A jumble of people of all ages crowded inside a 30-foot cement square outside the Arts Center at the College of DuPage as they slowly patted dyed sawdust into a spiral at their feet that soon swirled with hundreds of colors and designs.
Students, teachers and community members came together in Glen Ellyn earlier this week to create a “tapate,” the Portuguese word for carpet, to accompany an exhibit of pastel Latin murals by art instructor Jennifer Hereth in the college’s art gallery.
“In Brazil and Guatemala, each neighbor will do the section and pretty soon the entire town is covered. You put the dyed sawdust together so that eventually it gives a feeling as if it were a carpet.
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“It’s usually done as part of a religious procession. It is in existence for the day and then at the end of the day the people process through it and it is destroyed,” Hereth said.
About 40 garbage bags were in a large area outside of the spiral, each filled with a muted shade of red, blue, green, yellow or orange. One class mixed 12 different cans of house paint and water with the sawdust.
“I encouraged them to mix and match as many colors as they could,” Hereth said. “The idea was that at every point have it be an expressive art form. That’s the beauty of folk art. It’s not about perfection, it’s not about someone being better. It’s a public art and everyone is welcome and every part is accepted.”
Some stayed in the abstract form of the stencil, others put in more traditional designs like flowers or stripes.
The experience seemed to touch most in positive way.
“I was brought along by a friend and I didn’t know I had to do anything. And then once we got started, I’ve kind of taken the project away from him it’s so much fun,” said Linda Roberts, 50, a puppeteer from Hinsdale.
“It’s really great to see everybody come together and it’s really quite beautiful,” said Gail Francis, 38, a weaver from Wheaton taking art classes at the college. Francis came to help mix sawdust and stayed for two more hours creating designs. “It’s a really neat creative process. It’s kind of a timelessness type of feeling because you don’t realize how much time as passed. And it’s renewing to me because when you are in this kind of timeless space you forget about everything . . . and you leave ready to take on the world.”
At the scheduled time, in keeping with the tradition, its creators walked through the tapate and it was swept away.