modernity + sociology.

This could also be called “all things nerdy.”

Who, Are, You?

| Betsy

“The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead. […] To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
— Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living

Last night, while watching the Olympics (multi-tasking!) I updated my Facebook page, which I hadn’t done in over a year. I also updated the photo of me on here.

While the photos we choose to represent ourselves online are also curated by us, online photos are, shall we say, carefully edited. Or scripted or public relations related or any of a million other things photos do. Although yes, now I have to uncomfortably look at myself when and if I log into Facebook, and then I just sit there typing while the me of the last week watches the me now.

Eventually I got down to the box where it asked me about my “Favorite Quote” and I put the above. It captures who I am better than any photo ever could and it reveals more about me, too. Noticing this, I then got annoyed that that particular box was all the way down at the bottom, when that box really should be at the top.

As instead of the photos we choose to show the world, the words we choose to hold dear and sacred enough to remember despite being barraged constantly with more and more and more words are what really define us.

The rest? Fluff you have to muddle through in order to get to the good part, discovering what we hold to be true and right and kind. So we take the photo, put it up and hope that the people who come into our lives have the patience, the love and the wherewithal to stick around long enough to find that teeny tiny really way far down box. As that’s what holds the essence of who we are always, not just who we chose to be frozen in a moment in time.

Trash. Garbage. Waste.

| Betsy

Now that I’m back from Guatemala, all I can think about is trash. Garbage. Waste. Sewage. Landfill. Bins. Dumps. After thinking about prettier things for ages, it’s been weird to think instead about trash. It’s not pretty, cute, lovely, soft, cuddly or cozy. It’s gross. Today over on one of my other projects, Make and Meaning, I wrote a fairly lengthy post about it, which you can read here.

What are the crafty DIY possibilities of trash? We love coming up with ideas to make our own lives happier, brighter and cuter with trash as a way to reduce our footprint on the earth, but what can we create and teach other people to make that will make their lives better? Having embraced DIY and craft since sometime around 2001, isn’t it time we challenge ourselves to see what we can do on a larger scale?

I don’t think it is. I think it’s a direction that can fuel our designs and ponderings and tests in new directions, ultimately allowing us to become better, stronger makers. After all, even thousands of years ago craft was the original DIY worldwide, why can’t it be embraced by all now in modernity?

I also realize that maybe this is somewhere that DIY doesn’t need to go now. And that maybe I need to follow that divergent path to see where it might lead.

While there are many, many photos documenting the waste we produce, these photos of children in Ghana are absolutely amazing.

Just Words.

| Betsy

Like many of you, I’ve seen far too many photographs of the destruction and devastation in Haiti. Today, I’ve been looking for the proper words.

Over the past few days, I’ve been speechless about the events in Haiti. There are some things that a warm hand-knitted scarf or soft blanket won’t heal. And you watch the news, hear the radio, hear people in the street talk about what’s happening, as we all feel helpless watching footage without being there to hug, hold or soothe.

It’s these types of days where we sit in our houses, some tidy, some not, but most of them absolute luxury compared to millions of other people among our books and furniture and full cupboards, wondering how we ended up on the other side of the television. Far away from the news, the tears, the screams, the visceral reality of life in less fortunate places we feel helpless and lucky and selfish for complaining about a stain on the sofa.

It’s these days where everything comes into perspective, but for how long?

When the media trucks pull away, the bodies are buried, the wounds are healing, we retreat into our own little worlds and once again feel righteous when we get angry when we don’t quite make the train, step in gum or someone stole our morning newspaper. Once again we feel okay and drink $5 lattes instead of texting money for a good cause, we go out for $30 dinners, we pretend that everything is okay.

Then inevitably a few months later, something catastrophic happens somewhere where life was already trying, dusty and difficult before the incident that causes us to feel lucky again, once again we see the world as it really is instead of by what happens in our own individual bubbles.

All the good that’s happening now? All the money and volunteers and prayers going to Haiti is proof that kindness and goodness exist. I just wish that we would remember how we feel now when there’s nothing demanding our attention in the media, and that that tiny paragraph buried deep in the international section about a village bombed and destroyed or some other atrocity, warrants the same sense of loss and anger and kindness.

Resources for organizations that are helping on the ground in Haiti can be found all over the web, but I’d suggest having a look here, here and here.

Gear Shift. Plus, the Mapula Embroidery Project!

| Betsy

For a long, long time now, I’ve been focusing on primarily the indie craft world in English speaking countries. As I’ve lived in both the UK and the US they’ve gotten the most attention, with Canada and Australia** lagging behind. Well, guess what?

I’m flip-flopping and focusing more on international craft these days instead of mainly indie craft! It’s time for it to happen, it’s a new year, so -Huzzah!- posts around here will still be all about craft and creativity, just may be about things farther afield. It’s all so very exciting!!

But this gear shift does come with a whole new host of questions and thoughts, which means beginning to ask some things that, frankly, at first seemed a bit uncomfortable. Here are two of the ones I’ve been pondering lately in brief, so you can chew on them and see if they resonate, appall or make you feel kinda queasy. Any reaction is, of course, fine… Just as long as you have a reaction.

First, as if the word “craft” isn’t hard enough to define, it gets even sketchier to flesh out when you add in cultures that still craft for utility, whether it’s 100% or partially. Sometimes this chasm seems almost impossible to connect because the handspun knitted iPod cozy with an owl looks pretty darn frivolous when compared to, say, a handwoven basket created because you don’t have a basket and you need one.

Secondly, we enter “want” vs. “need” territory- a territory so vast it makes you kind of wish you were back on the other side of that chasm, steeling up the nerve to jump. Given craft’s ubiquitous utilitarian roots, (a major separation point from art) once providing vital “needs” in all countries, what does it really say about our cultures now when we produce mainly out of “want?” That we have too much free time and money to sit around making what we could buy? That we’re so privileged we don’t even realize the irony in creating items by hand when most of us have relatives, maybe some still alive, for whom the boom of fabric mills was an incredible timesaver?

These are the questions that are right in front of me as I start to look into craft in countries where people earn as much in a day as we pay for our morning coffee. Maybe you’ll be interested in asking them along with me or maybe you’ll be bored learning about projects that happen continents away. But you do have to ask yourself, don’t those questions also point to a shift in our own approach to crafts? Or at the very least, wants vs. needs? I’m not saying I have the answer, only that I’ve begun to ask the question.

So, taking one tiny step today in that somewhat daunting aforementioned territory, I wanted to introduce you to the Mapula Embroidery Project. The photo directly above documents the Queen of England accepting a gift from the project on a 1999 visit to South Africa. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the words “Education Development” are embroidered at the top of the piece, as the women were not solely making gorgeous pieces, they were making gorgeous pieces with a message. The photo up at the top by Maggie Maepa is a 2005 piece titled Wedding Day and You Can Live a Long Time with AIDS. I think the title alone says it all, really, it embodies hope instead of accepting destruction.

Mapula (“Mother of Rain” in Tswana) is a project of Soroptimist International Pretoria, the local Soroptimist branch who wanted to aid local women who needed to earn a living. Their pieces tell the story of individual women and reflect their own hopes and dreams and concerns, elucidating the feelings of many other women who no doubt have the same feelings but feel voiceless. As with all craft, embedded inside the actual craft skills is the therapeutic nature of the needle and stitching, helping the women develop empowerment as they simultaneously earn a living.

Want more?

*Links for the Mapula Embroidery Project and the Soroptimists in Pretoria

*More info and photos of a Mapula exhibit at Gallery On The Square over here

*Between Union and Liberation: Women Artists in South Africa 1910-1994 by Shannen Hill

*Stitches as Sutures: Trauma and Recovery in Works by Women in Mapula Embroidery Project by Brenda Schmahmann in 2006 she released the book Embroidery and Empowerment in the Winterveld. I can’t find her online, but learned she also was the editor of Material Matters: Applique by the Weya Women of Zimbabwe and Needlework of South African Collectives in 2000!

*Wondering who the heck are the soroptimists? Go have a looksee here and learn about all the great things they’ve accomplished!

**I’m not saying that those are the only countries that speak English predominantly, just perhaps the biggest?

Crafting the Whole World: Craft + Race

| Betsy

For the past few days, there’s been a bit of an online kerfuffle about race and craft and the group Knitta, Please. As a result, the Knitta, Please website now defaults to MagdaSayeg.com. Here’s a link to a post about it on my friend Cinnamon’s blog because she provides the Cliff’s Notes version with links. My ears perked up at a mention of the craft world being all white. And yes, the indie/DIY craft world is really really white. Do I think that it’s on purpose? No. Indie/DIY craft may have started a craft resurgence, but that doesn’t mean the story of the resurgence is over. How wonderful would it be to have another craft wave where we all started learning more about craft history or different cultural techniques?

Over a decade ago, there was a similar kerfuffle about Riot Grrrl. There’s even a really amazing article about it, Riot Grrrl: Revolutions From Within by Jessica Rosenberg and Gitana Garofalo. There’s an even more amazing online perspective of Riot Grrrl.

The difference between the two? It can be argued that the history of feminism is all white. It cannot, however, be argued that the craft world is all white. That’s one of the most beautiful things about craft, that it’s found in every culture existing now or previously. There needs to be more online about it, and it’s a project I’ve been working on… but without funding, it’s a beast (and slow!) to tackle. Here are just a few examples of craft in different cultures out of the thousands.

So, I say, bring it. Evoking a challenge a wider range of craft coverage online, in fairs and on bookshelves. Bring it on. Please.

Felting in Iran
Batik from Ghana
Tibetan Butter Sculpture
Chinese Woodblocking Prints
African Cloth about Culture and Politics
Chilean Political Tapestries by the Arpilleristas
Lots of Native American craft links! Beads! Weaving!
WarRug.com: Afghan made rugs (Political motifs? Bonus!)
Palestinian Embroidery Techniques: Dresses That Tell Stories
History and Glossary of Traditional and Contemporary African Textiles

(Photos, top to bottom: Tibetan butter sculpture, Afghan war rug, felting in Iran)