The article, which you can read entirely here features an interview with Olek:
…”Crochet came to me as a result of being totally broke,” she continues. “I had to make a costume in NYC and I had no cash for a sewing machine. I used any materials I could possible find…I even cut my sheets into strips to make pieces. Being resourceful is in my blood as you can see. Crochet is for poor people…that’s why you can find it in almost any culture across the globe. I am just a tiny spider who walked at night in East London collecting items soon to be transformed into crocheted pieces.”
Then, through the wonderful world of the internet, I found the video below, from the V&A with Grayson Perry talking about craft, art and the digital world. I was struck by two quotes in the video below, “Our relationship to making things has changed.” This surprised me because, well, the reason we aren’t making bread anymore (something he notes) isn’t because we’ve changed, it’s changed because our options have changed. For the same reason people stopped handmaking clothes when the Industrial Revolution came around, technology brought us inventions that save us time and the “hassle” of making them ourselves.
But, then later he adds, “One of the great empowering things about learning craft is… it’s almost like a manifestation, a physical manifestation of, “I can change the world.”" A few times he seems quite damning on craft, while others quite complimentary.
Maybe he’s just like everyone else? Not so sure on the proper definition? And where “craft” begins and “art” ends?
I first discovered this video in 2010 thanks to a post on Elephant Journal. And I can’t remember a video making me happier to just simply be.
And as I recently re-discovered it, I realized that it was finding craft that finally made to uncover the facts that a) it’s okay to be alone and b) it’s okay to like being alone sometimes. Craft taught me that I don’t have to fear either the silence or the cacophony in my head when I’m working on stitch after stitch after stitch. I don’t have to even worry about the future, if I just keep stitching. Breathing. Living. Moving forward.
May you feel okay to be alone instead of fearing it, and enjoy dancing alone whether it’s at home by yourself with the curtains drawn or in a club or to a lovely song in the grocery store. Or stitching or walking or laughing or cooking or going to see a movie or all the other 10 million things you can do alone.
Performed by Tanya Davis, who you can learn more about here.
Directed by Andrea Dorfman, who you can learn more about here.
Below is a lovely little video about a Los Angeles group called KnitRiot who makes crafty items and leaves them for the needy to find and take. How wonderful is it to make something full of intent and care and love and then leave it for someone who needs it to take by placing it near a homeless shelter?! As you’ll also see in the video, they also placed a tree sweater on one lucky tree, placing various items to craft with for passersby to take… And most beautifully, when they returned to the tree, they found thank you letters for leaving craft supplies.
What a wonderful world, indeed.
[Apologies for the giant video, but there wasn't a resizing option...]
In a recent newsletter for the Dreamrocket, Jennifer Marsh mentioned that some quilters from Gee’s Bend were donating a few panels to the Dreamrocket project. She notes in the newsletter that,
“In 1937 and ’38, the federal government commissioned two series of photographs of Gee’s Bend. The images have since become some of the most famous images of Depression-era American life.
In earlier years, one of the primary influences on the Gee’s Bend quilt aesthetic was the newspaper- and magazine-collages used for insulation on the inside walls of homes in the rural American South.”
While I knew the second bit, I wasn’t aware of the first and immediately headed to the Library of Congress website to track them down. You can see the gallery here which is nothing short of amazing. Out of the whole gallery, the photo below is one of my favorites. As you can see, it clearly shows that newspaper and magazines were used to keep out the cold winter (and yes, it does it cold in Alabama in the winter!).
Over the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about this photo. And how craft’s utilitarian history sets it apart from art as it surrounds us literally in sweaters and quilts and afghans, and how craft has literally embedded its kindness and quiet strength into our skin and made itself home. How the quilters of Gee’s Bend can take creative inspiration from newspaper covering their walls to keep out the cold, the same newspaper that we recycle everyday or that people leave on a bench to eventually float all over town like urban smog-colored tumbleweeds.
How craft has the ability to stimulate our creativity and our passions and still keeps us warm and cozy. It can expand in all directions, and bring us together, whether its out of necessity by a family sewing a quilt to keep them surviving through the winter, or through a knitting circle with friends both old and new. It keeps us humble and away from the traps of art world, while quietly urging us to move forward and seek new inspirations and directions. And it’s that quiet cozy push to move forward that makes me continue to fall in love with craft again and again. I know it must look a hell of a lot like art to some, but the roots of craft will never allow us to stray so far as to lose our way as sometimes happens in the big bad art world.
And, I, for one, am forever grateful and truly humbled for that, by craft’s long tradition that keeps me safe and cozy and secure with what I’m making, never failing to block out harsh comment or criticism like the simplest of insulation, newspaper keeping out the cold on a harsh Alabama night.
