What are you hungry for in life and community?” That’s one of many messages rotating on the front of a white, defunct Kenmore refrigerator sitting on the curb outside a home on Northwest Cumberland Avenue in Bend. Passers-by are invited to open the fridge and rummage through the treasures inside, which are constantly changing. On a warm May day, Kenmore was filled with disco balls, googly-eyed pinecones, seed packets and Pez dispensers filled with inspirational notes.
Kenmore started as an idea from Amy Williams who’d seen something similar in other places. Part experiment, part art installation, Kenmore has grown into its own being, with an Instagram account and text message hotline. Strangers leave love notes and contribute to the surprises found inside. The fridge brings people together, generates smiles and, in one very special case, helped begin healing a broken heart.
Alisa Swartz lives five blocks away. She wandered through the neighborhood one February evening, her heart heavy with the knowledge that her husband of 39 years was in his final stages of life after being diagnosed with glioblastoma (an aggressive brain tumor) the previous July. The sight of Kenmore drew her in, giving her a brief respite. Intrigued by the fact that Kenmore could text, she took the number home. Swartz, who owns a beloved 1981 Kenmore sewing machine she calls Pokey, decided to reach out to Kenmore.
Pokey’s first text: “Dear Kenmore, It’s been a long long long time, and you may not remember me, but we met 40 years ago at our factory inception, 4th floor, room 305. While your shelves were being lovingly crafted, my needles were being sharpened, and we had quite a love affair.” Signed Pokey, Sassy Sewing Machine.
Kenmore responded: “Dear Pokey, I’ve never forgotten just how you pierced through my frozen heart. Thanks for stitching my cold heart back to life. Weave on over to Cumberland and say hi. Or leave one of those sassy love notes like you used to back in the factory setting days.”
Pokey: “Dearest Kennie, I have been on pins and needles waiting to hear from you! Splendid!”
The enchanted correspondence became an escape for Swartz and a secret she kept from everyone, including her ailing husband.
“With my husband being ill, I just really opened up and started writing poetry and really getting into creativity in that way. Also journaling and going through that whole journey.” Swartz explains that her world became really small. The relationship between Pokey and Kenmore allowed for small pockets of joy which helped sustain her during a time of deep struggle. Eventually, in March, Swartz shared the death of her husband with Kenmore.
Pokey: “Today my thread is tangled, my needles are broken, my bobbin is unwound. The circuit board of one of my humans completely corroded last week and there was no warranty in place to fix him. Seams have been ripped, yet to be mended. This week the tiny stiches of repair begin as I get re-oiled. New thread, new fabrics, new patterns under my foot.”
Pokey and Kenmore continued exchanging texts, with their humans unknown to one another. “I didn’t know if Amy was old, young, male, female, non-binary, whatever, you know. The anonymity of our communication was really important,” Swartz says. One evening, about three weeks ago, Swartz was walking on Cumberland Avenue and saw Amy in her yard. She revealed herself and how deeply intwined Kenmore had become with her emotional journey.
“How do we move through what we are experiencing into more of a space of thriving and flourishing rather than just separation and collapse?” Williams asks.
About the same time Swartz was experiencing a devastating loss, Williams, too, was receiving bad news. Her landlord sold the house she’d been living in the past three years and has given her until July 1 to move out. With her future uncertain, so is Kenmore’s. She’s started a ‘Save Kenmore’ campaign, hoping to find a new home for the appliance that’s inspired so much joy.
“It’s hard to find in this rental market, a place that’s been as wonderful and magical and vibrant as this but also looking for a new steward for the Kenmore project, like a business or somewhere where the fun and wonder and excitement [can continue] and people are willing to do things a little bit different to connect community,” says Williams. For her, the reaction to Kenmore from strangers has been a surprise and delight.
“The concept of a fridge…was the heart of the home, where the family is, but here’s a fridge that’s outside. It’s repurposed. It’s rethinking trash and waste,” says Williams. “I was thinking a lot about how can it be a sign of community resilience, like people knowing each other, people coming together, people actually meeting their neighbors and being able to engage and to do that through joy and through play and through actual exchange and dialogue.”
Swartz puts it this way. “The project has blossomed into a space of play activism, grief-tending and mythic storytelling — embodying what it means to ‘tend the transition’ from dying systems to new life.”
This article appears in Source Weekly June 19, 2025.
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