interview

Interview with Nina Elliott (@rock_vandal)!

| Betsy

This next craftivism interview is with Nina Elliott! To find out more about her work, check out @rock_vandal on Instagram and rockvandals.com.

1. What does craftivism mean to you?

Craftivism was a really exciting discovery for me. It allowed me to connect with my community socially and politically and to offer something unique and beautiful for everyone in the town. I find that it encourages patience, reflection and personal action and these are desirable attributes to me. 

 

A Pothole of Gold in Twillingate

 

2. Why yarnbombing?

I first read about yarnbombing online and didn’t understand the why. But when I saw one in real life my perspective shifted. I felt as if I had noticed something special amidst the hustle and bustle, a little expression of joy that beamed regardless of whether it was noticed or not.  I love the idea of being able to surprise and delight people while also encouraging present moment awareness and in my mind, yarnbombing facilitates this beautifully. 

All you Knit is Love tucked behind Tickle Point Mercantile in Twillingate
All you Knit is Love tucked behind Tickle Point Mercantile in Twillingate

 

3. What compelled you to do your first yarnbomb? What was surprising about the process? 

I was living in Twillingate, a really tiny, isolated town off the NE coast of Newfoundland with a long winter ahead and time on my hands. The fact that yarnbombs are temporary and easily removed made trying it out seem relatively risk free. I yarnbombed a tree on my route to work and felt a surge of joy each time I passed it. I didn’t tell anyone, but somehow people suspected that I was the Yarnbomber. Regardless, I denied involvement and kept on knitting, ultimately orchestrating a bit of a small town mystery-this added quite a lot to the fun to the whole process!  

The most surprising part was definitely how receptive and supportive the community was. This is something that continues to blow my mind the further down this path I venture, and it extends to the townsfolk, the crafting community at large and the virtual community as well. It seems everyone can love a Yarnbomb!

The Deadly Pipe Sucker is the only snake in Newfoundland was my first 3D Yarnbomb.
The Deadly Pipe Sucker is the only snake in Newfoundland was my first 3D Yarnbomb.

 

4. Tell us about Old Manolis and the Sea. How did it start? How did it grow? 

It all began with a friend asking me to join a committee to raise public concern over a sunken ship off the coast. The ship, the Manolis L., sank 30 years prior with over 500 tonnes of oil onboard and the Canadian government had made no effort to remove it, despite oiled birds washing ashore. There was quite a lot of concern about the issue locally and provincially and the community was rallying.

Old Manolis and the Sea began as an idea to knit black starfish for the main thoroughfare in town, with the starfish representing the potential environmental impact of an oil spill. This evolved to include a community Knit and Yoga event, creation of a zine by an artist in New Brunswick and woolly donations from crafters from as far away as Ontario. In the end, I was able to make three installations, one in Twillingate, one in St. John’s, the provincial capital and another in Ottawa, the national capital! 

While the ship still remains in place, there is some progress to report as the government has taken the very first step towards recovery by initiating a full assessment of the wreck just this summer. Hopefully, it won’t take another 30 years for the next step to be completed.

The Knit and Yoga retreat where Twillingaters helped knit starfish for Old Manolis and the Sea
The Knit and Yoga retreat where Twillingaters helped knit starfish for Old Manolis and the Sea
Twillingate's Old Manolis and The Sea installation
Twillingate’s Old Manolis and The Sea installation

5. What’s up next? What’s your dream craftivism project? 

This is a tough question! Right now I’m backpacking through SE Asia, yarnbombing each country I visit and I’ve got a few more stops before heading home. I see craftivism as a means to respond to community issues so will have to wait to see what inspiration comes from returning to the stability of life at home. Travelling has given great opportunity to open my eyes to global environment issues, to talk with people from all over the world and to subsequently see Canada with refreshed eyes; but I’ll probably need the solitude of a Twillingate winter to really conceptualize something and start to get crafty! 

Chillingate: another community knit project
Chillingate: another community knit project

Interview with Kathleen Morris (@textilewarrior)!

| Betsy

Next up in this interview series is Kathleen Morris (@textilewarrior) who runs Seeds for Bees! She also mentions the work of @stitchforus. You can see an interview with Lisa Hallden here. I’ve included the photos after the text because Kathleen wrote such lovely captions!

1. What does craftivism mean to you?  

I feel very strongly about many issues, but I’m not keen on confrontation. Craftivism is a way for me to make a gentle protest, often in a fun or beautiful way that can raise awareness and influence people in small ways without making them (or me!) feel uncomfortable or threatened. There’s also a lot of community and personal engagement in craftivism whether it’s remotely by Guerrilla Kindness, directly in groups with community art projects or individually when an exhibited piece prompts a conversation. 

