The ties that bind: “(we) keep going” by Tomo Mori
On connection and reconnection
Hello friend,
Looking back over the past few weeks, I’m marveling at what a season it’s been for reconnection, often unexpected ones. There was a group lunch where, in talking to the woman across the table, I realized that we had met at an artist residency in Maine more than 30 years ago! Then there’s my wonderful friend Mary Sue, who I knew from my Harvard Divinity School days. Unbeknownst to us, we had gone on to take the same spiritual direction program many years later, and showed up in an alumni gathering over zoom. And just last weekend, Mark and I hosted my dear friends Lucie and Dan at our home. Lucie and I had met in the 1990s at Ragdale, an artist residency north of Chicago, and had hit it off immediately. Over the next three (!!) decades, we’ve kept in sporadic touch, each time falling right back into the deep groove of our friendship.
Each of these wonderful reconnections was marked by a kind of delightful ease. Curiosity about each other’s lives blossomed into deeper conversations. We talked about creative challenges, spiritual challenges, health challenges…the importance of community, about wanting more and wanting nothing else, about the limitations of aging and the freedom of giving fewer f*cks. In other words, the threads of these friendships are bright and strong, despite the years and intermittent communication. Have you experienced something similar? As I get older, this ease is the hallmark of the kind of relationships that nourish me—it’s like a cool, misty fog on a summer morning. Unexpected yet also comforting to be in that soft haze, where the world’s wonder is both undelineated and familiar.
The clamor of our daily lives sometimes makes it hard to discern these threads, but reconnecting in these serendipitous ways reminds me that they are always there. As close as someone seated across the table, as easy as a thought turned into a note and hitting “send.”
This week I’m excited to explore a piece by Tomo Mori, who incorporates her relationships and her community through the ropes she turns into art.
Wishing you the beauty of connections that transcend time,
xxKatarina
In case you missed it:
Invitation 10: “Winter Light” by Mary Temple (public post)
Invitation 14: “Piñatas of Earthly Delights” by Roberto Benavidez (public post)
Invitation 15: "Silver Crown with Phoenix Tree Flower, Phoenix and Bird Designs,” from the Miao (Hmong) ethnic group
Invitation 16: “Cup with calligraphic inscriptions,” from Uzbekistan
Invitation 17: Tête du chien “Bob” by Édouard Manet
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Invitation 18: “(we) keep going” by Tomo Mori
Over the past couple of months, I’ve found my mind returning to Tomo Mori’s work. I’d see a post on Instagram then later find myself thinking about the strange and beautiful cords that snake over each other to form large installations. I was struck by how she uses clothing donated by friends and family to make her sculptures and paintings; how these relationships are embedded in her work. Indeed, her work cannot exist without them. In bringing these different people together, she is also talking about her own multicultural experience as a NYC-based artist who was born in Japan.
To create these long, colorful ropes, Tomo painstakingly hand weaves the fabric together. She describes her process as “a meditative ritual…handweaving hope for progress and peace into the ropes.” I imagine this is not an easy process. Ropemaking is, in essence, a conjoining of two opposing forces so that the resulting unity is stronger than the individual strands. In that way, Tomo’s artmaking is part defiance and part optimism, seeking to move beyond survival to the joy of living. I was also fascinated to learn that Tomo's grandmother's family were ropemakers and owned a business in Japan, a fact Tomo only learned after she began ropemaking herself. This connection is a mystery, yet somehow seems inevitable—in this long rope that reaches back at least three generations, Tomo is now extending it into the future.
This particular piece, “(we) keep going,” is a site specific installation in a building in the South Street Seaport district in Lower Manhattan. It is a kind of communion of different ropes, each a different color and thickness, and feels as if they are uncoiling across the floor, connecting with the history of this important area where in the 1600s, it was a port for the Dutch West India Company. Here, items from across the world would be brought in, sold, and disseminated to other places. This southern tip of Manhattan was an important hub to global mercantile connection. As Tomo’s ropes drape over and through a structure that was used to tie ships to the dock, the installation becomes a literal anchor to her vision of an interdependent, vibrant community, one that is stronger by coming together.
Aptly called “(we) keep going,” the installation celebrates the intricacy, resilience, and interconnectivity of people, cultures, and communities. It is also an exhortation towards progress…keep going! A reminder that community is something we do together, stronger in our unity than in isolation.
To learn more about Tomo Mori’s work, please visit tomomoriart.com. Tomo will participate in The Children's Art Carnival’s Open Studio (3rd floor) on Saturday, June 28, 1-5pm. Her work will be in the “I Got Rhythm” exhibition, as part of Upstate Art Weekend at The Gallery@107, 107 Henry Street, Kingston, NY, July 18 to November 2; and at the Judy Ferrara Gallery in Three Oaks, MI, opening on July 19.
This week’s invitation:
What are your most important ties and how do they reveal themselves? Are there any ropes that need to be released, others that need to be wound tighter? Take a few minutes to write your thoughts or turn them into some other form of expression. I invite you to share what came up for you in the comments section as a way for us all to be together.
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Oh, Ragdale! I love that place :) It was so cool to be at a residency with artists across so many disciplines. Beautiful images and reflections on Tomo Mori. Something about textiles always gets to me--maybe it's that sense of wanting to touch something, and the thickness and texture of fabric. Thanks for sharing this, Katarina.