Young students help weave community art project for Latrobe's 2nd Mister Rogers Family Day
As many as 600 Greater Latrobe elementary students have taken a hand in weaving a rainbow to honor late Latrobe native and iconic children's television host Fred Rogers.
Students and other visitors to the Latrobe Art Center this month have taken turns manning a portable floor loom, adding threads of multicolored yarn to the fabric creation. The wall hanging will be displayed at the center during the second annual Mister Rogers Family Day, set for June 10 in downtown Latrobe.
"Weaving the Community Together" is the name of the project, which will continue until the first week of June.
"It's open to the community," director Gabi Nastuck said. "Anybody who comes to the art center and wants to participate can sit there and do a couple turns on the loom."
She said staff members provide a quick lesson on the basic steps in the weaving process, including use of a shuttle to pass the weft threads through the warp threads.
"We're going with the flow and seeing how big and long it gets," Nastuck said. "You can put in whatever colors you want and be as creative as you want."
For last year's inaugural event, the center organized a large art installation formed with 2,500 puzzle pieces. This year's woven work could stretch as long as 16 feet across the art center's exhibition space.
The project was sparked by friends and fellow weavers Maureen Ceidro of Latrobe, a local hospice counselor who has shown her photography at the art center, and Bobbie Hineline of Southwest Greensburg, who serves as a chaplain at a Greensburg senior home.
Last summer, the pair headed a similar weaving project in Monessen, helping members of a church create a prayer rug.
Hineline loaned her loom for the Latrobe project. She and Ceidro combined efforts to complete the time-consuming initial step — fastening the warp in place on the loom.
Ceidro said the warp in a woven piece usually is one uniform color — red, in this case, in a reference to the color of sweater Rogers often wore on his television show. But the weft features a spectrum of different colors.
"It gives it a symbolic sense of bringing people together," Ceidro said of the project. "You can remain an individual while becoming part of the community."
The participating students similarly "get to become part of a greater whole," she said, following the lead of Rogers, who "would be the one who would pull everyone together."
During a recent field trip to the art center, fourth-graders from Latrobe Elementary School formed into teams to help staffer Janet Mason operate the loom. Chuckie McDowell, 10, got to try out the art form he'd watched his late grandmother use to create bedding. "Pretty amazing," he said.
Jeff Himler is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-836-6622, jhimler@tribweb.com or via Twitter @jhimler_news.
