back from craft-land

I spent the weekend in Minneapolis for the American Craft Council Conference and it was so intense that felt like a month but was really only 2 days. The luxury of just being able to think and talk (to anyone around you) about craft was really indulgent and amazing and so helpful in thinking about what direction and refine the focus of what it is I am most interested in Craft.

I am still unpacking alot of what was said and discussed. I knew that there could be some drama in the craft world and the drama was there in effect and really interesting, especially in the context of feeling a little like an outsider, not making a living via craft or coming from an institution. Above everything, the weekend reaffirmed the approach that I want to stay posited right where I am - one foot in the design world (where collaboration and commerce meet craft) and one foot in a DIY mode of learning and perfecting and making the work. The two spaces reinforce each other, and though its perhaps slower going than if I could devote all my time to it, with ready mentors, its already generating alot of interesting ideas and questions I want to explore.

I think that they will be posting podcasts of the lectures on the ACC website at some point in the future - for now I will be deciphering my notes and will write about my impressions in the next two weeks.

the problem of making a thing, but not selling a thing.

all the questions we are taught to use when you first meet someone:

what do you do?
where do you live?
what are your hobbies?

are designed to help you quickly put them in a definable box.

what is your place in our economy?
what sort of consumption patterns so you participate in?
not looking at everything every person as a commodity
is a really hard thing in our society.

In the craft world at large, more than likely meeting folks will lead to the questions:
"do you sell?"

My "correct" answer is 'I dont." I say that, and alot of the time there is a pause. oh. ok. Its a weird pause, like if youre not selling it...well...? Then what?

Sometimes its an enthusiastic: "you SHOULD!"

Is the more correct answer: "oh no, I just buy stuff. My role is the consumer."

I do purchase yarn, support local artisans in the community by purchasing tools I need from from them. I try to purchase the raw fiber from local dye artists who are dyeing and processing fiber on a small scale on their own terms. I am also a maker too - just not participating in the commodity exchange at the end of my project.

Somehow that answer bothers me.

Despite 40+ hour dayjob, I still cant help but make things in every other moment of my life. Even if during the day I have to use my hands on a keyboard and not on a wheel or needle for work.

Is the validation for being a craftsman in that you make something to sell? Can it be for the enjoyment of the work, the learning, the expression?

As you know, this is all about process an learning for me. I do this for the preservation and the desire and impetus to learn more, to keep the knowledge alive a flowing. There are not a ton of people out there who find spinning yarn (for example, for which I am most passionate) particularly fascinating, and I feel like I am one of the lucky few who do. (If you go to a spinning conference, you will find many many others) and its an obligation to the craft to learn everything I can about it, caretake what knowledge I can absorb, perhaps add my own spin to it, but more importantly keep it alive.

The best answer I can come up with right now is to borrow from my friend Zoe: "No, but I am a major Enthusiast." (its not assertive enough somehow.)

Or perhaps I would like to assert a reclamation of the term "AMATEUR" as one who gives themselves fully and devotionally to a subject while otherwise financially employed in an entirely different venture.

So,
how do you talk about what you do?
does it matter to sell a thing?
where does the thing you make go to live its potential?

working on it

just a quick pop in - im trying to figure out how to do this and also stay sane in my insane dayjob. this subject will definately be a topic i want to cover - how on earth do you do balance a dayjob with the things that your brain requires (when you dont get it from your job) and your hands require. how to do these things so that you can get to bigger and better things. i know its not in the best interested of my dayjob (as differentiated by my work which is what i feel like this is) for me to have outside interests that stray me into focusing more on that, but in order to submit the day i need the allowance.

also i have been thinking about how important it would be to really create a cohort of people who are working on thier own projects but in need of some sort of similar motivation.

to be continued.....

momentary (month-long) distraction

I fully intended on jumping right into my studies this month.

I got a little distracted by this:

“Forest Canopy Shawl”/ Handspun DK 2 ply Superwash Merino fiber from PigeonRoof Studios

(click on image to see whole thing)

(thats sort of compulsory spinners/knitters footnotes)

Ive been thinking a lot about process while knitting this shawl.

