Janette Gerber
"Shear Joy"
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| (Photos by Cindy Kuo) | |
As I collected photos and articles for this project, I realized that purses have become a status symbol. Prices on websites for the "purse of the week" often start at $2,000-$5,000. “Big”—big house, big car, big ring, big purse. Oh my!
In contrast, while watching BBC News I heard some figures about the cost of the war and the number of starving people in the world, and that it would take just a small portion of war expenditures to feed the world’s hungry. The very next day I received a gift acknowledgment of a 1/3 goat donation in my name, along with some information about the Heiffer Project. I immediately ordered their children’s book, Beatrice’s Goat, that tells about what one goat can do for a village.
As a textile designer and hand weaver, how could I make sense of the dichotomy? Could I use the “big” approach to encourage us to share our abundance? In the 1970s, I hand wove sheep to sell, and I used the same technique to weave my sheep purse. Like goats, live sheep can provide milk, cheese, meat and wool for clothing as well as jobs for the farmer, sheep shearer, wool processor, spinner, weaver and knitter, etc. Yes, small can make a difference; it can grow into something big. Please help yourself to the information about the Heiffer Project and consider bringing, in Heiffer's words, "Shear joy to a family in need."
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