 

2. What is Seeds for Bees?

Seeds for Bees is a guerrilla kindness craftivism project aimed at increasing habitat for the bees and to encourage seed saving and sharing.

My accomplices and I leave handmade packets of bee-attracting flower seeds (usually a mix of marigold, alyssum and sunflowers) on the streets for anyone to find and take home to plant in their garden. It’s a little bit of happy for them and quite a lot for the bees. A good seed drop is in a great location, where likeminded people will find it like street art lanes, eco festivals, organic cafes, community gardens, markets and public transport corridors. 

 

3. How did it get started?

I have always been a keen gardener and when my husband and I moved into the house we live in now, there was nothing but lawn and three old fruit trees. The soil was tired and didn’t have much life in it so I decided to renew it with organic methods, composting, worm farms and no-dig. I self-studied permaculture and over the next ten years our backyard has been rejuvenated without the use of commercial fertilisers or pesticides. I began to get a feel for the earth, planting sacrificial broccoli and spinach for the caterpillars and not spraying the aphids. With this came the return of birdlife, the ladybugs, butterflies and bees.  

Over time my love of nature turned into a respect for it, to not mess with it, to give back what I take and do what I can on my patch to restore balance. 

I had recently learned about the “Doomsday Vault” in Norway and it scared the hell out of me. I also realised the importance of seed, that just about every living thing on our planet depends on it for food and the air we breathe, then my fear turned into annoyance about massive corporations owning seed rights. This was the catalyst for seeds for bees. 

At the end of Autumn, 2015 (that’s around May here in Australia) instead of composting spent plants, I let my vegie patch go to seed and flower, and saved thousands of heirloom marigold seeds (which had been handed down through three generations from my grandmother) with the intention of giving them away. Broccoli, parsley, spinach, Boc Choy and radish in flower really is a sight to behold and I was amazed at the number of bees buzzing around my garden. It was a hive of industry and I was fascinated and thoroughly entertained watching their overloaded pollen bodies trying to fly away. It now seemed I had a thing for bees and I knew as a species they were in trouble. I wanted to help.

I tore and stitched pages from the (1000+) pages of a Dinosauria I found in a box of deleted library books waiting for me to make something out of to enter into a repurposed book art exhibition, stamped them with “seeds for bees” and collaged them with pretty recycled papers. To date I’ve done this another 1890 times since (give or take a few).

 

4. How long have you been doing it? How big do you want to grow it? 

My first seed drop was in August 2015 at tram stop 8 on the street where I live in Adelaide, South Australia. I was pretty nervous and self conscious but they were snaffled up by the time the next tram arrived. So I made more and pegged them up at other stops along the tram corridor and posted photos to social media with the #seedsforbees hashtag.

That very day I was approached by public artist and craftivist Sayraphim Lothian from Melbourne, Australia. She loved the idea and offered to peg some up around her city. Since then I have been inundated with requests and now nearly 2000 packets have been pegged up by more than 30 collaborators all over Australia (Adelaide, Melbourne, Newcastle, Brisbane, Townsville, Hobart) and more recently in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Quarantine restrictions in some Australian states and also in Sweden have given me the opportunity to collaborate with other seed savers in these places. Seeds for Bees have also been used as bonbonnieres at three weddings, as corporate gifts for not for profit organisations and a few offshoot seed drop projects have begun in Hobart, Brisbane and Germany.

 I will keep growing the seeds and making packets for as long as people will take them but it’s getting to the point now where I need help to keep up with the demand. I’m always trying to connect with more local, national and international seed savers who practice organic gardening methods, crafty folk to help me with the stamping, stitching and stuffing, and of course accomplices to perform seed drops.

If you’d like to get involved, visit textilewarrior.com and send me a message, or you can follow Seeds For Bees on Instagram: @textilewarrior and Facebook: textilewarrior.

Stamp, Stitch, Stuff, Repeat.
Stamp, Stitch, Stuff, Repeat.

 

No borders

Collaboration with @stitchforus - human rights activist/craftivist in Sweden. Lisa has made guerrilla stitches to accompany nearly all seed drops in Stockholm. Collaborating with Lisa has probably been one of the most personally enjoyable aspects of the project, she invested so much time and I’ve loved seeing her images come up in my instagram feed.
Collaboration with @stitchforus – human rights activist/craftivist in Sweden. Lisa has made guerrilla stitches to accompany nearly all seed drops in Stockholm. Collaborating with Lisa has probably been one of the most personally enjoyable aspects of the project, she invested so much time and I’ve loved seeing her images come up in my Instagram feed.

