By Judith Dorato O’Gara

If you venture over to Natick’s Common Street Spiritual Center at 13 Common Street, you’ll be sure to notice a special art installation which opened at the end of June. Franklin artist Amy Adams created an art exhibit and Wind Phone, an idea she explains was initially developed in Japan and brought to the United States. Adams’ Wind Phone is part of her Project Healing with HeART. It sits by a bench encapsulated under an arbor-like structure, both custom-painted in a floral motif, entitled “Forget Me Not.” Its purpose, to be used as a tool to process emotions and to share words.

Use this phone to make a “call to the wind,” to someone who has passed on.

“It is a disconnected telephone with the purpose to speak to loved ones who have passed on, allowing messages to be “carried by the wind,” says Adams, “It is a symbolic way to share memories, and hold space, so that healing from grief can begin.”

Adams says she tries to center her art around “topics that need talking about and raise awareness … and I thought creating an installation near us would be great to promote healing to give an opportunity for people to reflect and to save a space for healing.”

Inside the installation, a list of resources for those dealing with grief, including a support hotline for mothers who have lost children and a resource for children dealing with grief and loss, help those experiencing the exhibit understand they are not alone in their grief and that they can reach out to others.

“The project itself is to promote awareness of grief and remove the stigma behind it,” says Adams, who has, as many, experienced profound loss of loved ones in her life. “A lot of people think there is a time stamp for grief,” she says, “but there is not, and this is an opportunity to make it a little more normal.”

The new Wind Phone of Natick is one of 303 Wind Phones in the United States, with an additional 127 outside the U.S. and more planned. To find out more about wind phones around the world, visit
www.mywindphone.com.