Makers’ Stories | Next Steps to Address Climate Change | Bring The Tempestry Project to Your Community
The Tempestry Project brings together personal and collaborative fiber art, environmental awareness, and climate activism. This vibrant work uses colored yarns to represent data reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Members and friends of the Knit Wits and the Craftivists – two of the arts ministries of North Decatur Presbyterian Church in Decatur, Georgia – have created temperature panels documenting climate change in years that have special meaning for our community and for the artists personally.
Tempestry panels are created with 365 rows of yarn to represent one year in Atlanta. Each row shows the daily temperature in a specific yarn color. Not only do these panels display climate data, they map the motion of our hands, and the touchstones of our lives. The century spools out, like our stories.
Click the names below for each maker’s reflection about their featured year.
1930 – Alice Hickcox
-the first year ATL airport weather data was available
1955 – Kent Leslie
-the founding year of North Decatur Presbyterian Church
1965 – Betsy Witte
-the birth year of her daughter, Ellen
1975 – Gail Perkins
-a year of special Camden, SC memories
1983 – Marcia Morley
-marking the year Southern and Northern Presbyterian denominations reunited
1985 – Alice Hickcox
-shared the work with Linda Curry
1995 – Gail Brown
-the birth year of her daughter, Hannah
2005 – Cheryl Parlato
-marking Hurricane Katrina and Cheryl’s work in the affected area
2015 – Sherrill Terry
-recreated by Betsy Witte after panel was mangled in a car wreck
2019 – Carol Bartlett
-most current data available at the time
1895-2020 – Alice Hickcox
-The New Normal, reporting 125 years of Georgia’s climate
Next Steps to Address Climate Change
Implement Creation care initiatives with guidance from Georgia Interfaith Power and Light; their good work includes blogposts offering specific actions for practical change
Consider how you can adapt to and mitigate the ways in which climate change is making an impact: listen to the Political Rewind with Bill Nigut conversation with David Pogue
Learn more about creative arts-based responses to climate change like this one: Putting Green, a Brooklyn, NY mini-golf course that showcases problems and solutions to climate change issues
Explore dozens of ideas at 101 Ways to Fight Climate Change
Bring The Tempestry Project to Your Community
Beginning in 2022, this exhibit will be available for loan to Georgia venues that wish to bring attention to climate change through this visual display. For more information, please contact us at [email protected]
Visit the original Tempestry Project website