web six

Long before any of them had heard of the worldwide web, six friends—all of them artists & mothers—formed a performance group called “Web Six.” Near the end of their (1984) first show, Elizabeth McCommon sang, “Weaving the Web” a song about connections, relationships, and growth, therein the title. To give you an idea of both their longevity and dark humor, their latest performance (2015) was called “Loose Threads.” 

The six: Pat, the painter/sculptor; Elizabeth, the singer songwriter; Susan, the fabric artist, Diane the photographer; Mary, the poet; Ann the prose writer. The photographer writes and acts, the singer acts, the fabric artist makes videos, the poet paints and sculpts, the writer dances. Fringe & yet essential to the group: Joni painter and patron; Kathy, painter and altar creator; Chris, planner/stage manager.  

These women have shared more that thirty years of making art and indulging in hedonistic potluck suppers. They raised their children together, went on beach trips, road trips, head-trips and observed menopause together. They were there, at the beginning, when Pat began to build her amazing house from a pile of river rocks. They remodeled and rebuilt Ann’s dreary kitchen in her poverty-stricken past. They went to the weddings of the kids-who-wed, and celebrated together the waves of grandbabies. The Web mourned with Pat and Kathy-- most monumental outrage under the heavens—when each lost a child. 

They’ve seen fire, rain, heartbreaks, triumphs, poverty and wealth: the decades slowly made orphans of them all, while they kept on keeping on. Covered dishes and wine after funerals, but also after readings, art openings, baby births, and elections (the selfish, the good, the bad, the best, and the outrageous). A rich, intricate tapestry, woven and rewoven: silver threads and golden needles; women weaving their collective way from cuties to crones. . . .  .  Still Web Six, after all these years.