 

“Daisy Chains” - Little Rundle Street, Adelaide. The big arse wall of flowers I made as part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival Street Art project drawing attention to the fact that bees need flowers. It accompanied a seed drop of 200 packets. This piece measured 3 metres x 1.8 metres and was made from woven and crocheted plastic bags. I made the kids too :)
“Daisy Chains” – Little Rundle Street, Adelaide. The big arse wall of flowers I made as part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival Street Art project drawing attention to the fact that bees need flowers. It accompanied a seed drop of 200 packets. This piece measured 3 metres x 1.8 metres and was made from woven and crocheted plastic bags. I made the kids too :)

 

Seed drop in Hosier Lane (street art precinct) in Melbourne by @sayraphim
Seed drop in Hosier Lane (street art precinct) in Melbourne by @sayraphim

 

Seed drop at Flinders Street Markets in Adelaide (South Australia).
Seed drop at Flinders Street Markets in Adelaide (South Australia).

 

Interview with Lisa Hallden (@stitchforus)!

| Betsy

For this interview, I asked Lisa Hallden of @stitchforus about her beautiful work. Read on to learn about why she does what she does, how she keeps her work so darn neat, and more!

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1.     What does craftivism mean to you? 

Craftivism is punk. It’s do-it-yourself, use what you have (in my case cut-off jeans and the rags from an old rug) and lean by doing. It’s to use (the inherently human) creativeness to make other people feel good, impact change or better the world. I find craftivism really liberating. With focus on creativity rather than talent I could join in without actually being very good at it. So much fun, and so free.

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2. How did you come up with stitching signs as reactions to real-world events?

I started to stitch messages as the refugee crisis unfolded in Europe, in the autumn of 2015. I was filled with frustration over how European politics failed humanity and I wanted to scream from the rooftops that humanity was larger and worthier and more beautiful than what we saw of it. But I also felt frustrated with how easily words are spewed out into the public spare, in a debate where many scream and few listen. Words are rattled out so fast and lightly on a keyboard and I wanted to slow myself down. Stitching the words became the way to do that, to give the messages a slower pace and a denser weight. I feel that the time and touch that is ploughed into the pieces, in combination with the softness of the cloth and the thread, that gentleness of materials, strengthen the political power of the stitched words.

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3. How do you cross stitch so neatly? (All your pieces are so darn neat! I’m jealous!)

You wouldn’t believe how happy, as well as hugely surprised, I am to hear that you find my stitches neat. Their wonkiness is very apparent to me! To make them less wonky I use a sort of canvas that I pull out thread by thread from under the stitches, when I am finished. I’m not sure what the proper terminology for it is, but I’ve picked it up in my local charity shop (along with all the thread – it’s an amazing charity shop for craft!) and it works for me.

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4. How do you choose what you stitch with the news being full of less-than-positive things?

The slowness of the stitching gives a lot of time to think about the words, what connotations they contain and how they may be received. I find it a difficult balancing act, to say something positive when the world looks like it does. I am senselessly angry about the politics of Europe and the death and devastation that comes in its wake, but I want my stitches to stay away from blinding anger. When I tag the stitched words on the street I want them to become little peace offerings or prayer flags, calling for freedom and love, equality and solidarity and all the beauty of humanity.

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5. What is your mission with these pieces?

I hope to remind people of the goodness that lives in us all. To remind people that fear blinds us, but that the otherness out there is part of the same wonderful humanness. I hope that my pieces in a small way may help to build a bit of spirit to stand up to injustices and fight for the best of humanity. That sounds really pretentious. Oh well ­– I guess it has to be sometimes.

Interview with Krista Barmer (@pendrops)!

| Betsy

Today’s interview is with Krista Barmer, @pendrops! These bi-weekly interviews are a place to learn more about what craftivists are up to around the world, and I find people and their work by searching #craftivism over at Instagram. If you’d like to be interviewed (or know someone who I should interview), please drop me a line!

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1. What does craftivism mean to you?

For me, craftivism is three-fold. Practically, it means using creative techniques and mediums to draw attention to social issues. Secondly, if that art piece is sold, it means giving some percentage or all profits from the sale of that art piece to organizations that do work in that line of social justice. And lastly, it’s about telling a story. Because social issues are so vast, stories must help us connect to them. Whether it’s a literal or abstract expression, a story must be expressed in order to connect and inspire.

