Photo suite 66 -- German steeples

Happy Easter!

Craftivism

I’ve recently become aware of a movement whose name makes me gag – “craftivism.” Yet the underlying concept is worth exploring. It’s an umbrella term for many kinds of art and craft activities designed to promote good in the world. It’s as current as this week’s New York Times, as intellectually rigorous as my art history graduate seminar, as close to home as my fiber-art friends.

As I’ve read and heard about such activities from several different sources in the last couple of weeks, I think it’s time to think about what they are and how they fit into the art and craft scene.  These projects seem to fall into three major food groups.

First, charitable contributions or services, such as making scarves, toys, mittens, hats and afghans for soldiers, cancer patients, women’s shelters or the homeless; or teaching people to knit. This concept is as old as the hills (your great-grandmother might have knitted socks for soldiers in World War I; her grandmother might have done the same in the Civil War) but seems trendy with its new name.

Second, consciousness-raising display, making or doing something that will get people to think about political or social issues. In some cases, the audience is small and accidental; for instance, the Counterfeit Crochet Project encourages people to crochet and use "designer bags" as a commentary on brand identity and globalized marketing and manufacturing.

In other cases, the product is considered high art. For instance, textile artist Kelly Cobb enlisted an army of farmers and craftspeople to make a suit from products raised and produced within 100 miles of Philadelphia; it was exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Yarn-bombers covered a WW2 combat tank with pink squares to protest the war in Iraq; it was parked outside the Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center in Copenhagen.

Third, making things to sell.  This seems to break into two sub-groups.  

One seeks to make existing products more ethically or cheaply.  For instance, Blackspot sneakers, made from hemp and recycled tires, are made in fair-trade factories and sold through independent retailers, sans marketing hype.  Ethical Metalsmiths make jewelry using only socially and environmentally acceptable materials (no conflict diamonds), and recycle the metals and gems from old jewelry.

The second uses craft to help disadvantaged people make a living.  Not a new concept -- perhaps you remember the Freedom Quilting Bee, founded in Alabama in 1966 as part of the civil rights movement; rural black women made products to sell and the next thing you knew, we had the Gee's Bend extravaganza!  Professional craftspeople are often enlisted to go to remote areas and help the locals improve their skills and design products that will be more appealing to potential buyers.  For instance, my friend Philis Alvic, a weaver, has worked with craftspeople in a dozen different countries from Nepal to Tanzania to Peru.

Some of these projects seem like no-brainers (ladies who quilt, sew and knit have been making and donating things forever).  Others seem kind of cerebral, a variety of conceptual art, and still others seem like great ideas for collective action but hard to incorporate into one's personal agenda.  I'll be thinking more about this subject -- and if you have thoughts, please share them!

Sign of the week

Found pennies -- success!!

A couple of weeks ago I was whining about how many times I had to try to get my found pennies to hang nicely in a grid.  I realize that I have never reported back on how that worked out.

Fortunately, it worked very well.  Here's the finished piece, casting beautiful shadows under the multiple gallery lights.  I think it's probably the best piece in the show, from a purely aesthetic viewpoint.

I'm also happy to report that somebody liked it well enough to buy it -- and best of all, it's somebody who had been reading about the difficult genesis of this piece on the blog.  So she'll always know how much I wanted it to come into being.

Update: I'm posting this to Nina Marie's weekly blog roundup -- check it out to see what other fiber artists have been doing this week.

Photo suite 65 -- taking the gloves off

Most of the gloves abandoned on the street are work gloves, fungible in the extreme.  But now and then I find gloves that surely were survived by a grieving twin and owner.

My book is art 3

I wrote earlier this week about how Keith Auerbach took pictures of my 15th century book and through the magic of Photoshop transformed them into a series of art prints now on display at Pyro Gallery in Louisville.  Now in a circling back home, I have taken one of his prints and turned it into my own version of art.

Keith had hundreds of postcards for his show that the printer had done wrong and could not be mailed, and he offered them to his friends.  I took a pile and decided to slice them into bits and reconfigure them -- exactly as Keith had done with the photos of my book.  But my reconfiguration was a version of my old favorite "postage stamp" quilt.

For years I've been saving all the announcement postcards I get in the mail for art exhibits, and thinking of sewing them together into a postage stamp array.  This project was a dry run, much smaller than I envision the work of my dreams.

I learned that using paper is in some ways easier than fabric (you don't have to first stitch the little "quilts" together, and you don't end up all covered in bits of thread and fraying fabric) and in some ways trickier (if you run out of thread or make a mistake, you have to carefully fit your needle into the pre-existing holes).  And I learned that the glossy finish of postcards makes the finished product very difficult to photograph, so if I ever make the work of my dreams it may have a hard time getting juried into anything.

But meanwhile, I enjoyed taking the process of cutting, multiplying and reconfiguring one step farther.