GFWC Watch Project

When Ellen asked how she could thank the Sharon Woman’s Club for their volunteer work on AMP, Judy Albright suggested a project involving watches as a symbol of the hours people give without pay. In 2010, Ellen asked for donations of watches from the General Federation of Women’s Clubs across the country, as part of their Arts Partnership Community Service Program. Little did she know how enthusiastic the response would be. 

Over the course of several years, she received more than ten thousand watches, at a total weight of over a thousand pounds. The piece took her a few months to create, as she positioned the watches face up on twenty-eight yards of aluminum wire mesh cut into sections, affixing the watches to the mesh with a total of nineteen gallons of polymer. Finally, John Jacquier, Don Breslauer, and Justin Truskauskas—also volunteering their time—helped her install the piece at the mill.    

Ellen said, “I have to be honest and describe this as one of the most tedious creative pieces I have ever done. Yet every time I put my knee pads on and started pulling watches out of the massive piles, finding a perfect fit, a sweet juxtaposition, there was this momentary sense of accomplishment. Every watch belonged to a person who gave their time to help someone else. And every night when I got up to leave the studio, the pile of completed watches growing, I thought of the cumulative effect of all that help. At heart, we’re still a country of people who want to give back. I hope AMP will tell those stories, which don’t always make the front page.”