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2. Tell me about the Freedom Collection stitched pieces. What are they? How did they come to be?

The Freedom Collection is a series of textile art pieces that came to me in such a beautiful, unpredictable way! As an artist, I am always seeking to be present to everything around me and then channel what I’m observing and learning into a piece of textile art. My passion is always to connect something in my story to someone else’s story.

So this past spring, I watched a documentary called “The True Cost” about fast fashion and the sweatshop workers who pay a high price – sometimes with their lives – for consumerism and greed. I was already on board with the action points that the documentary talked about: I don’t buy clothing from foreign or domestic sweatshops and I have a minimalist closet. I began wondering what more I could do.

In the days after I watched the documentary, the first Freedom Collection piece started coming together. This issue of forced labor and slavery was so heavy on my heart and mind after the documentary and was tied so closely to a cause I’ve united with for more than a decade, it was inevitable that this collection emerged.

I stitch every day no matter what and I don’t really plan my projects, so the Freedom Collection just started pouring out of me. The design, the upcycled scraps of linen, the vintage threads and antique embellishments, the organically grown cotton fibers. Each material had a purpose, every stitch meant something, even the tatters and fragments spoke something to me about the precious lives caught in forced labor and slavery. I have always believed that the stitch is not a means to an end…it is the end. I love every stitch, just for its own sake. Even the ones that get tangled or snagged. I leave them as is because they introduce dimension and interest and beauty. That’s how I feel about all lives and, in this case, the lives of women and girls, mothers and daughters and sisters, in slavery and forced labor. They are not just a means to an end, something to be used and thrown out after we get what we want. Their lives matter, they have value and worth and belonging. So these meticulous, countless stitches represent their lives and their inherent value.

So the Freedom Collection was born very organically, an abstract textile representation of the lives of women and girls in forced labor within the global textile industry.

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3. Your work is about slavery and forced labor. Has making it changed you in any way? If so, how?

Making these pieces has absolutely changed me. Learning more about the issue of modern day slavery and forced labor in the global textile industry has challenged me to speak boldly in order to bring awareness to this issue. Hearing stories of individual women and girls in slavery and forced labor has stirred an even deeper compassion and empathy in me. And understanding the necessary steps to combat fast fashion, forced labor, modern slavery, systemic poverty, and consumerism has increased my commitment to this cause.

But even beyond that, the meditation of my heart and mind each time I sit down to work on a Freedom Collection piece has changed. I think of my sisters around the world. My fingers may ache after a couple hours of stitching, but I am in a comfortable chair, in an air conditioned room, in a clean, safe building, and get to be with my family while I stitch. These women often have to send their children away to live in better conditions while they work in big cities for 16-hour days, in dangerous, filthy buildings. I now think of these women with every stitch.

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4. You donate the proceeds of your work to the International Justice Mission (IJM). Why did you choose to donate to them specifically?

There are so many fantastic organizations who are working to end modern slavery. For me, I support IJM because of their effective model. They don’t just recover victims of slavery from traffickers, they also restore survivors of slavery to their communities, they work with local police to restrain criminals, and they represent survivors in court while working with local prosecutors. IJM has a track record of getting at the root of slavery and forced labor, to strengthen local justice systems around the globe, and prevent violence against the poor. They have a deep, tireless commitment to seeing slavery end in our lifetime. That’s why I have supported their work for over a decade.

 

5. What are your craftivist-related plans for the future? Where do you want to take this project? Is there a next craftivism-related project you’d like to do?

My craftivist plans are to continue making the Freedom Collection pieces for a long time. I’ve been overwhelmed by the support these pieces have received and am thrilled at the funds I’ve been able to donate to IJM the past few months.

I also plan to create more small-scale pieces that most anyone would be able to afford. My first few Freedom Collection pieces were larger, upwards of $100 USD. I’m now creating exceptional-quality, smaller pieces that are in the range of $25-$35 USD. This allows almost anyone to purchase a one-of-a-kind, artisan-crafted textile art piece while also donating to a worthy cause, all for the price of a new shirt.

I don’t usually plan out projects, but I have a project in the works creating pieces that raise awareness about depression and anxiety disorders. I plan to start focusing on those later this year.

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Thanks, Krista!

You can check out more of Krista’s work over on Instagram, @pendrops.

She can also be found via her Etsy shop, PendropsCouture.