The Berlin Wall

It all started with an old map from The Bright Spot. It was a place designed to pool creative professionals to spur them into profitable businesses. The map was from Berlin Town the city that is now called Kitchener, in Ontario, Canada.

This industrial town is now a town who likes to think of itself as the Silicone Valley of the North. It’s expanding large boxy homes filled with boxes out into the fertile fields. They may not be made with ticky-taky. But they are all looking very much the same. (Song reference)

The plaster wall that I elected to embellish for The B Box is in the eating area near the board room and front entrance way. I am using my original decoupage technique that with a yellowed vintage December 1977 Kitchener Record.

It’s starting to echo the map in lines and streets. As I work, I am thinking about how my Mennonite ancestors would never have spend the time making this wall. Paint it and move on. Yet it is very much like piecing a quilt.

A crazy patch sampler quilt. A style that allowed the quilter to break out of traditional roles and be frugal all at the same time, saving every scrap of family clothing in its design.

Today, this Berlin Wall, has a story of breaking out of factory industrial mindsets, and suggests bringing nature and almost cartoon like suggestions of humour, delight and colour.

My intent is to contribute a Vibe to this old factory room. A buzz that inspires the workers to bring the A into the STEM, to collaborate in respectful ways, to set new destination points on this old map of consciousness.

I must do this for myself first. Allowing the work to transform me as I transform it.