Craft: Why Breaks Are Okay, And So is Re-Entry

| Betsy

Funny how life loves to throw you curveballs. Even more funny (in the ironic sense, unfortunately not the “ha ha” sense), when craft saves you once, and then saves your ass again.

And speaking of craft saving your ass, I bought Kathleen Vercillo’s new book this morning, Crochet Saved My Life: The Mental and Physical Health Benefits of Crochet, which I will be reviewing and sharing more about here soon.

If you look over here, you will see in the slideshow, a photo of the piece above when I was just beginning it. Several years ago. The photo in the slideshow was all “Woohoo! New piece! Yeah!” and then I started it, effed up some of the stitches (after showing it to Mr. X Stitch and Lauren O’Farrell in London in 2011, I knew most of it needed to be redone. Subsequently, the photo you see above is of a piece that has been redone, several times. Pieces of the aida cloth up towards the top of the piece are (in some cases) down to their last literal threads.

Fast forward to earlier this spring, during a talk in a class on Creative Dissent at the Corcoran, when I was talking about my own work. I mentioned that the series linked above is something I’ve been working on off and on since 2004. One of the students said the equivalent of “Dude, that’s a really long time.” To which I responded, honestly and without hesitation, “Yes.” If anything, this series has taught me how not only our lives ebb and flow, but our creative endeavors, do, too. And, sometimes, these two intersect in a cluster*ck of inaction, uncertainty, doubt, frustration, and, frankly, wanting to just effin’ quit. Not life, necessarily, but all its flourishes aside from sleep/work.

And if you’re like me, you end up eating little but toast and hiding all your work in boxes and watching really bad tv reruns. And then one day, your fingers start to itch and you wonder, “what ever happened to that piece I was working on?” And after the excavation of 4 other boxes, in the 5th box, you find what you were looking for. And the intersection between life and creativity bubbles up in your brain and you start stitching. And you realize that there are reasons for these creative breaks, and you understand why at some museums you see that 1 piece by 1 artist took 9 years. Because we are made to ebb and flow, we are made to create. However, sometimes things get so shite that you end up in Toastville using your boxes full of creative projects as a makeshift cat beds so the cat can look out windows. (Truth!)

So, again, I realize that while these breaks perfectly natural, it is imperative for them to be “breaks” and not a “full-stop quit.” I also realize that sometimes those “breaks” honestly feel like a “full-stop quit,” especially when you get to Toastville (or your equivalent of Toastville)! And that’s okay. We’re allowed to burn out, stop, take a break, go learn new things or just zone out for a bit. However, we need to also give ourselves permission to fall in love again. To realize why we began to stitch/paint/insert-creative-endeavor-here in the first place.

We need the break in order to refuel and recharge and remember why we’re here, what we love, why we make, and who we are. However, we need to give ourselves permission to take one in the first place. So, while you hopefully don’t make it all the way to Toastville, hopefully you will allow yourself to stop when you feel like it. And when you look back at that project that took 7 years when it should have taken 1 month, remember that break with pride, serenity, and joy.

I was there the day that the students were knitting (in some cases learning to knit!) to make this “Student Debt Blanket.” You can see them (they were awesome!) in the video below, along with their blanket:

Creative Protest: Studet Debt Blanket 1 from FoodFight on Vimeo.

Me, in 3-D, and the “New Domesticity”

| Betsy

Recently I had the opportunity to become an official “talking head” sociologist for a story on Voice of America about why “young” people are returning to domesticity.
Also, interviewed in the story is Emily Matchar of New Domesticity. As @thejaymo mentioned on Twitter the other day, this is, indeed, proof that I am a real 3-D human and not a typing robot.

Also, of note, there appears to be a university class on Craftivism at George Washington University, which oddly is a university in the same city in which I live. Welcome, students! I kind of want to meet you all for coffee and talk craftivism now.



P.S. The skirt I’m wearing in this piece was made by Zoe’s Lollipop.

P.P.S. I just enabled Disqus comments/reactions here, and it tells me that old comments made before today will show up on older posts. I hope so, otherwise, I’ll be looking mighty unpopular! :)

“Why?” or “What Works?”

| Betsy

This morning I woke up wondering lots of “WHYs?” Why do/did people agree with the idea of craftivism? Why do people read what I write? Why do people like what I make? Why do I want to share their thoughts and essays in a craftivism anthology?* Why, why, why, and so on. Let be said, even I felt like a beleaguered parent after awhile after my proverbial inner 5 year old just would not stop with all the “Whys.” The cat was little help, the birds that visit the bird feeder outside also didn’t seem to have any pertinent suggestions, although I swear they did eye me more inquisitively this morning than they usually do.

And I think we all ask ourselves questions like these more often than we admit. But, why don’t we admit it? (There I go again, another why question!) After finally getting diagnosed correctly for the first time in over 30 years, it’s like all these questions no longer linger, they instead serve their true purpose, which is to find the real truth behind the matter, instead of making me want to hide underneath the covers all day and eat biscuits.

