Everything Is Tied To Everything Else

Katherine Ferrier, Everything Is Tied to Everything Else. Cotton, linen, denim, antique handkerchiefs, flour sacks, cyanotypes, indigo, thread. Sky: 13’ x 3’. Kite: 3’x 6’. 2024.

If I must Die
Refaat Alareer

If I must die, 
you must live 
to tell my story 
to sell my things 
to buy a piece of cloth 
and some strings, 
(make it white with a long tail) 
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza 
while looking heaven in the eye 
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— 
and bid no one farewell 
not even to his flesh 
not even to himself— 
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above 
and thinks for a moment an angel is there 
bringing back love 
If I must die 
let it bring hope 
let it be a tale

Refaat Alareer was a beloved Palestinian poet, professor, and activist born in 1979 in Israeli-occupied Gaza. He was killed in Gaza on December 6, 2023 by an Israeli airstrike. 

To date, more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, with thousands still buried under the rubble.

Ceasefire now. End the occupation.

FREE PALESTINE.

Katherine Ferrier is a queer poet, teacher, and multi-disciplinary artist based in Rockland, Maine. Her research grows out of a deep practice of paying poetic attention to the world, and lives in the intersecting communities of movers, makers, writers and activists. She earned her BA in Dance and Women’s Studies from Middlebury College, and her MFA in Performance at Sarah Lawrence.

She is a founding member of The Architects, an improvisation ensemble whose performance history spans nearly 30 years, with whom she still teaches and performs. Her spontaneous typewriter poetry practice has been featured twice in The Knot, and her writing has been featured in Uppercase Magazine, Contact Quarterly, and several poetry anthologies, including A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis, published by Littoral Books, and a self-published collection of photographs and poems about making, called Thread Says Stay. She was the Poet-in-Residence at The Press Hotel from 2018-2021, writing custom poems on the spot for guests on one of her vintage typewriters. 

She has recently shown her work at The Ice House Gallery on North Haven, The Buoy Gallery in Kittery, and Speedwell Projects and Cove Street Arts in Portland. A self-taught quilter, Katherine has improvisationally designed and constructed more than 100 quilts, drawing on her years of study, both formal and independent, of movement, poetics, painting, and architecture. Since 2018, she has been the Director of the Medomak Fiberarts Retreat, a nationally recognized gathering of fiber artists from around the world, where she teaches patchwork, slow stitching, wet felting, and writing for makers.

She believes in patchwork as the radical practice of being patient, saying yes, and making space for everyone at the table.

Website

This project is part of the rotating window gallery solo installations on the occasion of the (stillness) collective’s 534 gallery exhibition.