Public Commissions
Connections (featuring Growth)
National Scrollathon: Virginia
2025
Commissioned by: Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia
Medium: Fiber, rubber bands, pins, ink, glue, wood, paint
Dimensions: 60 × 36 × 1 in. (Growth, Collaborative Masterwork); Signature Plate, 8 ½ × 11 in.
Photograph: Courtesy of the artists
Created in: Roanoke, Virginia
Artists’ Registration Numbers:
Collaborative Masterworks (Growth): 2025.057.001–2025.057.016
Mini Portrait Mural: 2025.058.001
Signature Sheet: 2025.059.001
Portrait Mural: 2025.060.001
Exhibition History: Connections: National Scrollathon Virginia, Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia, 2025. Coordinated by Cindy Petersen, and Katrina King-Singh
Connections represents the culmination of that shared vision, a project that unites friendship, advocacy, and art. Commissioned by the Taubman Museum of Art, it marks Virginia’s contribution to America’s Cultural Project, part of the National Scrollathon initiative that brings people together across the country through collaborative artmaking. Installed in the museum’s vast glass atrium, a space traditionally reserved for large-scale suspended artworks, Connections reimagines the Scrollathon as a fully spatial, multidimensional environment.
Commission Overview
The Taubman Museum of Art commission grew from a relationship more than fifteen years in the making. Joanne Cassullo, a visionary supporter of the museum and a dear friend, was first introduced to our work in 2007 through Beth Rudin DeWoody. Since that time, Joanne has been our steadfast advocate, championing not only our studio practice but also our commitment to community engagement. For years, she envisioned bringing Scrollathon to the Roanoke community, believing deeply in the program’s ability to inspire connection and creativity.
Rather than presenting a single wall-based piece, we worked with the team at the museum to create a sweeping installation composed of more than 200 Scrollathon maquettes gathered from across the National Scrollathon, suspended alongside Growth, the newly created Collaborative Masterwork representing Virginia. From certain perspectives, the work appears as a single, continuous field; from others, it reveals five double-sided layers, allowing light to flow through and transforming as viewers move beneath it. The result is both monumental and intimate, a sky of shared stories hovering above Roanoke.
The completed installation brought Growth together with more than 200 maquettes from Scrollathons across the country, forming a vast, double-sided canopy suspended in five layers. As light moves through the work, its surfaces shift continuously, appearing as a unified field from afar and revealing intricate detail up close. Every scroll, every hue, contributes to an atmosphere of levity and depth, a suspended portrait of collective making.
The structure of the work reflects the guiding philosophy of Scrollathon itself: that collaboration is a form of art, and that when many hands come together, they can create something far larger, more luminous, and more lasting than any one alone.
Artistic Approach
Working within the museum’s dramatic glass atrium, we approached Connections as both sculpture and suspended tapestry, a living architecture of memory and evolution. Each of the 80 Virginia participants created a personal scroll from textile trimmings, wound around a wooden dowel and customized to represent their individual story. These scrolls were gathered together with those made by other members of their community, and filled in with scrolls lovingly contributed by our parents. The resulting trays formed the landscape Growth, which entered the Taubman Museum’s permanent collection.
But because the museum envisioned an installation that would fill the atrium, the project expanded in unexpected and thrilling ways. During a series of Zoom conversations, curators remarked on the hundreds of maquettes visible on the walls of the our studio. Cindy Petersen paused mid-call and asked, “Are all of those available too?” That question sparked a transformation.
Engagement and Impact
The Virginia Scrollathon sessions brought together a vibrant cross-section of Roanoke’s community—children from the museum’s Spring Mini Camp, artists from the VIA Centers for Neurodevelopment, and members of the museum’s staff, volunteers, and board of trustees. Over two days, participants rolled scrolls, shared stories, and reflected on what they wanted the 250th birthday of our country to mean to them.
Context and Legacy
Connections, with Growth at its heart, joins the growing constellation of National Scrollathon artworks that will culminate in 2026 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Each state’s Collaborative Masterwork forms part of this nationwide exhibition commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United States. Together, these works form a collective portrait of the nation—thousands of scrolls, thousands of voices—celebrating unity through art, friendship, and shared creativity.
When the installation was unveiled, Connections transformed the museum’s atrium into a place of upward movement and wonder. Visitors looked skyward to find hundreds of hand-made elements suspended in quiet harmony, an invitation to see collaboration as something luminous, expansive, and alive.
For us, it was also deeply personal: the realization of a long-held dream shared with Joanne Cassullo, whose faith in art’s power to build community has inspired our practice for nearly two decades.
Community Groups
Arts Connects Neighbors Artists; Taubman Museum of Art Spring Mini Camp Participants; Taubman Museum of Art Staff and Board of Trustees; Taubman Museum of Art Volunteers; VIA Centers for Neurodevelopment Club & Hub
Special Thanks
Joanne Cassullo, Cindy Petersen, Katrina King-Singh, and the team at the Taubman Museum of Art
Acknowledgments
The Scrollathon team; National Scrollathon Interns and Fellows; Timothy Lewis and Babette Husson; Charles and Barbara Ladd; Mari and Gary Teeter; Claude and Gina Falcone Skelton; Eric Ladd; and the team at Lowenstein Sandler LLP
Sponsors
Made possible through the generous support of The Dorothea Leonhardt Foundation, Inc.; Taubman Museum of Art; Virginia Commission for the Arts; and additional support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services via the Happy HeARTs Program