Pop-up labyrinth unveiled in Graton Town Square
West County creatives collaborate to build eco-art and foster community
On Saturday, July 26, locals gathered in Graton Town Square to attend the unveiling of the Re-Storyation Labyrinth, the first of five community art pop-ups at the square.
The project, co-led by Cristina Valverde and Cory Brown of Occidental, took a month of planning and a week of hard work from local volunteers to complete. It was funded by a grant from Creative Sonoma and District Five with the help of Graton nonprofit Re/Village Green Valley.
Construction of the labyrinth began with on-site logging in a forest in Green Valley on Monday and Tuesday. A lumber drop-off in Graton followed on Wednesday, and construction of the three-circuit labyrinth, using harvested logs and poles, took place Thursday and Friday.
The project ended with a well-attended presentation of the labyrinth on Saturday evening, preceding the community Summer BBQ and Lawn Chair Cinema event.
Graton Town Square, located at 9155 Graton Road, is itself an ongoing civic project. It occupies the last empty lot in downtown Graton and was purchased Feb. 1, 2024, by the Graton Community Services District, using funds allocated by Sonoma County. In the ensuing 18 months, the empty lot has been cleared and made ready for public use.
Matt Jorgensen, founder of Re/Village Green Valley, was the point man for the Graton Town Square project, and he also collaborated in the creation of the Re-Storyation Labyrinth. Re/Village Green Valley hosts the art pop-ups in the town square through its grant-funded Museum of the Future, which is housed onsite in a shipping container-cum-art studio donated by local artist JunJun Lee. Among other things, the Museum seeks to engage the local community in thinking seven generations back and seven generations forward as it navigates and builds its future.
Jorgensen previously worked with land-trust co-ops and organized food and economic justice movements in Oakland. He has found a renewed sense of purpose and belonging since moving to Graton three years ago. He says it’s easier and more possible, in this time of increased social isolation due to cell phones and interactive online media, to re-localize and have deeper relationships in a smaller community—especially one he and his wife intend to raise a family in.
“We used to be members of churches,” he said. “We used to do barn raisings. We used to invest in civic things like the grange halls, and increasingly, people don’t,” he said.
Re/Village Green Valley is, in his words, about “rebuilding commons, nurturing shared culture and investing in thriving local economy.” Paralleling a resurgent interest in bioregionalism, the nonprofit also focuses on strengthening the Green Valley/Atascadero watershed, which runs from Sebastopol to Forestville to the border of Occidental, with Graton at its center.
Mirroring that same sensibility, “The Re-Storyation Labyrinth is a project that is aiming to creatively direct restoration work and bring the community together through collaborative projects,” Cristina Valverde said.
She and Cory Brown began the labyrinth project a month ago on the heels of another intentional art project, Landscape Shapes Mindscape, in which they—with the help of friends and volunteers—harvested lumber during forest remediation and built a visually striking 25-foot-tall “head house” sculpture with it. Both projects are constructed out of forestry restoration materials gleaned from the 150-acre piece of land Valverde and Brown live on in Occidental. The “head house” sculpture, which contains a Tiny Art Gallery exhibit inside it, resides on that land.
Cory Brown explained that the projects constitute an effort to creatively turn excess biomass from forest remediation into something beneficial.
“If we can send resources to do forestry work that then brings that into a community art experience, that seems kind of like a win-win,” he said.
Valverde added, “There’s a great desire that people have to have access to land and to work on land. And that is something that we experience often when people come out to visit where we live in the forest. There’s always so much of an elated experience just to be outside.” Simple tasks, such as helping to thin the forest with pruners, make the experience that much more meaningful for visitors.
The labyrinth unveiling
Twelve children and roughly 60 adults attended the Saturday evening unveiling of the Labyrinth. The 16 volunteers who worked to bring the project to fruition were honored during the ceremony, and the underlying meanings of the project were explained. Then the Labyrinth was “activated” as attendees navigated the spiral path to the small Zen sand garden at its center and back out.
“People were moved, delighted, grateful, for the story behind it and the final creation,” Valverde said. And the kids loved it, as did the volunteers, who found extra meaning in having participated in the project.
Volunteer Hannah Horowitz, a recent transplant to West County, said, “The main thing, I think, is that bioregional hubs of connection that involve community and art and other projects and spaces to come together are increasingly needed. I know of almost no better way to bring people together into coherence and a shared vision and community over the longer term.”
Volunteer Cole Rosner of Occidental said, “I feel about Graton Town Square the way I feel about the communities I co-steward with Cristina and Cory—there’s this general desire to be in intentional action for the world and also be playful and simple and connected to nature.”
Additional upcoming pop-up art events planned for the Graton Town Square by Re/Village Green Valley’s Museum of the Future include a participatory mural day, an interactive sound or light installation, a guided storytelling experience or poetry activation, and a pop-up art studio with community-made creations.
Learn more about these projects at www.revillage.earth, mindscapesculpture.com, www.graton.org.
Speaking of labyrinths…
Sebastopol is about to re-install its teen labyrinth, which was dismantled in 2023. Councilmember Sandra Maurer wrote the Sebastopol Times: “We set a date for restoring the Teen Memorial Labyrinth in Sebastopol. It will be Saturday, Sept. 20, at 10 am behind the ball field near the Sebastopol Community Center. We are gathering 40 volunteers to set the stones in place. I’m told it may take 1 hour more or less to build it, and this will be followed by a dedication.” If you are interested in volunteering for this project, contact smaurer@cityofsebastopol.gov.
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What a difference from a Graton of 1955