AR:T ROUTE BLUE may be about art, but it is about art and more. Although to my head art is everything. In times of peace, and bounty, art can take place. When we live from a lack of struggling to survive great art can be created. It is the art that is created in times of strife and struggle that sings with our stories. The pieces of thread, glass, the carved wood and pounded metal, that live in between the places that are most valuable. The stories that mark graves and great triumph, or the whispers of wool on a patio to sooth a anxious child, wrapped up in a knitted poncho.

Our hands are the weapons of peace by piece, row by row, while we count our blessings.

Culture is what we do to define our stories. Art is the thread in the layers that show us that we too are connected like the trees. Some of us sturdy oaks, and some of us willows, bending like whispers in the sun.

Each of us has a thread, each of us a community, each of us a region, each of us a county, each of us one planet…so really we really are just one huge soft poncho of many coloured threads….lovingly knitted on a sunny deck in paradise.

BY Michelle Loughery