What began as a poem dedicated to my mother, turned into a movement for all our mothers and our foremothers.

WASH! honors the contribution women have made by emphasizing the oral histories of women the role they played down at the riverbank and in their backyards, at the communal wash houses and in their neighborhood laundromats. It is a grounding metaphor that celebrates collective consciousness of women.

Since the beginning of time, women have gone down to the river bank and out to the back yard, washing their clothes, hanging their laundry, trading stories and support and sharing their wisdom. Working side by side in a stream of laughter, tears and words, mothers and daughters, sisters and friends have been coming clean, conversing about life and what it means to be human and feminine.

WASH! is a multi-layered conversation and large-scale, participatory art project and platform for social change through which the collective contribution of our mothers and foremothers at the washline is recounted, fully experienced and amplified in order to make a difference.

WASH! provides the conduit or holding space for deep and meaningful conversations about community, connection and the importance of caring for each other through the socio-historic lens of the washline and the metaphor of wash.

WASH! explores the rich oral history and story traditions created by our mothers and foremothers as, day after day, they took on the family laundry and tended to the business of creating and keeping alive the community.

This website serves to connect the community to WASH! by creating a repository of stories, images, programs and social commentary to drive the conversation and by providing a virtual washline for washerwomen everywhere.