WATCH PROJECT

In addition to the mural, you will see a smaller installation called the Watch Project.

When AMP founder Ellen Griesedieck asked how she could thank the Sharon Woman’s Club for their volunteer work on AMP, they 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. She received more than ten thousand watches, at a total weight of over a thousand pounds.

The piece took Ellen 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.

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.”