Creative Community Collaborations are

CAT Scratch Studios

COMMITMENT, PASSION, CONNECTIONS

Lead, SD | Dancing Bees Mural 2022

This mural project provided accessible arts engagements in the community. We utilized a multi-tiered approach to engage with and offer connections as we completed the public artwork. This mural is located at Christ Church Episcopal in Lead, SD. The imagery includes bees, the hive, flowers and a poem from Emily Dickinson, “To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee. And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.”

The work included education, creativity and connections with a cross curricular, art mini-lesson for the Boys and Girls Club youth in Lead. We developed an art and science lesson teaching about bees, what they do, their work as pollinators, a variety of healthy aspects of honey and more. Children created their own unique artworks. From those finished works, we chose several using a formal critique process based on the principles and elements of art. Those works then became two additional public art projects for the town, wrapping utility boxes. Those pieces are located at the Handley Recreation Center and Manuel Brothers Park. The team of co-creators, Amme Deibert, Kiah Crowley, Eric Jones and Cary A. Thrall, offered the mini-lesson and completed the mural, modeling how to work with a generative focus. For the team, this project was an opportunity to continue connecting within Lead, Deadwood and Lawrence County to help people learn and intersect in a communal way through creatively driven and focused events. A goal each member of our team continuously strives for is to be creative placemakers who can help bridge the gap in developing and strengthening relationships and partnerships amongst artists, creatives and community members. This work will continue major creative shifts in Lead and the region with purpose. By connecting to and developing a stronger network of invested community members who care about our youth and enjoy an outdoor, open creative atmosphere with artists makes space for powerful conversations and the development of new ideas. Inherently, the learning embedded in our project fostered community growth. The sessions provided multiple spaces for community members of all ages to connect with new people, experiences and ways of thinking.

Linking Fences: Community Unity 2017-Current

Engaging community participants through the Linking Fences project has beautified six South Dakota towns. We build relationships and trust, forge partnerships to create more art and teach the processes of developing vision. Cary designed, managed, taught and connected diverse community groups in 2017 and 2018 on her own. In 2019, she was afforded an opportunity to develop a team of artist assistants from across the state who traveled with her to teach and install. This work expanded to include 6 additional installations in 2020 and 2 more in 2021. She and her team have completed 13 installations in 6 different communities in the Black Hills and Central South Dakota regions over the years, connecting with countless friends.

The creative processes for the project have remained the same each year and engage community throughout the process. CAT Scratch Studios co-hosts multiple touchpoints to design, prepare for and install artworks with diverse groups in community. By co-hosting events, each organization is included in the creative process. Cary begins by teaching mini-lessons participants leave with a finished artwork that visually connects to the larger final artwork. She also teaches preparation sessions and invites locals to help with install.

Each site celebrates the public artwork with a community party. In extending the work to multiple locations, cross pollinating the processes and executing the final designs we demonstrated that people of multiple communities are also united through art. Developing a sense of pride in place and a job well done foster a supportive environment. People who are better supported are more vital. Working together towards a common goal builds long-lasting relationships and strong networks. Those connections are nourishing.

This project began with a Community Innovation grant from the Bush Foundation in 2016 and a call for artists from the Spearfish Matthews Opera house that Cary responded to with her proposal in 2017. Thrall continued working with the name Linking Fences in 2018 in her hometown of Lead, SD. That year the entire project was funded by local sponsors who believe in making art matter. In 2019, through her work with the Change Network, generously funded by the Bush Foundation, and additional funding from the Matthews Opera House continued support and funding from the initial 2016 Bush Foundation Community Innovation grant, she was able to dream bigger and connect more folks to one another and to the events and artworks. The team completed three artworks that connected three different communities through a visual story that wove the Black Hills and Missouri River landscapes together.

Linking Fences is a passion for Thrall. It aligns to her creative community goals and has endless possibilities. Cary works with communities again and again. The team completed their 4th public art installation in Lead and their 2nd in Lower Brule in the 2020 season. In 2021, she was back in Lead for another installation and added the community of Gregory, SD as well. The Creative Explorations Nonprofit Organization has taken over this project as one of its Initiatives in 2023. To learn more about this nonprofit, please visit https://www.creative-explorations.org

Lead’s Legendary Haunted Tour: Halloween 2017

The Haunted Tour was the final event that occurred over the course of Halloween weekend. The build-up to it involved collaborative projects and other local events with several individuals, community groups and local establishments.

The high school sculpture students helped in a prop-making event. They were keen to participate in the project; fully engaging in the creative processes. For the lessons, Cary introduced the Legendary Haunted Tour Project and invited students to participate in the tour. Then, they learned basic and advanced sculptural techniques to make paper mache spider egg sacks and created life-size, spider web wrapped human bodies made with chicken wire and Halloween decorative webbing.

At the “Get Plastered” events, locals gathered to share a beverage or snack with family and old friends and made new friends too. They plastered an arm, leg, hand and even their ear or nose. The casts were used to make silicone body part castings as props in the tour. Many who were at the prop making events worked to make the haunted experience or played various roles in a scripted tour.

This project included a script written by theater professional, Merlyn Sell. The two collaborated to develop a twisted plot based on an elusive and unknown “dark matter” that haunted the Homestake Gold Mine and the miners working there for the event. The Sanford Lab, studying actual dark matter, sponsored the event and collaborated on the script as well. Locals, actors, Boys and Girls Club youth and Lead High School students all volunteered to be in the tour for Halloween that year. This was not only creative for the community but a successful fundraising event for two non-profits in Lead, SD.

Boys and Girls Club Mural Project: 2016

This project entailed working with the Boys and Girls Club of the Black Hills kids on several occasions. Over 80 children were involved in this start to finish ranging in age from 5-18. Cary began with the whole group for the goals of this straightforward project. The youth individually drew an image of themselves doing something active. Then, in six small, flexible groups they voted to work on one of those drawings together to make them better. The next time they met, children re-drew that selected image. Over the next few weeks, Thrall drew the images each group designed on an external wall outside the Boys and Girls Club. Next, they began painting. Children helped throughout the summer to complete this six panel mural, which was a continuation of one done the previous year with another artist.