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Help create new public art!
As part of SEEK Raleigh, artist Adam Cooley is creating a site-specific art piece titled Boro Fence for Brentwood Park.
You can participate by attending one of three public art workshops:
Foam Stamp Printing Workshop
Saturday, Nov. 14, 9:30am – 12pm
Participants will cut simple shapes from craft foam and mount them to make their own stamps, then print patterns onto cloth with fabric ink.
Register on RecTrac
Wax Resist Batik Workshop
Saturday, Dec. 5, 9:30am – 12pm
Workshop participants will learn batik, a wax resist technique. They'll apply melted wax to cotton cloth, then brush dye over it.
Register on RecTrac
Boro and Sashiko Stitching Workshop
Sunday, Dec. 13, 1 – 3:30pm
Participants will learn boro, the Japanese tradition of mending worn cloth, along with sashiko, a simple running stitch used to reinforce and decorate it.
Register on RecTrac
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About the Artwork
Example of boro and sashiko stitching. Art by Adam Cooley.
Boro Fence extends Adam Cooley's ongoing Boro Land series into a public, participatory form, to be installed at Raleigh's Brentwood Park. Boro is a centuries old Japanese tradition of mending worn cloth so nothing is wasted, an ethic of repair Cooley has spent years translating into layered, community minded textile work. Rather than build a finished piece alone in the studio, Cooley is leading public workshops teaching the history and technique, inviting Raleigh residents to mend and patch their own small pieces of cloth. Those contributions will be combined into three noren style walls, each strung between a pair of trees at separate locations throughout the park. Cut with slits that let wind and visitors pass through, the panels are designed to move and shift rather than stand static, inviting people to walk between them rather than simply look on. Cooley is working into the reclaimed cotton with dye, wax resist, and hand stitched patching, building surfaces that will read differently up close than from a distance, and that will continue to age and change throughout the installation. The work asks viewers to reconsider what gets thrown away and what gets kept, and to see mended, imperfect materials as carrying more value, not less.
About the Artist
Adam Cooley is a Durham-based visual artist whose practice spans textile art, painting, illustration, sculpture, and costume, developed over decades of exhibiting internationally. A self-taught artist working in the outsider tradition, he is known for layered symbolism, folkloric imagery, and technical ambition across materials and scale.