Stitching birds
Young artist heals self and others as project takes wing

ALBANY — Emily Rawitsch has a flock of paper cranes hanging in her kitchen. The birds are tiny and perfect, folded of bright paper.

They were made by her mother, Sara, who died just over a year ago, on Christmas Eve, of ovarian cancer.
"She smiled to the last day of her life," said her daughter. "And she made things for people."

Sara Dean Rawitsch, a first-grade teacher who was raised in Altamont, was passionate about making things with her hands. She braided rugs, sewed clothes, quilted coverlets, and wove baskets.

As she battled cancer, she folded paper cranes for people she loved.

Her daughter Emily on Saturday morning, perched on the edge of a couch in her Albany apartment, told the story of the paper cranes, made through origami, the Japanese art of folding paper. A girl who was ill after the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima set out to fold a thousand paper cranes to make herself well again. She died before she finished the task but those she loved finished for her.

Emily Rawitsch has started on a flight of fancy herself. It began with the idea of turning a bra into a bird and, now, after hours of long work, the project is about to take wing.
The 22-year-old artist is creating an installation called "Transcend," which will be exhibited at Pi Naturals in Troy from April 7 to 29. The exhibit is to answer the question, "When you lose someone you love, how do you transcend the pain and celebrate life""

Rawitsch admires the artist Ross Bleckner who lost his lover to AIDS.
"His paintings ask how to mourn; they celebrate and commemorate," she said.

In October, Rawitsch was one of a group of artists asked by Albany to create works about cancer. She was to display art about breast cancer in a storefront.

Rawitsch had already started work when the project was canceled.
"I’m a Type A go-getter," said the slender young woman who moves with quick bird-like motions and talks rapidly, hopping with alacrity from one subject to the next, never lighting too long.
"It’s about healing"

When she was first thinking about breast-cancer art, Rawitsch thought of bras.
"It just came to me...I ran into my bedroom and got one out of my closet," she recalled.

With just two tries, she was able to transforming a bra into a bird. The unhooked back strap became the wings, and the cups, with a tuck or two, sewed together became the body of the bird. No part of the bra was discarded; the hook in back became the hook from which to hang the bird.
"It was like bras were meant to be birds," Rawitsch concluded.
Looking at a bundle of them nesting now in her kitchen, she said fondly, "Some are like baby chicks and others are like flying hens."
Rawitsch sent out a mass e-mail with the subject heading "Request for Bras," describing her project.

The response was astounding.
"I sent it out on a Monday," she said. "Tuesday, I started getting calls from all over."

Women she didn’t know sent bras, some of them with personal stories about themselves or about people they had loved who had survived cancer or who had died from the disease.

So, Rawitsch decided to continue on her own, expanding to include all cancer, not just breast cancer.
"To me, it’s about healing," she said. "The effects are universal....Bras are intimate, just like the experience of cancer. Birds represent being set free, transcending...."
Rawitsch used to worry that people would "be offended that I’m touching bras or using bras." She said, "I want to make sure people get it’s not a silly thing."
She also said, that, after sewing so many hundred bras into birds, "I’m not even fazed by bras. I’ll be sewing on them in a waiting room or announcing in the grocery story, ‘I got five more bras.’"

Opening day

Rawitsch’s exhibit has expanded from the original storefront as the bras keep on coming. She plans to accept as many as are donated. The one-time e-mail has taken on a life of its own as recipients copy it and share it with friends.

Rawitsch’s small Albany apartment is filled with hundreds of bras — some of them already transformed into birds.

On Saturday, she opened a box that has just arrived from Cincinnati, Ohio, packed with bras.
The bras arrive in bursts from new places. "People talk to their friends," Rawitsch said. "When it hit Missouri, for a week, I was getting all these bras from Missouri."

She’s gotten bras, so far, from 21 states and two foreign countries — one from England and one from Germany.
"Most of them are from people I do not know," she said. "They are all strangers."

Some of them are fancy white lacy bras bought for a wedding day; others are sexy with leopard spots or black lace; still others are utilitarian plain white; while others are flowered or dotted.

They will be displayed in an exhibit which opens Friday, April 7, at Pi Naturals, Inc. in Troy in the shop’s gallery-style space.

Her friend, Josh McIntosh, who designs sets for theaters in New York City and television shows like Law and Order has volunteered to construct a scaffolding that will display the soaring birds.
"His mom is a breast-cancer survivor," Rawitsch said.

Rawitsch applied for and received a small grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts, which will pay for the structural material, she said.
"My vision is the birds will start in a cluster to transcend out to the ceiling," she said. "I want them to be set free."

April 7 will be filled with events to raise awareness about cancer. Bellevue Woman’s Hospital is supplying a mobile mammography van from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at no or low cost to women who qualify. Appointments should be made in advance by calling 1-888-423-36.

An information tent will be set up, filled with booths staffed by local cancer-awareness organizations. Rawitsch secured the 20-by-80-foot tent in case of rain.
"It’s going to be like a festival. The street will be shut down," she said of the block at 2217 Fifth Avenue in Troy.

Rawitsch even got the churches on the street to donate their parking spaces for the event.
"Everything’s been donated," she said. "I’m focusing on the healing. The other groups can speak for themselves as to what they can offer."

