Spool 500

Site-specific and interactive public art festival for which Jerry Beck served as Artistic Director, Educator, Artist, and Event Coordinator.  2004-6.
After Beck discovered a collection of antique textile spools in his basement, he responded to create a surreal hybrid art festival combining NASCAR with Lowell’s historic textile history.  The project included a mobile public art race track (18' x 60' x 10'), over 100 banners, an exhibitions, musical and dance performances, art wear, and dozens of in-school and community workshops that led to the construction of over 500 art cars using textile spools as wheels.  

Beck also researched quilt-designs and discovered “Spool-Pattern” quilts were as popular today as when they were at the turn of the century. Beck invited the New England Quilt Museum and over 100 quilters from around the country to participate in the project.  The following two years, the SPOOL 500 quilts and cars were on display at the New England Quilt Festival. The summer-long project traveled to the American Textile History Museum, New England Quilt Museum, The Revolving Museum, and LeLacheur Park, Home of the Lowell Spinner’s AA Ball Club, an affiliate of the Boston Redsox.