Haiku project hopes to chronicle city's history with clay

on April 05, 2013 at 9:20 AM, updated April 05, 2013 at 4:54 PM

Two women's chance encounter several years ago has given rise to a citywide art project that its creators hope will form a history of the daily lives of Jersey City residents this year.

Caley Vickerman is a Midwest transplant and current Jersey City resident who has experienced a tremendous success with the unlikeliest of hobbies: she walks up the strangers and asks them to write haiku, a Japanese short-form style of poetry, in chalk on public sidewalks.

Ceallaigh Pender, a massage therapist, classically-trained cellist and prolific sculptor with a zeal for clay, grew up in California's Bay Area and has called Jersey City home for the past 3 years.

After becoming acquainted by a mutual friend, this creative duo decided to team up for a unique project they are calling the "Year of the Ku," where they will attempt to capture a year in the life of Jersey City using haiku and clay.

"We are both committed to Jersey City and we wanted to do something to give back to the community," Vickerman said.

Lively and energetic, Vickerman, who goes by the moniker "Haiku Mistress," has a passion for people and haiku. She began her career as a teacher in a rough section of the Bronx.

"Doing work with kids and youth and engaging in larger community issues really lit my fire and it's been really exciting," said Vickerman.

Vickerman always had this idea to have people on streets write haiku on the sidewalks to reflect what was going on in their lives and community.

She decided it was time to give it a shot in November of 2010, and she started the Guerilla Haiku project on the streets of New York. It expanded to more than 40 cities throughout the country, including San Francisco and Atlanta.

The premise is simple. Vickerman assembles local teams to go through different neighborhoods with buckets of chalk and have locals sketch haiku on the sidewalk. She then takes their pictures to keep a log of her project.

When writing haiku, Vickerman encourages participants to write about whatever comes to mind, whether it's something going on in their personal lives or something having to do with their surroundings.

"The point was to have as many interactions with as many different people as possible and challenge them to look at their neighborhood in a different way," Vickerman said.

Equally as enthusiastic, Pender runs her own massage-therapy practice. Her extracurricular activities include playing cello in several local alternative bands and running her clay-centric endeavor called Indelible, which stemmed from a tough time in her life.

Indelible is an interactive social art series where people are given a piece of clay to put their mark on it. There are no rules, except that tools aren't allowed. Pender then takes the clay and fires it.

"The whole idea of the piece is that we as individuals make an indelible mark in our community and in our history," Pender said. "No matter how small or insignificant, we change the world just by interacting.

The "Year of the Ku" project came about after the two discussed potentially collaborating for some sort of artistic endeavor. Equipped with tools and wet clay, the idea is to get Jersey City citizens to engrave haiku in the clay.

The slabs will then be fired to make them permanent before having others write more haiku on the hardened slabs.

"What I find is that people generally haiku about what is going on around them," Pender said. "Some people write haiku on top of others as a retort or wherever there is space."

Vickerman envisions them hitting a wide variety of locations from little league games to PTA meetings to homeless shelters, in order to capture Jersey City's great diversity.

"I want a lot of different perspectives on our community and to have a record of them," Vickerman said.

When the project wraps up at the end of the year, they hope to be able to put the haiku on public display, allowing residents to reflect on the past year.

"We are hoping to work with the city to put it up," Pender said. "We hope to weather-proof it and put it out on a wall in a public space. We are still at the early stages but that is our hope."