In re-discovering the wonderful book Art and Fear this morning, I think I have found an answer. All these “whys” (and the proceeding “What works?”) come because you can never truly pinpoint when the moment is that there was connection of your work with others’ hearts, minds, or other parts. Because that moment exists in another place behind now, which is where you’re working as you’re typing, stitching, painting, drawing, quilting. “Why” is for now, “what works” is for later, but they’re both still not present in the moment of creation, where new things are springing from your hands right now. In creation, we drop the “whys” and the “what works” and are left with what is. And once what is is in the hands of others, we can start to question ourselves (and possibly our sanity) again, but that moment of creation, we continue to come back to, because that’s where all the questions stop and we can truly bring ourselves to the present moment.

From Art and Fear:

In following the path of your heart, the chances are that your work will not be understandable to others. At least not immediately, and not to a wide audience. When the author fed his computer the question, “What works?,” a curious pattern emerged: a consistent delay of about five years between the making of any given negative, and the time when prints from that negative began selling. In fact, one now-popular work was first reproduced in a critical review to illustrate how much weaker the then-new work had become. Performing artists face the added, real-time terror of receiving an instant verdict on their work in person- like the conductor being pummeled with a barrage of rotten fruit halfway through the Paris premier of Rites of Spring, or Bob Dylan being hooted off the stage the first time he appeared live with an electric guitar. No wonder artists so often harbor a depressing sense that their work is going downhill: at any given moment the older work is always more attractive, always better understood.

This is not good. After all, wanting to be understood is a basic need- an affirmation of the humanity you share with everyone around you. The risk is fearsome: in making your real work you hand the audience the power to deny the understanding you seek; you hand them the power to say, “you’re not like us; you’re weird; you’re crazy.”

So, I guess, after all, we should just be happy when we find ourselves asking questions like “why” and “what works” because that means we still care enough to be understood, relavent, connected. But, at the same time, we should also be sure that we let those questions go and just create after awhile, too, because they are just the framework that allow us the knowledge that our goal is to connect with others; the work itself is what allows us to actually do so.


*Yes! (And given the quote above, a good thing it takes several years to get these types of things together, no?) After wanting to do so for a long time, I’m finally announcing that a possible craftivism anthology is in the works. I want to share people’s definitions of craftivism along with their craftivist-related projects, especially from countries outside of the US and the UK. Want to share your story? English not your native language? Or worried that “writing just isn’t your thing?” No worries! All that can be fixed. First, I want to hear your idea of what you’d like to write about! Get in touch!

Beili Liu’s The Mending Project, Wellington Craftivism Collective’s Pussy Riot Protest Fence

| Betsy

Last week, I came across this amazing video over at Colossal of Beili Liu’s new installation The Mending Project at the (what looks like the amazing) Women and Their Work Gallery.

As you can see from the video, Liu is “mending” cloth while sitting underneath hundreds of Chinese scissors, juxtaposing safety with violence, security with the unknown, and what can destroy with what can (literally) mend.

And from another project this week, one done in solidarity with the Pussy Riot Protest Fence done in Melbourne, Australia by Jacquie Tinkler, a yarnbomber and lecture at Charles Stuart University and Casey Jenkins, a yarnbomber and Craft Cartel member, another Pussy Riot Protest Fence by the Wellington Craftivism Collective!

While at first they may not seem connected, when I happened to look at both projects side by side, a striking connection did, in fact, emerge, when I carefully listened to these words spoken by Liu in the video:

I do think when we’re facing uncertainty and concern and that fear, or when we’re facing very difficult situations in life or in this world, the best thing we can do perhaps is something very simple. And if we can do it with persistence and calmness some change can happen.

I like the idea that “persistence” and “calmness” can foment change, as opposed to speed or anger. Steady pressure, fervent belief, process, intent; these things can bring groundswell, create shifts, deepen fault lines. Whether or not we are underneath hundreds of blades or stitching to fences, we are still helping “change””happen.” We are creating our own realities and paths and truths as we continue to sew, to stitch, to change, to mend.

“We Warrior Women”

| Betsy

First there was the Yahoo! News article that got my attention with the title, ‘We Women Warriors’: Bringing Needlepoint to a Gunfight. This text followed:

At the outset of the new documentary We Women Warriors, which opens this week in Los Angeles as part of 2012’s DocuWeeks Festival, a group of women in Colombia is seen spooling twine. The activity takes their minds off the ongoing violence of civil wars that have been a part of daily life in the country since the 1960s. Also, the resulting fabric can be sold to help finance their efforts to reclaim, through nonviolent means, the land that’s rightfully theirs, to peacefully dismantle police barracks that have overtaken their villages, and to mobilize marches to major cities to demonstrate their plight.

Naturally, I went to the documentary’s website and watched the trailed, which is below:

I was especially struck by the frame below (a still from the trailer, which is preceded by the words, “We call ourselves MUKANVI: Kankuamo Women Victims of Violence.” After the still, “But it is also the craft of carefully spinning out path as native peoples. When it is well made it doesn’t break.”

To find out more about this documentary, check out their website (where you can also sign up for their newsletter) and/or their Facebook page. To find out more about the director, Nicole Karsin, go check out her bio.


And speaking of these women’s strength, I found apt quote that agrees that all things bold need not be loud.

Though little dangers they may fear,
When greater dangers men environ
Then women show a front of iron;
And gentle in their manner, they
Do bold things in a quiet way.
-Thomas Dunn English,
Betty Zane, Stanza 1