why handmade.

Aside from what you can make with your hands (and who creates with them), why is it important?

A Quilt of Many Panties

| Betsy

How could I not post this on a Friday?

Text from here, click through for whole story:

Video from here:

Louisiana, MO. He’s a hard-core biker with a sensitive soft side. Truly, how many Harley owners do you know who stitch quilts on the side? And have you ever met a HOG lover who makes his quilts out of women’s panties? And let’s not forget this character has his nickname “Shovelhead” tattooed just below the bridge of his cap. Yep, right there on his forehead so you won’t forget his name—as if anyone could forget ol’ Shovelhead.

But back to the panty quilt…

Louis “Shovelhead” Garrett rents out the basement of his mother’s house in Louisiana, Mo. That’s where he crafts his one-of-a-kind quilts. He’s kind of picky with his panties. He’ll accept silk, acetate, nylon, even rayon. But polyester panties need not apply.

“I don’t want them cheap, dollar store, not-sexy-farm-girl panties. I want classy.”

How can you not love a story who’s headline reads “Biker stitches panty quilt? Or a video that dares to ask, “From where do you get all the panties?”


Yet another example of how craftiness has nothing to do with gender or appearance… And how it runs through the lives of many in so very many ways!



Why To Pay Attention, via War Boutique and Carrie Reichardt

| Betsy

Last December when I was at Carrie Reichardt’s (amazing) house* in London, she showed me some of the pieces of work she had by her friend War Boutique. I was amazed at the way he incorporated his knowledge learned from creating “armour systems for the government,” into his art practice using, as he notes in the video below, Kevlar, ballistic nylon, chain mail, stab vests. There’s more about the origin of his work here.

While you should watch the whole video, as it’s brilliant, one thing he says spoke out to me the most, “In today’s society, there’s so much wrong with society, to me, that’s the role of the artist… to try and keep that highlighted and not let it drift away and become yesterday’s news.”

It’s our (whether you call yourself an artist, crafter or maker) role to make sure people pay attention. Our (collective!) role.

War Boutique Artist Profile from Alex Buckley on Vimeo.



And speaking of Carrie, she currently has a show up at Ink’d in Brighton until April 10, which you can read a review of over at Spindle. The show is called Mad in England, a show about which the Ink’d website notes (click text to read more):

UK renegade potter and leading anarchist Carrie Reichardt will be bringing an eccentric twist to all things British at Ink_d Gallery. As we built up towards the media mania of The Royal Wedding Reichardt has decided she just can’t take it anymore – and this show represents the Great British Empire as ‘Cruel Britannia’ through her unique anarchic vision.”

If you can’t get to the show, you can still own a bit of “Mad in England!”I recently received my specially made mug for the Kate n Wills Royal wedding next month in the mail that Carrie created for the occasion. While it does contain a 4-letter word not suitable for the kitchens of some, it looks quite proper sitting on my kitchen shelf.



*Seriously her house is amazing. They did a 4-page spread on it in The Guardian last year. See the original Guardian article here, and complete with photos over here. (And yes, there is a little blurb about Garth Johnson, Craftivist Collective and I down at the bottom of the article. Way to go, eagle eye!



There is No Myth of the Tortured Crafter.

| Betsy

When I was younger, I fell full into the myth of the tortured artist. I inhaled the work of Kerouac and Pollock and Thompson. I worshiped at the altar of Arbus and Ginsberg and Warhol. I cried in solidarity with the lives of Basquiat and Haring.

I made a lot of mistakes. I mistook pain for authenticity and thought that to create was to also destroy. That there was no one without the other. And, as a direct result, I’m lucky to be writing this. I could bore you with tales of close calls or of loved ones that didn’t fare so well and lost, or details half-remembered or eulogized in partial memory by people that claimed to be “Artists.” With a capital “A.” It’s neither romantic nor exciting nor even interesting. It’s boring in that it mistook destructivity as the ultimate catalyst and origin of creativity. Those days, those years, are nothing to be proud of, even though I have scores of friends and colleagues who have the same tales. It’s just wasted time, wasted promises, wasted breath.

samo

But it was craft, that saved me.

You see, there is no myth of the tortured crafter. Its roots in utilitarianism, need and progress had little time for chaos. Little time for upper middle-class time wasting in the pursuit of the perfectly executed cocktail or party or hazy work. While we were all destroying ourselves and claiming to be authentic, the real authenticity was covering our beds, in our kitchen cupboards, hidden in dusty trunks. The real authenticity, the real creativity, was craft.

I often joke that my life didn’t start until I was 26, when I started knitting. Well, it’s not such much a joke as it is the whole and honest truth.

Those nights of wrapping wool around a needle to create something with my own two hands sutured me together more than all the reams of paper I had written in haste trying to recall what had happened the night before thinking that I was onto something. That I was really living. Those holey crooked scarves were not just creations that kept me warm, they were reaffirmations that creativity was real, true and honest. As I watched the fabric grow in my lap, the scarves getting longer and longer, I was pushing away false myths and idols, and embracing something more stronger and powerful.

And with each night of knitting, I moved more and more into the sacred space of creativity. I joined the women of Gee’s Bend and the arpilleristas of Chile and a long line of my own female ancestors as my fingers created and bled and made items that weren’t called art and were deemed a lesser creation. In time, as I began to learn more about myself and about craft I began to see the truth in craft, even though it’s not always aesthetically pleasing for galleries and white walls.

lifeofpei

[photo via Flickr user life of pei]

The creative work of soldiers and warriors, Afghan war rugs, the Just Work Economic Initiative, Emerge, Fine Cell Work, Vollis Simpson along with others taught me the true power, potential and gift that is craft.