The installation’s unveiling will take place at 5:30 and run till 9 p.m. A $10 donation is suggested. The money will be given to Gilda’s Club of the Capital Region, which offers support for those living with cancer, and for their friends and families. E. Stewart Jones, the Troy law firm, will match up to $5,000, she said.

Rawitsch, who anticipates the event will draw 700 to 1,000 people, has put it all together herself.

All she’s still looking for are volunteers to help on the day of the opening — setting up, welcoming people, and cleaning up.
"This project is using everything I’ve learned in 22 years of life," said Rawitsch.
"I came from a creative family," she said. "My mom and dad both taught first grade."

Her sister, Elizabeth, was editor at the Guilderland High School Journal and lives now in New Hampshire, where she works editing.
Elizabeth Rawitsch is folding 1,000 paper cranes for the April 7 opening "for people to take in memory of Mom," said Rawitsch.
"My mother was an incredible sewer, quilter, basket weaver. I’ve been sewing since I was five," said Rawitsch. "I made clothes for my dolls as a kid and made my own clothes in high school."

Like her mother, she was a Guilderland High School graduate.

After graduating in 2001, she started her college education at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and graduated from The College of Saint Rose in 2005 with a bachelor of fine arts degree in graphic design.

She works now as a graphic designer at Spiral Design Studio in Albany.
"My mom passed away when I was still in college," she said. "I’m glad I got to be here to spend two years with her."
In putting together the opening day for "Transcend," Rawitsch has used the leadership skills she honed as her class president in high school and since in roles such as being on the board of directors of the Troy-Cohoes YWCA.

She has used the organizational and networking skills she’s developed at her current job for Spiral.

Rawitsch has also used her moxie. She describes, for example, asking the owner of a local liquor store, Capital Wine, for 50 cases of wine.
"He said, ‘Are you nuts"’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘That’s a lot of wine.’"

After she explained her project, the store owner contacted a supplier in California, Barefoot Cellars of Modesto, which made the donation.
"I’ve really been wracking up all my contacts," she said. "I’m not afraid to hear no."
She explains the outpouring of support by saying, "Curses can be blessings. I have not met someone yet who has not been affected by cancer...Cancer leaves you feeling helpless...I’m giving people something to do."
Reviving "a lost art"

The project has taken up all of her spare time for months, but Rawitsch has no regrets.
"I’m getting a lot of satisfaction out of doing this, out of helping other people," she said.
"Some of these bras come with handwritten letters, two or three pages long," she said. "These women tell me their stories. Sometimes there’s a note, and I tuck those inside and sew them in."
Her artist’s statement for the installation says, "I transform each bra into a bird to symbolize rising above and being set free. I place the name of the person being commemorated inside as a private homage."
Reading some of the letters or taking phone calls from some of the bra donors, Rawitsch said, "It’s emotional....there are times I would break down in tears."
Recalling one telephone call from a stranger, she said, "One woman called to say her sister was just diagnosed with cancer. Her birthday was coming up and things were not looking too promising. For her birthday, they gave her a bra to send into this installation as a gift....
"I got another call from a woman who was just diagnosed and she said, ‘I hope I can come to your opening. I might not make it that long.’
"I really didn’t anticipate this when I sent the e-mail."

Rawitsch feels a personal connection to the women whose bras she is transforming.
"In the beginning, I was stubborn. I wanted to sew them all myself, every single one."

But now she has friends helping her. An accomplished seamstress, Rawitsch can sew a bra into a bird in about three-quarters of an hour. Her friends take longer.
"My mom was always a part of sewing circles," she said. "It’s kind of a lost art. It’s been great having my friends help. We’re sitting here in my apartment," she said, gesturing to the white-walled space filled with modern art and clean-lined furniture, "sewing, talking about intimate things...There’s something really powerful and meditative about the process."

Her mother, she said, used to say that sewing was her religion so Rawitsch feels she’s connecting to her when she’s sewing for this project.

Spiraling dream

Rawitsch’s dream is to take her birds on the road, much the way the AIDS quilt travels from city to city, raising awareness, offering healing and hope.
"I could see this as a project that, every time it’s shown, it’s larger and larger. It could turn into a full-time job," she said, stressing this is a dream and she’s very pleased with her current work and the support Spiral has given to her project — including setting up a website: www.brabirds.org.

Her father, Peter Rawitsch, helped her put together packets to send to celebrities, like Oprah Winfrey.
"I need to find someone to fund the project — a company or a celebrity," she said of making the installation national.

Rawitsch has applied for a copyright on the bra birds to protect herself as an artist.
"I went into this hoping not to lose too much money; I’ve never had a goal to make money off of this, and I don’t want anyone else to use it that way," she said.
Asked what she thought her mother would think of her project, Rawitsch said, "I’m sure she’d be so proud."
Her eyes filled with tears as she answered and, ever the organizer, she said, "I’m planning on having boxes of Kleenexes at the show....This is like art therapy...."
Then she went on, completing her answer to the question, "People don’t know how to open up. They’re scared. I’m finally okay talking about the emotional side of it....Everything I’m doing is in the spirit of my mom. Everything she did was so positive...I’m like my mother; I’m not afraid to talk from the bottom of my heart."