Gee’s Bend Quilts, Keeping Craft Cozy

In a recent newsletter for the Dreamrocket, Jennifer Marsh mentioned that some quilters from Gee’s Bend were donating a few panels to the Dreamrocket project. She notes in the newsletter that,

“In 1937 and ’38, the federal government commissioned two series of photographs of Gee’s Bend. The images have since become some of the most famous images of Depression-era American life.

In earlier years, one of the primary influences on the Gee’s Bend quilt aesthetic was the newspaper- and magazine-collages used for insulation on the inside walls of homes in the rural American South.”

While I knew the second bit, I wasn’t aware of the first and immediately headed to the Library of Congress website to track them down. You can see the gallery here which is nothing short of amazing. Out of the whole gallery, the photo below is one of my favorites. As you can see, it clearly shows that newspaper and magazines were used to keep out the cold winter (and yes, it does it cold in Alabama in the winter!).

Over the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about this photo. And how craft’s utilitarian history sets it apart from art as it surrounds us literally in sweaters and quilts and afghans, and how craft has literally embedded its kindness and quiet strength into our skin and made itself home. How the quilters of Gee’s Bend can take creative inspiration from newspaper covering their walls to keep out the cold, the same newspaper that we recycle everyday or that people leave on a bench to eventually float all over town like urban smog-colored tumbleweeds.

How craft has the ability to stimulate our creativity and our passions and still keeps us warm and cozy. It can expand in all directions, and bring us together, whether its out of necessity by a family sewing a quilt to keep them surviving through the winter, or through a knitting circle with friends both old and new. It keeps us humble and away from the traps of art world, while quietly urging us to move forward and seek new inspirations and directions. And it’s that quiet cozy push to move forward that makes me continue to fall in love with craft again and again. I know it must look a hell of a lot like art to some, but the roots of craft will never allow us to stray so far as to lose our way as sometimes happens in the big bad art world.

And, I, for one, am forever grateful and truly humbled for that, by craft’s long tradition that keeps me safe and cozy and secure with what I’m making, never failing to block out harsh comment or criticism like the simplest of insulation, newspaper keeping out the cold on a harsh Alabama night.

There is No Myth of the Tortured Crafter.

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.