england.

After living in Norwich, Watford, London and Sussex and visiting often since 1995, it deserved its own category.

curiosity may have killed the cat, but not craft.

| Betsy

I was drawn to a recent craft research post that covered several different issues I’ve been thinking about lately.

I think that there is a barrier in thought between the US and the UK regarding craft. My post from yesterday regarding hierarchy was written without knowing there had been a discussion on the very same issue on both craft research and museum blogging. And I believe we are speaking about different hierarchies: one between art and craft and one from within the craft community itself.

In having the opportunity to work both in the US and UK, I can attest to the two extremely different modes of thought between the two. But that’s hardly surprising given the way that history allows for divergent paths (and one notably longer than the other)- it is only now that there is a craft revival on both shores that we are clearly able to view the gaps.

On craft research, Mike Press notes that “Its not so much that our concerns (this side of the pond) are hugely different- it’s just that we are driven by a different set of issues which arise from the politics of academic inquiry in the UK.” Out of curiosity, what politics exactly? My biggest concern lies in the fact that I have been told that as someone who wanted to research crafts in the UK, it “wasn’t important that I learned how to knit” by someone whose opinion I hold in high esteem. My reaction was nothing but shock as, from my perspective, in order to better understand what I’m looking into (in my case, largely textiles), my research is only richened by being familiar with the very craft I am studying.

I think the main problem I have with craft at the moment is based on audience. It is my goal to write somewhere between the academy and the “hobbyist,” because if I just focus on one or the other, I’m missing out on a key piece of this cultural inquiry. Going straight from an academic perspective, I run the risk of not only alienating those that I create with but also rich ethnographic insights which I might not be able to garner elsewhere. Going straight from a craft perspective, I run the risk of sounding “happy clappy” (to quote a futher craft research post by Georgina and not taken in any way seriously by anyone from inside the academy.

This is in no way an attack on craft research, a blog which I am very excited about. I just have some questions. When Mike says that craft is usually considered “domestic, working class or just plain thick”, I wonder about the definition, because ‘thick’ can either mean stupid or as it is sometimes used in narratives “a rich description.” Because to me, craft is what it is because it is ‘of the people’ instead of being born from the academy. It has found its way into the cultural conscience not only because its creations historically tend to be utile, but because before the Industrial Revolution it was a common way of life. Modernity has turned craft on its head.

The current craft resurgence in the US owes a lot to stateside modes of feminism, and in my view, predominantly Riot Grrrl. Echoes of this can be seen in the UK, especially in some of the larger cities where Riot Grrrl had some sort of presence in the 90s. The fact that the author of this week’s earlier Guardian article regarding the subversive state of craft, Eithne Farry, used to be in the band Tallulah Gosh, is further proof of a possible connection.

The struggle we are all now having and hashing through is in regard to the definition of craft. While, I, too, struggle with this issue, one of the most important things to remember is that at its root, craft is not a “system of thought.” Craft was born out of a need for things, which separates itself from art. Now that we now longer have that need and can buy products formally made at home at the corner shop, the revolution really begins.

re:defining.

| Betsy

Below is a response to a post earlier in the week that I thought was so beautiful that it warranted a post of its own.

Sometimes people ask me what craftivism means. Sometimes I don’t know quite what to say. Or know how it’s related to me.

But craftivism is more than just a way to express your politics and views, it’s about finding a way to better your life and that of others through creative endeavors. Because I believe that everything we make with our hands has power. Just what that power is, is your own decision.

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I’ve just discovered this site and it chimes so many bells with me. In my younger days I went on protest marches and rallies and carried banners and chanted chants. Now I have three young kids and I don’t seem to do that stuff anymore. It’s not that I no longer care about the same things – believe me, having kids has made me care even more. But nowadays I am more likely to make a sturdy shopping bag out of all the plastic carrier bags in the cupboard cut into strips and knit together, or crochet an afghan out of lots of leftover yarn from my late mother’s stash and give it to my father as a Christmas gift. Things like that. Currently I am braiding a rag rug out of all my old maternity dresses (boy does that ever provide closure!)

What would have happened if I *hadn’t* gone on all those protest marches back then? Nothing much. Everyone else would still have showed up – 30,000 people minus me is still lots of people. But if I hadn’t made that afghan for my dad, I never would have got to see the glistening in his eyes on Christmas day, and the tears in my own eyes when I visit him and see it folded over the arm of his favourite chair, obviously much used.

I never had a name for this before, or for the quilts I made for my kids which I tuck round them extra tight every time I hear another mother’s son or daughter has been killed by a suicide bomb, or the cookies we bake together from scratch because I want them to understand where food comes from (and also they taste good), or all the things I repair around the home not because I can’t afford to replace them but because … because … well just because I *prefer* to. And now I do have a name for it. Craftivism. Thank you.

on remembering…

| Betsy

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Lately, all my thoughts have come back to this photograph. Not just at the actual image, but also the way the top seems to fade into nothing. I’ve been trying to dry a delicate felt rug that I made in the bathtub for days now. It’s made of fleece and due to some thinner spots, I don’t want to hang it up before I can mend it with a felting needle. The beginning of southern humidity is doing little to expedite the drying process.

