Mother Nurture Art Here at St. Martin’s

May 14-June 20

As part of our theme of healthy soil, healthy plants, and healthy community, Care for God’s Creation has accepted an offer from Arts, Cultures, and Designs of Remediation at UC Davis, a working group of faculty and graduate students from the performing arts, environmental design, and soil sciences.

Their mission is to challenge us to think about how we can remediate and heal our soil, and tell our stories by doing so. They have invited us to display a beautiful and creative art piece named Mother Nurture in our developing garden space outside of the Parish Hall facing Hawthorne Lane. It was recently shown at the International House in Davis and is now at St. Martin’s for a month.

The installation invites individual storytelling and participation from the community. Pieces hung on the structure are all organic and made from Kombucha leather, silk from cocoons, mushrooms, and seaweed. Pieces are dyed from natural materials. People are welcome to touch pieces and be inspired by our own ability to nurture the land we stand on, the air we breathe, and the water that nourishes us. Mother Nurture is very much a social structure because it invites participation. It is made of Kombucha mothers because symbolically we can celebrate all our mothers – human and non-human, and meditate on what it means to cultivate the best mother in ourselves. 

Come add your prayers to Mother Nurture on the chalkboard and add a message of your own about mothering to the art piece itself.

The community is invited to begin growing Kombucha now. In 3 weeks, the mother becomes leather and we will have a “molting” ceremony to replace the existing Kombucha leather on the installation with new pieces. See directions on this website.

Individuals are welcome to start the process if they feel comfortable. Or they can wait for the instruction video, which will be posted May 19, 2021. About 2 weeks from when you start the process, on the weekend of June 5/6 – there will be a Zoom session to harvest the mother for drying and opportunities for participants to write in and share their experiences.

Read more about the art installation here. 

To see the Mother Nurture Art Installation as it was brought and installed at St. Martin’s, view the video below.

To view a Kombucha mother demonstration view the video below.

Ann Liu, Chair of Care for God’s Creation