Why did I sit on the yarn so long if I thought I knew what to do with it while I was spinning?

(The fiber was spun over last christmas vacation intended for sock yarn, but the plied yarn was too thin in certain places to make a good sock yarn in the end.)

At what point did I feel comfortable enough to embark on the Forest Canopy pattern?

The pattern actually took a lot of thinking about whether the variations in the colors would look ok, or if it would stripe at all. (it did, is ok.)

Spinning this yarn was during a really stressful period of living at my parents house – looking at it I will never forget the feeling of hiding out on Christmas Eve in our bedroom just taking a moment to spin to calm myself. The light in that bedroom was really terrible. I had no idea how many colors and interactions there were until I saw it when I was done plying, and all the while I was knitting it there was a constant delight at the way the colors played out in the lace pattern.

C R A F T A S A P R O C E S S O F P H Y S I C A L M E M O I R

What then about all these thoughts, and how they get ironed in by our movements and actions. How all of the above is what I am processing as I am knitting the shawl stitch by stitch.

And then questions of intent. Will I still continue to think these things when I wear it? Will I wear it? Did I imagine already while I was casting on that there was one person for whom this shawl was meant for? That made clear to me when I finally was knitting the yarn in its rightful purpose. Not socks. A shawl. And suddenly the purpose of the process, already begun back in December, is realized.

I cant think about craft as anything other than process.

Ive reconciled in the knitting of this shawl that in my interpretation, craft is a VERB.

A transformational process.

The nouns that we collect to start a process are infused with POTENTIAL.

We courier this potential in our leg of the work to its final state which can be in different spots in the lifecycle of the material – for one person the finished material state is the beginning of another person's process cycle.

Also that life gets in the way sometimes, and knitting is the way that I cope and process that.

Onwards.

...cohort...?

if theres anyone who wants to throw a whole lot onto thier plate and do thier own subject DIY - MA or MFA related to craft, material studies, art, etc......please let me know.

theres a thought of perhaps putting together a loose group of over achievers to get through this together. seeing as its DIY, you can start anytime, and do whatever you want you know?

:)

WTF DIY MFA N CRAFT????

edited to add 10/2009
this list is my hope and aspiration for what I can work up to - rigorous studio practice. Ive put alot of pressure on myself and been disappointed in for only being able to work on this from time to time - but a part of the evolution to getting to the work is the finding yourself in new habits.

So, still evolving. Ive now come to that monthly I am focusing on one aspect of the curriculum and this month (since I will be going to the American Crafts Council Conference later this month.) Its craft theory.

The culmination of this project is going to be a thesis with a body of work that supports it. And I think (right now) the subject is going to be about Process.

(P.S. my dad is totally laughing right now because he is a software development process consultant and I grew up with as the things he talked about (metaprocesses, dev. cycles, etc.) what he was thinking about his field are actually mirrored in a really direct way to what is really starting to take shape as being applicable to not only making things with your hands but also DIY as a process of living ones life, a vehicle to enact change. OK DAD, your research and work really does make sense to me, and thank you for the inspiration!)


officially to start June 1, 2009

C O M P O N E N T S:

H A N D W O R K:
commit to working on challenging knitting, spinning and embroidery/sewing projects - learning more and more challenging techniques.

S K E T C H B O O K:
purpose is a commitment to seeing and working on hand rendering skills - 4 pages per week - draw whatever - to get into the practice of drawing as making.

R E A D I N G:
work through reading list

C R A F T O P H I L I A:
podcast with Alisa - in development. focus on the "private crafter...craft not for money...i'll show you just how to do..." (sorry, will explain later.)

T H E W O R K:
start working on pieces that I have had mapped out for years - do one step per week - document said steps on this blog - keep moving forward - one step at a time - to become a daily practice - take the place of sketchbook

T H E C O M M U N I T Y:
go to guild meetings - lectures - travel to conferences and workshops - to learn and write about themes encountered on this blog - on the roster for the rest of the year:

Sock Summit 2009 - August 9th - Luminary Panel
American Craft Council - October 15-17 - Creating a New Craft Culture
Spin Off Autumn Retreat (SOAR) - October 29-November 1


E V E R Y S I X M O N T H S:
summary writing on what has happened in the last "semester."

