Celebrating Our Work

Work Is Love Made Visible = Hands-on Participation in the Arts

“Work is love made visible.” — Kahlil Gibran

Some Our Workshop Crew 2026 after our last official "meeting" before the Parade. Left to right: Olivia Sorgman (In the left corner who was taking the picture) Jim Sun Bear (a partially visible Beau Wilding behind Jim Sunbear), Claudia Bratton, Natalie Richardson, Tara Brooks, Brenda Galloway. Emma Jane Huerta (EJ sitting on the floor) Penny Little, Irene Ramirez, Nobeel Masri (behind Irene) Chloe Villanueva, Adriana Reyna (Behind Chloe) , Andrew Stevens (behind Adriana) Richard O'Steen, Riccardo Morrison. Missing from this picture are Workshop staff and volunteers: Justine Pannier, Pali X-Mano, Carlos Cuellar, Allison Claudio, Hope Christofferson, Shelly Woods, Nicole Caldwell, Jeremy Lamb, and a few others .

On Labor Day, we traditionally honor the contributions of working people. But perhaps it is also an opportunity to think about work itself—what it means to make something, to care about what we do, and to contribute our time, skill and imagination to the world around us.

At Solstice, we see this kind of work everywhere. It is in the hands that bend wire into a giant puppet, stitch a costume, paint a float or repair something that didn't quite work the first time. It is in the musicians practicing a difficult passage, the dancers learning a new step, and the volunteers doing a hundred seemingly ordinary jobs that together make an extraordinary celebration possible.

In our increasingly digital world, there is something particularly important about making things with our hands—and making them together. Technology gives us remarkable creative tools, but human beings still need the experience of touching materials, moving our bodies, solving problems together, getting things wrong, trying again, and finally standing back and saying, “We made that!” (Isn't there a little commercial "I made this!")

And perhaps part of our work as human beings is learning to bring love to the work itself.

Not every task is glamorous or wildly creative. Some jobs are difficult. Some are repetitive. Some may seem almost invisible. Yet there can be dignity in doing even a simple thing with attention and care. Learning to find meaning—and when we can, joy—in what we do is itself a practice.

Artists, makers and creators understand this deeply. The finished creation matters, but so does the process of making it. Creativity teaches patience, persistence, curiosity, cooperation and the courage to try something that has never existed before.

These are not only artistic skills. They are human skills.

Perhaps that is why hands-on creativity matters more, rather than less, in the digital age. When we gather around a worktable, pick up a paintbrush, learn a dance, play music together or build something larger than any one of us could make alone, we are practicing how to create a community, team-building and collaboration.

A parade passes. A performance ends. The paint eventually fades.

But something remains in the people who made it.

This Labor Day, we celebrate all the hands, hearts and minds whose work makes our community richer—and the possibility that, whatever our work may be, we can make a little more love visible through the way we do it: