modernity + sociology.

This could also be called “all things nerdy.”

Foreign. (Film, Immigration and Old Familiars.)

| Betsy

In 1985, I got 3rd place in a school art contest with the theme “Safety.” It was a painting of a policeman stopping traffic, and to this day, I think it only won 3rd place because it marginally had something to do with safety and wasn’t off-topic. Last Sunday, twenty-four years later, I picked up a paint brush again. Although it’s not for a contest and has little to do with safety, I’m pretty happy with the preliminary results.

We watched The Visitor as I tried to retain the bounce of the brush on the canvas and stay in the lines I had drawn- while also paying attention. Although I’m not sure if it was the painting or the film, somewhere along the line I started tearing up. I’m not really sure which was the culprit, and think perhaps it was a little bit of both. The film is about the unlikely friendship that arises from an equally unlikely introduction and deals with issues of belonging, home, identity and immigration.

As I’ve done work in the past with refugees, my heart went out to the people everywhere who are in those back rooms in detention centers or airports or live in fear of being denied asylum or what have you. And since I hadn’t painted for so many years, I also felt that rush of release you get when you tackle something new and unfamiliar, that unbridled freedom of seeing where your hands may take you is always an adventure. Although canvas, paints and brushes are benevolent things, there is still a sense of escaping your safety zone as you push toward new skills.

So as Richard Jenkins’ character learned to play the drums in “The Visitor,” I picked up a paintbrush (a little easier than playing the djembe). While his lesson was tied up in a messy storyline fraught with modern problems and frustrations, mine was unfolding quietly with a dog curled up against my side. The result? A pleasant and kind reminder in the liberation and joy of letting yourself go and learning something new.

Other lovely things of late:
*Savta Connection (a group urban knitting in Tel Aviv)
*Discovering the activist anthropology department at UT-Austin
*Interview with Syrian musician Kinan Azmeh (who speaks of those back rooms)
*Art Yarn’s Call to Action for handmade knitted or crocheted strips for an exhibit at Manchester Craft and Design

And as for me, I’m being kept busy:
*Preparing for a group show at The Scrap Exchange in Durham, Domestic Spaces (March 20-April 11)
*Excited about my first trip to Portland for the Handmade Nation West Coast premiere, April 2-6th! I will be on a panel called Craft Perspectives on Saturday, April 4th, which I’ll be posting more about later. For now, you can see more details <a href=”http://www.museumofcontemporarycraft.org/hmn/programs.html”>here</a>!

Creativity, Robots and Seals! Oh My!

| Betsy

When you get right down to it, I love lots of things. For starters, I love the seaside, coffee, exploring new cities, 80s nostalgia, people who challenge me and Lionel Richie.

I also love animals. While my love for marsupials has been well documented here, there is one other group of animals I overlooked when listing animals I adore. The “sea” animals. Seals. Seal lions. Sea otters. Creativity and its power are tops on my list, too, which is not surprising seeing how often I write about it. Loving creativity also means loving creative people of all sorts, like people who make robots.

While checking out some amazing robot photos today, I was floored by all the helpful things new robots are doing. Helping people eat! (It’s actually called “My Spoon!”) Catching burglars with a crazy-looking web! (Kind of like a tiny metal Spiderman!) Moving the dead post-apocalyptic disaster! (Creepy, yet fantastically awesome!)

I also found something combining three loved things, creativity, robots and seals!

I was especially endeared by the invention of a robotic seal named Paro, who was invented as a companion for the elderly and/or lonely. It turns out this little guy also helps children with autism and individuals with Alzheimer’s! While my cat ran away during the playing of the below video, I found it fascinating, especially around 3.24 when it shows how Paro is providing companionship for an older woman living by herself.

Want more? There is a sweet video over here showing Paro’s effect on residents in a Japanese nursing home that made me cry. The accompanying news story is here, which may also make you tear up when an elderly woman mentions someone stole her cat. (The video link above also answers my burning question of why they made a seal instead of, say, a kitten.)

Some other nice things you might like:
*Bad Banana Blog
*Ranch dressing recipe from CRAFT
*Life size blue whale (link from Tiny Choices)
*Lovely interview with the amazing Diane Gilleland.
*Discovering where the time goes when you’re on line with Rescue Time

The Dream, 45 Years Deferred.

| Betsy

Before today, there was only one other MLK Day weekend that had stuck in my mind. We were on a family ski trip and on the ride north we stopped at McDonald’s. They had the radio on announcing that the United States had just invaded Kuwait. It was a bit surreal being in McDonald’s of all places, hearing George Bush instead of the ka-ching of the registers.

I was in 11th grade and confused how we were going skiing and going to have fun when our country was doing something really not fun. I guess you could say that was the first day I started to think about that continuum we all live on, that small space where we exist and thrive despite all of the horrors and evils and disappointments that life can bring. We thrive because we can see the other end, the end of possibilities and newness and happiness. In order to keep moving forward, we perch ourselves delicately between the good and the bad, aiming more towards hope than towards despair.

I’ll also remember this MLK Day and its long weekend, but for a better reason. Today at 12pm EST, CNN rebroadcast the entirety of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

When the speech started, I had my laptop on in my lap thinking I would be able to tinker away at some things I needed to do, as not to waste a chance to multitask. About a minute into the speech, I closed my laptop and set it aside. Some things need your full attention, this is one of them.

And a few minutes in, I started crying and felt so very different than I did around this time 18 years ago. Instead of feeling estranged and wondering what the hell was going on in a McDonald’s in Virginia, I felt happy and hopeful. I know that tomorrow the wars aren’t going to stop and the economy isn’t going to right itself and that millions of people will still need food, water and shelter.

But today there’s a sliding towards the plus end of the scale away from the minus. Not because tomorrow we’re going to go to bed richer or kinder than the day before, but because tomorrow, for the first time in a long time, we’ll see our country move forward along with us.

Activism Is Not A 4-Letter Word. (Reminder)

| Betsy

Today’s post is a re-post of something I wrote in November 2005. If you’ve read Handmade Nation, you’ll see that I have an essay in the book with the same name. This original post was what led to the essay a few years later. I’m reposting it here because sometimes it’s good to be reminded of just where your heart lies.

Two things for today, this afternoon I’ll be on The State of Things from about 12.40 until 1EST, and tonight I’ll be talking about craftivism and the book at Barnes & Noble in Cary at 7pm.

Dictionary.com defines activism as “The use of direct, often confrontational action, such as a demonstration or strike, in opposition to or support of a cause.” This is the definition I have often been presented with the minute I mention either craftivism or activism. At the mention of these terms, some people rear up and want nothing more to do with the discussion. When such a negative definition is so commonly applied, it isn’t hard to see why feathers are ruffled by even a whisper of activism.

But my own definition of activism lies closer to this, “Activism, in a general sense, can be described as intentional action to bring about social or political change” from Wikipedia. It continues with “The word ‘activism’ is often used synonymously with protest or dissent, but activism can stem from any number of political orientations and take a wide range of forms, from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, simply shopping ethically, rallies and street marches, direct action, or even guerilla tactics. In the more confrontational cases, an activist may be called a freedom fighter by some, and a terrorist by others, depending on which side of the political fence is making the observation.”

Activism (or craftivism) is less about a call to arms and more about a call to act for change. Although there are negative ways one can bring about change, the majority of activists I know are working for the common good, attempting to bring about illumination instead of darkness. By negating a construct and stripping it of its positive intent, the more commonly used definition only breeds fear and unwillingness when in fact every time you make a conscious choice, you are being an activist. In choosing to buy one brand of yarn instead of another due to the way it was produced or by choosing to ride your bike instead of drive, you are being an activist.

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The past two weeks I have been living in rural England on a small-scale farm. I can’t think of a time when I have been more inspired or been taught more lessons or been shown so much hope in such a short span. I have been connecting and meeting individuals who continue to farm despite all the obstacles in their paths. After all the governmental and financial restraints have been agreed to, there seems to be little reason to continue an agrarian lifestyle.

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As we send all of our textile needs to further shores where people are paid less to work more, resources that the small-scale producers have relied on since the Industrial Revolution have vanished, leaving them trying to fill in the gaps. And as it becomes more and more difficult for small-scale farmers to survive, traditions and methods are lost in the name of technology and progress.

But there is a sense of activism in the air here as people strive to continue to produce wool and fleece as they once did when all the factories where up and running and could take in small quantities of fibre to be prepared. Out of love and determination, activism is alive in its most positive sense- as individuals try and band together to keep traditional methods afloat despite myriad setbacks. In watching their strength and learning from their dedication, I am reminded again and again of why I am not ashamed to call myself an activist.

Craftivism vs. Craftism, and the Quest For Uniquity.

| Betsy

Ok, I’ll admit it. I have no idea what “craftism” is.

I do, however, know what “craftivism” is.

The word “craftivism” came into my life by way of a conversation about “craft” and “activism,” seeing the similarity and opposition in these words as culturally defined, I started using a “craft activism” hybrid. A friend of mine at a knitting circle actually combined the two words into one way back in 2002.

I’m not sure what happens when you start writing about a theory and then thanks to making up a weird looking word, it is commonly spelled missing a few letters instead of the word you started out with! However, if you have an idea of what “craftism” is, I’d be well chuffed to hear its definition. I would argue that the “-ivism” part of the equation is pretty imperative because it denotes craft’s connection to activism, instead of it glomming on a different “-ism” like Marxism or Taoism or veganism.

Bizarrely, Google seems to whip right on by the missing letters…which makes little sense to me as normally it’s hypersensitive?

I often get asked what was going on at the time that made me start connecting “craft” and “activism.” In the next few posts, I’m going to expand a bit of the various cultural trends that seem to have a whole heck of a lot to do with why this whole craft resurgence happened in the first place!

Thanks to the convergence of the quest for uniquity, annoyance at the banality of materialism and the mall/superstore presence, the internet erasing geographic boundaries and the reclamation of the domestic thoughts began to run to making and sewing and knitting and crafting crafting crafting! On a lesser scale, I would argue that a need for the tactile was craved, too. This marked a strange point in time where people were really excited to see what technology could do, but perhaps secretly hoping that teleporting would just be invented already so we could get a hug instead of :)

A lot of times when I bring up the reasons above, more explanation is requested, so here’s the first of 5 posts, with the others soon to follow.

The quest for uniquity

No one likes to show up at a party wearing the same dress as someone else in attendance. Well, up until the Industrial Revolution clothes were made by hand and as a result didn’t come off of the same rack as things were tweaked for specific body types or styles.

Then all of a sudden advances in the how textiles were manufactured came along and clothing was mass produced and you could eventually pop down to the shop on the corner and buy a shirt or stockings instead of crafting them on your own. I can’t even imagine how much of a relief this must have been! Of course, this is a whipquick run-through, as some individuals (the number varying on changes in economics, culture, politics) have continuously been handcrafting their clothes.

Eventually the hype of popping down the corner for that shirt wore off a bit and some people wanted more control of their clothes and wanted a say in color, design and weight of what they wore! In the first few years of this century, a push began starting a craft resurgence that was heavily boosted by people wanting to create what they wore instead of picking them off a on over-stuffed rack. Instead of being annoyed that their favorite store didn’t have the sweater they wanted in orange and only had it in red and green and blue, people were starting to create what wasn’t available to them instead of settling for a product they only halfway wanted anyway because their own vision wasn’t displayed before them in a shop window.

Also, how has the film short The Last Knit evaded me until now?!

*Amazingly, this version of the post is a micro-version of the original. Think of these posts more of elevator speech definitions, although I always love to talk about the nitty gritty details if you’re up for it.