crafters + makers.

People who make stuff, whether they call it art, craft, folk art, outsider art or something else entirely.

JR, Women, Strength, Our Own Two Little Hands

| Betsy

The trailer for JR’s Women are Heroes and his TED talk.








There are no words for the beauty, depth, perfect timing, honesty of this work. I dare you to tell me art (craft!) can’t change the world. I dare you.


Your hands, your two little hands, have more power than you may ever even know.


So, today, go challenge yourself. Go find out what changes you can make. For yourself, for your neighbors, for your friends, for the world.


Not sure where to take the first step? Go check out JR’s international (free!) project: Inside Out.




Soldiers, Crafts and Comfort

| Betsy

I know that many of you, as have I, have donated various items of handcraft to soldiers currently in country in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ever since World War I, there have been initiatives like Knit Your Bit from the Red Cross. Actually, knitting for soldiers started even earlier than that, but that’s another story for another day.

But here’s a story about quilting and war. It’s about how a mother and daughter started an Iraq quilting bee for soldiers who have since learned various handcrafts. In the video below, there’s also a photo a light blue elephant crocheted by a very manly looking doctor in uniform, and the story of how this was started.





What I like best about this story was that it not only showed how a tiny idea (a soldier in Iraq requesting fabric from her mother) can grow into something bigger, but it also showed how sometimes (religion aside) there’s both a need and an interest in picking up something like crochet or quilting where you least expect it.

Instead of making something for the soldiers to use as comfort, this particular project uses craft itself as the comfort. And this perfectly dovetails with some thoughts I’ve been struck with lately… how sometimes the act/lesson of craft itself can be a more apt gift than the final product and how new valuable (for others not just ourselves!) projects can find us if we’re willing to just listen and be present.

I don’t know about you, but usually when I start something so small I feel like it’s useless, I’m focusing on the wrong end of the stick (the needle? the hook?). I’m focusing on what I think it will give vs. focusing on the joy and excitement and energy the project itself brings.

I forget how letting go of the outcome allows projects the room to fully expand and go where they need to. So today, here, is a little reminder to follow the joy your work brings… and to honor the work itself by giving it the space and the trust to change, move and grow.

Extra/Ordinary is Here!

| Betsy

One of the most beautiful and delightful things about being involved with craft is that I have had the incredible luck to work with some amazingly talented people along the way. The recent release of Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art (cover below), edited by Maria Elena Buszek is no exception!

[featuring Marianne Jørgensen’s Pink M .24 Chaffee on the cover!]

The super special thing about this book (to me!) is that there is a CRAFTIVISM SECTION! A whole section, mercy me!! Not only is there a separate section, but it includes some brilliant essays: “Rebellious Doilies and Subversive Stitches: Writing a Craftivist History” by Kirsty Robertson, “Craft Hard Die Free: Radical Curatorial Strategies for Craftivism by Nicole Burisch and Anthea Black and “Loving Attention: An Outburst of Craft in Contemporary Art” by Janis Jefferies! Yeah!

If you ever want to learn about the long true beginning of craftivism, I knock it all out in an essay called “Craftivist History.” While the history of craftivism is not about me (don’t be silly!), it’s about what happens when you’re attributed to coining, fostering or publicizing a word that no one has ever heard of. Not to mention a word they’re not sure how to spell, pronounce or define. If anything, I’m a custodian of the word, so eloquently put in Greek here as the “godmother of craftivism.” As even though I don’t have a wand or can fly or even have a fancy, willowy dress, I am glad that there were some people out there who got sprinkled with a bit of ‘craftivism dust’ and agreed with me. To be added in such a book, with such astoundingly talented academics in a separate section is just mind-blowingly rad, it’s words like theirs and yours that constantly astound me every day, it’s such a beautiful things!

Speaking of beautiful things, here’s a beautiful documentary of the making of the Pink M .24 Chaffee, also featured on Marianne’s website, with the words below:

The pink covering consists of more than a 4000 pink squares- 15 x 15 centimetres – knitted by volunteers from Denmark, the UK , USA and several other countries. People were invited through Cast Off Knitting Club, from friend to friend either by word of mouth or over the internet, and by a number of knitting groups made for this specific project, or other already existing knitting groups.. The physical and personal acknowledgement in all of these knitted patches are, when joined together, a powerful visualization of thoughtfulness. The main impression of the knitted tank is that it consists of hundreds of patches knitted by many different people in different ways: single colored, stripes with bows or hearts, loosely knitted, closely knitted, various knitted patterns, … They represent a common acknowledgement of a resistance to the war in Iraq.

Between the 7th – 11th April, 2006, the tank was placed in front of the Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center in the heart of Copenhagen. There were 4-5 permanent volunteers sewing the squares together to cover the tank and many of the people that passed by also helped sew and crochet the pieces together.

Along with the essays mentioned above, the book also includes work by M. Anna Fariello, Dennis Stevens, Louise Mazanti, Paula Owen, Karin E. Peterson, Elissa Author, Betty Bright, Jo Dahn, Lacey Jane Roberts, Andrew Jackson and Maria Elena Buszek!

**The book holds a special special joy for me, as many years ago, Maria, Dennis Stevens, Garth Johnson and Tsia Carson and I started some amazingly powerful email conversations on craft. We dubbed ourselves the Craft Lab. Those conversations fueled me at a time when I was really needing it, and for that, I can never thank my Craft Lab co-conspirators enough! I love you kids and miss our conversations!**

Barbara Koenen’s War Rugs Made of Spice

| Betsy

I love how despite seeing thousands upon thousands of images every day, there are still some that cause us to stop, stare and digest. That’s what happened when I came across the piece about the work of Barbara Koenen via a link from The Examiner, which recently had a fantastic interview with Koenen about her work.

