guatemala

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.

Home Again.

| Betsy

Back home from Guatemala. Can still feel tiny hands clutching mine. The giant smiles on tiny faces looking up at me and the rapid Spanish? Miss those, too.

As for craftivism, have you seen the article about it in The Observer? It’s about the awesomeness of Carrie Reichardt and her house. Will put up the whole article later as the pics don’t show online… either does the sidebar about the work of Garth Johnson, Sarah Corbett and me! Yay!

P.S. This is also the only photo I will ever upload online of me from the back. I have better ones of the children, but given the rate of child kidnapping in Guatemala (for adoption, sex trade and organs), am not going to put them online. Those mothers have enough to worry about, I’m not going to broadcast their children’s faces on the internet.