Sunday night I gathered the fleece on the rug before me, stacked in fuzzy piles of various color and breed. Once I was done assembling the fiber, I took the lot to the bathtub to begin the felting process. As the hot water hit the fleece, the room smelled like sheep and flooded my mind with memories of the farm in Sussex, rural North Carolina flocks and even the land deep in Georgia my grandfather owned when I was a child.

The ridiculous juxtaposition of natural fiber and mod cons was laugh-inducing as I sang along to The Reindeer Section while stomping to mesh the fiber just like that old “I Love Lucy” episode with the grapes.

Already somewhat mawkish at this point, I thought of why I was making this particular piece- in order to find ways to recycle fiber that has become almost surplus in some areas of the United Kingdom due to a steadying decline in market price. I remembered an afternoon spent hiking in the North Carolina mountains where we came over a rise to find the entire landscape before us clearcut. One of those moments where you just feel a stomach-dropping sadness for what could have been.

Seeing the photo above gives me that exact same feeling I had that day in the mountains. Where you feel like you stumbled on the scene too late, unable to do anything truly useful. Despite my recent article getting nice remarks from friends and colleagues across the world, I’m still getting sad news from England regarding farmer’s incomes.

And as I do things like look at photos and stomp wool in the bathtub, I can’t help being struck by the fear that maybe it is too late for the English wool industry. But simultaneously being enlivened by the idea that perhaps in time, we will start to reclaim our cultural legacies instead of eschewing them for more, more and more.

‘but you’ve got too much to wear on your sleeves…’

| Betsy

For the past week, I’ve been wandering around London listening to ‘A Year of Seconds’ by The Standard. When I get back to my laptop, it’s nothing but “Kissing the Lipless” by The Shins. I’ve also been openly redeclaring my love for satsumas and sesame snaps, so things aren’t totally bleak.

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All the hustle and bustle of London has me thinking in patterns as well as words. It seems like every time I sit down I’m talking with someone about contemporary crafts, so walking around the city is somewhat of a wordless reprieve. I turn my somewhat decrepit tape-playing walkman up loud and watch the drama of the city unfold around me as my feet stepstepstep one foot in front of the other without any forethought.

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Passing women in saris, men in coveralls and children in school uniforms, I find my mind racing with all the color combinations and textures, curious about the origin of all the cloth displayed before me. Was any of it handknitted? Produced in a sweatshop? Inherited from a family member? When I was younger, my mother used to always warn me to be careful of what I was wearing as it projected a persona. As an adult, my outfits generally consist of something donned in a hurry as I’m perpetually late and in a rush. On grey days I’m most often to be wearing color in a futile attempt to beat the drabness into submission. Although when it’s nice out, I don’t mind the way hot pink gleams in the sun.

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But I’d like to think that I’m not the only one that notices the kaleidoscope of the city as I walk from place to place in outfits that may or may not add or subtract to the explosions of color I see rush around me. Spying patterns in clothing, buildings and rubbish while my walkman keeps me to a steady beat with my mouth shut and my eyes open. Once I’m back at home again, I take out my wool and knitting needles and daydream* about what I will make next after taking in all the sights and secrets that the city continually offers up.

*Lately my daydreams have been about what I’m going to create for knitpro Needlecraft Art Show, whose deadline has been changed to June 1st! Oh, the possibilities!

the soundtrack of spring.

| Betsy

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Lately soundtracks have been on my mind.

The past few weeks my head has been full of the sounds of The Decemberists, Edith Frost Sebadoh and Silver Scooter.

And I’ve been thinking about the soundtracks that permeate our lives. How they change over time and vary with our surroundings.

I’m back in London for a week and am remembering how whenever I think of the city I think of trains and when I think of North Carolina I think of chirping birds outside my window.

I never quite made a conscious decision on the matter, but somehow the sounds of trains and birds have imprinted themselves onto my brain as sounds of comfort and home, independent of one another, each denoting different locations.

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While North Carolina makes me want to run around barefoot in the grass and drink sweet tea at weekend cookouts and make pretty things, London makes me want to urgently create due to its raw energy and constant grind never ceasing to inspire me with its contrast of decay and renewal.

Even though the birds and the trains and the things I create change, the music I’m listening to rarely does. Even though in my youth I listened to nothing but loud and screamy bands, I’ve been listening to prettier music as of late, music that is best described as bittersweet. Because instead of overarching sadnesses that so often belong to youth, I’ve grown into loving the bittersweetness that prevails more often than not as youth passes. And come to enjoy the flipped sides of coins and the greener side of the grass.

While may this may seem completely inconsequential and ludicrous, I see in it a perfect analogy to my feeling about the world of craft lately. Due to the resurgence of handmade crafts over the past few years, I’ve seen so many people flourish and grow.

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But lately, I’ve seen more than a few people whose work I admire very much begin to doubt their own consequence and strength. Begin to burn out because they don’t believe that what they are doing is worth their time or energy or money. And all I want to do is whisper to them that it’s not all in vain that their work is important and valid and not inconsequential.

But that’s the power of soundtracks, isn’t it? That sometimes we forget to listen to the birds or the trains or the music or our own inner voices and just hear the negative soundtracks that we started to record in our fragile youths. And we forget that all we have to do is simply change the tape and put on something new.

So I guess this entry is for anyone out there who feels burntout and tired and unoriginal and drained and boring. And just a tiny reminder to remember why you started making art in the first place.

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