From the interview:

DG: How did you come up with the idea of combining the concept of Afghani war rugs with that of sand mandalas?

BK: I was already doing transitory work, as paintings, installations and actions using materials that would deterioriate or be swept away. But when 9/11 happened, I thought about the war rugs and it just made sense as a practice that could begin to respond to the horror of the attack, and bring in some historical context about why it might have happened. The war rugs were a response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1970s. America backed the resistance fighters, supplying weapons and making promises of other support. But the US pulled out after the Soviets left, and the Taliban took over and turned the country into a despotic place. So our betrayal was in some ways responsible for the later attack. It is important for us to understand this, and to work for peace. So, combining the war rug imagery with the Tibetan meditative practice felt like as appropriate a response as I could think of at the time.

What I perhaps love most about Koenen’s work is the way that kitchen ingredients take the place of warp and weft and turn war imagery into something delicate and finite. Strong imagery turned powdery and wispy, shining brighter with the fact that at any moment, the whole piece could be erased with a swipe of a hand or brush.

Given the fact that these rugs tell stories from the lives of Afghans, the high illiteracy rate in Afghanistan and the lack of infrastructure, the real rugs, their real power is also powdery and wispy, as soldiers bring back handcrafted rugs made by Afghans for the soldiers, turning the war into a commodity instead of a backdrop of life. As the rugs leave Afghanistan as souvenirs they disappear into the ether much like spices do when you spill a bit while making pie.

But then again, I’m fascinated with war rugs, with their storytelling, their history, their capturing of culture in a society where history books and museums and archives fade into the background when war is a daily reality. And what better to honor those pieces than Koenen’s rugs, as they perfectly gather those questions and problems with spices and time.

Also, the wonderful and amazing Heather has continued the conversation on the absence of the myth of the tortured crafter over on her blog! Do go check it out and join the conversation!

KOI Call for Proposals in DC!

| Betsy

First off, two things may come to mind when reading this post:

1. What is KOI? KOI stands for Kitchen of Innovation. Exact definition follows, text from a post on the KOI blog.
2. Art/Crafting in DC? Are you kidding me?

Photo by Flickr user adri_gz

Save the date: April 9, 2011. More details coming soon, but if you’re an independent artist interested in presenting a project for community funding, we’d love to have your application. See below!

Kitchen of Innovation (KOI) invites artists to submit project proposals for its next networking fundraiser to take place April 9, 2011. The deadline for submissions is
FEBRUARY 25, 2011.

KOI is an open-ended experiment that invites DC culture-lovers to invest in artists’ creative processes. It is a fundraising event that gathers like-minded people and promotes artists and initiatives. We are looking for projects that may not comfortably fit into conventional funding grants and artists who are not receiving steady income from galleries, theaters, universities, or non-profits.

KOI encourages creativity and investment: people who attend pay admission, share a meal, each artist gives a brief presentation, everybody votes, and the winner gets the money.

At the next KOI there will be 7 to 8 artists presenting their projects. If you are someone working with performance, sculpture, sound, visual arts, dance, puppetry, theater, web-based art, installation, or any combination thereof, please tell us about your plans. We are looking for projects by independent artists, meaning people who are neither in school nor working as full-time teachers. Recent graduates, adjuncts, and freelance artists are strongly encouraged to submit their ideas. We seek to fund proposals that are in need of creative investors and enrich DC’s artistic landscape.

We will ask the artists who fit KOI’s criteria to present their proposals in person in March and then choose people to present at our next events (there are 3 more KOI fundraisers planned for 2011). The first KOI (held in October 2010) generated networking opportunities, contacts and ideas for artists and participants, plus two artists split the income of $1000.

If you want to be a part of KOI, send answers to these questions to kitchenofinnovation@gmail.com

Include your name, email address, phone number and mailing address:

1. What is your project? (please answer in 150 words or less)

2. How will your project benefit people besides yourself? (answer in 150 words or less)

3. How would you spend the money received from KOI? (using 150 words or less)

4. Tell us if you are NOT available any of these dates/times: March 4 between 6-9 p.m. and Sunday, March 6 between noon-3 p.m. These are the dates we will meet with artists who fit KOI criteria and hear more about the project proposals.

The deadline for sending in your answers to the 4 questions: February 25, 2011

2. The DC thing. Yes, there are politicians here, and weird motorcades, and lots of people who carry special badges for work. But there is a directly opposite force of creativity (Pink Line Project comes to mind?) that, to me, fits perfectly. Creating in a place that’s too far left or too far right doesn’t feed me with what I need, the sharp contrast, playful opposition, open discussion and bizarre juxtapositions that result.

I know that that’s just my opinion, though. I’m still settling into the city, finding my way around, meeting more people (I know like 10 now! So much better than the previous 3… who were mostly related to me!), watching what sets DC apart from other places I’ve lived. Creativity exists in the push and pull binary that brings up questions, never settles and is always transforming.

So, yeah, we may not be NYC or Paris or London or LA. (Or Portland!) But, we have a vast collection of unique strengths and differences, free museums and people itching to create. I think DC’s magic is that the true creativity (art or craft) lies somewhat undiscovered underneath its politics and elections and senators. From there, it’s unbounded by rules or expectations or political sides, which is a mighty fine place to be.