden said about 100 students in her intro to 3-D class have worked on the project, and last month, students and faculty were invited to add stitches to panels representing the names of the high school's 'œhouses,'ť which include faith, courage, justice, humility, integrity, spirit, truth and loyalty. She hopes to reach school-wide participation in the project.

She let the students select their own themes for their design, but she asked them to keep their images positive. The imagery depicted in the panels includes animals, flowers, crosses, inspirational words and symbols of peace and unity. One of the panels depicts holding hands forming a heart with the words, 'œthere is no '~us' and '~them,' there is only '~us.''ť

At the beginning of the project, the class had discussions on the topic of human dignity and the refugee crisis, Burden said.

'œI think because we talked ahead of time about the dignity of life and how Christ calls us to help all people, they just kind of went into the planning with that in the forefront of their minds,'ť Burden said.

Providence senior Augusta Schonard's panel depicts a crowd of people gathered outside the Berlin Wall with the words 'œwe know walls don't work,'ť and the piece contains a stitched peace sign as graffiti on the wall.

Schonard said she loves sewing, and it meant a lot for her to be an advocate for the acceptance of refugees through her panel. She wanted to comment on the Trump administration's building of the border wall.

'œBasically, the message I wanted to send was, we know that this doesn't work, so why do this again?'ť she said. 'œAnd also to help the refugees, of course, and to let them into the country, because we know that they need help, and we should help them because, it's just the good thing to do.'ť

The panel also references the Bible verse Leviticus 19:33, which instructs that when a foreigner 'œresides among you in your land, do not mistreat them,'ť but instead, to treat them 'œas your native-born.'ť

'œ(The verse) says we should not judge foreigners, for we were once foreigners in Egypt,'ť Schonard said.

Sophomore Kayla Badon was among the students contributing her stitches to the 'œhouse'ť panels this week. For her, the art project has personal significance - her father came to the United States as a refugee at age 15 in search of a better life, she said.

'œHe had to learn a lot of things really young,'ť she said. 'œI never really knew what it was like for him to come to a new country not knowing all this - not knowing any English, not being an American.'ť

She wants the project to send a message of inclusion to those coming to the United States as refugees, no matter where they are coming from. She also appreciates that the project involves students creating the stitches by hand.

'œWe're doing the stitches ourselves, which is another message that teaches me something - that we get to be part of this too, even if we're not refugees,'ť she said.

Freshman Brooklyn Stemle taught herself to embroider, and she created two panels for the project, including a detailed depiction of a turtle.

'œI'm happy that I'm able to do this, even if I have to give it up,'ť Stemle said. 'œIt's really nice to be able to do this project and show that refugees do have a voice and they should be shown in society.'ť

Rev. Dan Atkins, chaplain at Providence, said the project sends an important message.

'œIt's just amazing how our students are being brought into the real world where we need prayer and we need love - we keep inviting them to come into dialogue with the world, especially the world of the poor. We have to be reminded almost every day that there are people who need us to stand beside them.'ť

Burden said it feels 'œprofound" to be part of a larger advocacy piece, and she is excited to see photos and video of the panels when they are put together in the tapestry.

'œOur (panels) are just going to be a small portion of all of these other artists who have done all of these amazing things,'ť she said. 'œWe're just a small part of that, yet we've played a role in it, so I think that's pretty cool.'ť

She wants the art piece to remind people that 'œwe are all one.'ť

'œIt's important to get outside of yourself every now and then and to remember that throughout the world, there are people who need help and need assistance, so even if you're not able to help monetarily, there may be a way that you can raise awareness and build advocacy in some other way,'ť Burden said.

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Source: News and Tribune