W H E N E V E R:
posts about things that i come across that relate to craftnart and what im thinking about them.

C U L M I N A T I O N:
paper. body of work. joy of studying craft n handmade. bliss.

I N S U M M A T I O N:
lets begin!

OMG DIY MFA N CRAFT!!!!!!

Welcome to the documentation of my continuing ongoing never ending education.

For the last 10 years I have really, more than anything, wanted to go back to school. Or is it just that in all my spare time I do things that are school-like. When others see what what I am reading, alot of the time I don't think they know what to do with the fact that I'm reading about spinning wheel construction or reading about craft theory. (whatever, thats what I do!) I also feel like I need to spend the time to fully develop my stand and body of work that makes sense of where Ive moved from photography to a more interdisciplinary form (including philosophy). (i.e. make that portfolio of work, work out the problems and ideas Ive got about craft and art and making.)

I hope to do this here. My new project.

Projects are the way that I make sense of the world. When I come upon something interesting, beautiful, complicated, my mind goes immediately to how that idea can be expressed in materiality or a process that could translate it into a more immediate experience. Having a "project" to do gives form to the many things that I am drawn to and have to consequently learn everything about.

Once upon a time I went to art school. (sort of - I graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a BA in Art.) Photography was my concentration, with healthy side dishes of Semiotics and Art Theory.

ART. NERD.

I experienced what Ive heard and read has been a common experience of others who were in art school in the early 90's - that the more I studied the world of signs n symbols and relating it to my artwork the less I feel bodily connected to the work. My photographs became increasingly more conceptual, even though the first attraction to the discipline was the craft of working in the darkroom and the working of the material and light. I felt more and more connected to the ideas and less to the photographs - to the point that I froze and ceased to generate new images of my own and embracing the cut n mix of appropriation in my work.

After college, I deposited myself right into the working world, hoping to find the reality and grit of daily life (modeled after tragic characters from Jean Rhys) Photography became a sort of thing that I could do easily commercially, and went from having day jobs and doing my "real artwork" at night to working in darkrooms and doing fine printing for other photographers and still doing my "real artwork" at night. Not that much more connected to the work - still working in the world of ideas. I was never quite able to wrap my head around my growing archives - the chasm between the ideas and concepts I would try to execute and then the actual process of how I used photography - which was instinctual, in the moment, responding completely to situations as they were and little manipulation of reality.

After the cancer days, photography felt like a betrayal. I stopped working in the darkroom and suddenly realized that was actually what I loved most in the practice of photography - the process by hand of printing. I suddenly felt that I needed to make a meaningful legacy, even if it was just hats I knitted for my newborn nephews. The hats felt more real, more lasting, more of an expression of life than any artwork I had ever done previous.

Something about Craft (and the timing of the start of our Los Angeles chapter of the Church of Craft) and seeing time expressed by thread (magic of every object knitted or sewn I could recall the time, the feeling of making the piece, the places I knitted on it) was intensely therapeutic while I was going through treatment. Not only was it healing for my mind to contemplate these pieces and the time that I was giving indirectly to the recipient of the thing I was making, but the joy of doing this work with others (as opposed to working in solitude and trying to achieve the making of something completely distinct from other artists) was something very real and amazing to experience. I started to teach knitting and sewing classes around Echo Park and Silverlake, and fell in love with the craft community that started to grow there...

I ran from Art to find refuge in Craft.

Craft saved my sanity and my life with its thread, its fabric to touch, to count, the giving of oneself into a project.

I believe that CRAFT can help ART become the exhuberent expression of being alive and community that they both embody.

DIY because there is never a reason not to. I grew up making zines, making bands, making a culture of ones own - Punk Rock made it possible to envision a life that you could create with your own hands. We didnt need outside validation to be our own real thing. . I almost feel the same way about going back to school - more on that topic later.

Whether or not I end up back in school or not doesn't really matter. More than anything its a framework with which to think about all these things, and make sense of craft.

D-I-Y M-O-F-A-R-T-S-N-C-R-A-F-T-S !!!!!