They taught me that true creativity begets joy not pain, and is born out of hope, not destruction. They obliterated the myth of the tortured artist and allowed me to see craft for what it is. A gift. Positivity. Enjoyment. Fulfillment. Love. Life.

While I’ll always love the former list of creatives in this post, I’ll always draw strength and the spirit of life from the latter. Because craft is not about destruction or pain, it’s a gift to be invited in, savored and celebrated. And in that celebration, thankfully, there is no space for negativity and false hopes.

There’s nothing but love and creating and laughing and living, in full, in beauty and in the light.

Hi, Hey, Hello, 2011.

| Betsy

Here’s to the new year and all the dreams and adventures and love it may bring. As for 2010 parting, few things could be more fitting that this piece above.


Why this piece, you ask?

Because it depicts the juxtaposition of rough, activated and rugged (bull) vs warm, welcoming and beautiful (crochet) and how well they can go together. As those are the two poles we circumnavigate continuously in our daily lives, in between the good stuff and the bad stuff, I really like that it appeared on Wall St right at the tail end of a rough year. While this particular installation only lasted a scant two hours, this image remains as a testament to an artist’s vision, as she expertly combines aesthetics and concept. Of her work, Olek (born Agata Olek) writes,

It was truly a year of guerrilla actions that opened a new path in my crocheted investigations. I started it with a bike and ended up with the Charging Bull as a Christmas gift to NYC and a tribute to the sculptor of the bull, Arturo di Modica,* who in another guerrilla act, placed the bull on Wall Street in Christmas of 1987 as a symbol of the “strength and power of the American people” following the 1987 Stock Market crash.

This crocheted cover represents my best wishes to all of us. It will be a great, prosperous year with many wonderful surprises!!!

For more on Olek, check out her website, artist statement and be sure to check out her work, especially the Sculptures section for more amazing crocheted and fiber work.


So here’s to 2011, and here’s to new work, new ideas, new collaborations and new joy in this new year! And like di Modica and Olak, keep in mind that creativity and its creations are a gift, for both the maker and the viewer.



As makers we’re meant to let our ideas and whims break through into actual visual manifestations, we’re meant to put forth the work we envision in the shower, in a conversation, in dreams, everywhere we look. Maybe some projects falter and crack, but if you look carefully enough, they always light the path to an even bolder and more thought out project, the original thought was just the starting block.


As viewers, we’re meant to not only appreciate the time and effort that has gone into the making, we’re also meant to see these creations as manifestations of our own goals, in whatever shape they might evolve. Like the maker (creator, artist, crafter, whatevs), as viewers we are also here to create and make something beautiful, just perhaps not visually. Creativity, while at times, goofy, melancholy, engaging, is at its root, transformative, freeing and bold sparking revolutions both inside and outside of ourselves.



*For more on Arturo di Modica, check out his website. For more information on his statue, Charging Bull, go check out the Charging Bull Wikipedia page. Most interesting perhaps, is the original NYT story written the day after the bull’s installation on Wall Street in 1989.

[For more about the second photo, it’s by Flickr user Fotologic. About this photo she writes, “A still from a stop frame animation I made with my 8 year old son today. The full quotation from Henri Bergson reads: “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating.”]

And for extra credit and two gold stars, go learn more about Henri Bergson, k?

Sometimes It’s the Quiet That Leaves the Biggest Scar

| Betsy

“Today the only works which really count are those which are no longer works at all.” -Theodore Adorno*

“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.” -John Berger**

It’s important to film and document what happens, when it happens. It’s important to leave documents of real life instead of curated life, which we’ve all become so used to. We document the happy moments, the milestones, the loved ones. We document so we don’t forget. The bad moments? We want to forget them, but we can’t. We don’t need photos, but what about people outside of our own heads? They need to see it too.

Riots, protests, need photographers and filmmakers. I want to document the quiet protests. The ones going on in houses, huts, tents, refugee camps, work about countries fleed from when they finally got to where they fled.

It’s the quiet I want to preserve and write down. I want to speak for them, not necessarily even out of a political standpoint, but a human one. We all want to leave this planet better than we started, to make our mark. While we with the internet and freedoms have a chance at that, millions don’t. I want to give them a chance to leave their mark and tell their stories.***


It took me a long time to uncover that the mundane is just as important as the other side of our reality. And finally, I came to a place where I believe that the most important work is done in, around, between and among these two worlds. The work of struggle and complacency, fighting against each other, just as those two opposing forces fight against each other all day long. We eat toast for breakfast while listening to the radio. At the very same time, somewhere a child is dying of starvation. Those are indelible aspects of our everyday lives, and I think it’s important to document them both.

The former and the latter are both someone’s realities. We create to ignore, justify, fight, love, hate, question those two differing worlds. For me, creation is just as much an act of salvation as it is an act of education. The mundane and the horrific have different stories to tell, and as such are equally important to take notice of. For years and years I tried to figure out what those two things fascinated me; figuring out their connection opened a whole new world. In their dissonance, they leave a bigger mark than by their isolation.

As for the scar left behind? It’s the emotions that the images themselves evoke as opposed to an actual physical mar. Most scars we can cover by wardrobe or makeup. But, however, when we sit down to create? There’s no makeup or wardrobe to hide behind, the curtain’s open before us, waiting for us to open it wider rather than run away or shut them tight.

*Epigraph from the Introduction of The Object of Performance by Henry M. Sayre.
**Ways of Seeing, by John Berger. (Page 1)
***Something I scribbled down one day at random.