Last month marked 15 years that John and I have been the executive directors of Patchwork. So much has happened and changed in that time, and yet it’s difficult to believe that we’ve been here for so long! John and I were recently asked how it was that we ended up at Patchwork. Many of you know the story, but many may not.
I first came to Patchwork 27 years ago as a Mennonite Voluntary Service worker. I had recently graduated from college with degrees in English and studio art and I had a vague vision of combining those two things with some place engaged in community building. At Patchwork, I worked primarily in the Arts & Smarts Program under the direction of Jane Vickers. We had many adventures together including an arts-based road trip to the Grand Canyon. While I was here, I enjoyed the way that Patchwork connected to its community and to that community’s stories and the way it used the arts to tell those stories.
John arrived two years after I did. He had also recently graduated from college and had wanted to take a short break from school before getting a seminary degree and becoming an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He worked at Patchwork through AmeriCorps VISTA and was an assistant to Alan Winslow in Alan’s Neighborhood Economic Development Center (NEDC). Before John came, he imagined he would gain some skills related to economic justice that he could use later as a minister. Upon his arrival, he was surprised to find a fuller, deeper experience of people living out their faith and connecting to community in ways that were new and exciting to him. He also found me.
We lived and worked together at Patchwork, becoming friends. After each of our terms of service ended, we left Evansville to do other things. John got his Master of Divinity degree and then pastored a church. I worked for other arts organizations providing art education in out-of-school time and then earned master’s degree in art education, concentrating on arts administration. Somewhere in there, we held what we called a Confluence Ceremony at Patchwork to mark our lives flowing together.
We returned to Patchwork again in 2008, after Judi Jacobson died and left the executive director position open. We were excited to return to this quirky, unique group of people and programming that we loved and hoped to use our skills and experience to help sustain it. We’ve been through a recession and lean times, significant expansion in Patchwork’s programming, deaths, and Patchwork’s current time of relative stability.
In the time we have known it, many things at Patchwork have changed, but I think one thing that remains the same is Patchwork’s connection to the people we’re working to serve and our ability to listen to them, their stories, and their visions. Patchwork also remains a quirky, scrappy place made up of a community of people filling in the gaps left by others, working together to make the world a better place, and examining the place where faith intersects with these things.
John and I look forward to continuing our work here, being part of this incredible place.