During the Wiscasset Art Walk 2019 season, locals and visitors from away – from far away – took part in a community weaving project.  The result of that project, a wall-sized woven tapestry, is now on view at the Wiscasset Community Center, 242 Gardiner Rd. You can’t miss it. As you walk in the door, it’s hung in the entry area near tables and chairs where people eat, visit, and settle in with their laptops.

According to Community Center interim director Duane Goud, he knows a lot about the tapestry after watching the recent Selectboard meeting on You Tube at which the weaving project was recapped and displayed for Selectboard members. When asked to host it at the Recreation Center, Duane immediately found a place to display the art piece because, he said, it represents a community-wide effort. 

More than 100 ‘guest artists’ participated in braiding strands of colorful materials and then adding them to the wall piece. The Town of Wiscasset provided the orange barrier fencing for the background structure and various crafters and local businesses donated the colorful fabrics, ribbons, and assorted doo-dads for the braiding.  Guest artists came from Wiscasset and neighboring towns, the New England region, more distant states like Florida, Colorado, and California, and from even more distant places like Mexico, Canada, UK, and Germany.

The community tapestry will be making additional guest appearances throughout the community in the coming months with invitations from the Wiscasset Public Library, the Wiscasset Congregational Church, and the Wiscasset Middle High School. Notices in the local papers and elsewhere will announce the new locations for this fanciful display of a community working together to create something fascinating and meaningful.