Red Thread Studio

Is 2010 the Year of the Maker?

Many people who work with textiles (or ceramics, wood, glass, you name it), myself included, struggle with defining themselves. Are we artists, artisans, crafters? The answer often seems to rely on our own inner perception of the seriousness of the work, or on some kind of amateur/professional fault line. But lately I'm hearing more people use the term "maker," an interesting, and possibly very helpful, variation on the theme.

For most of us, choosing a position on the art-craft continuum isn't really necessary until we have to define our work for others, or make decisions about our own long-term direction and whether we want to operate in a gallery/studio system, as entrepreneur craftspeople, or some other model. Then all kinds of issues come up -- are we good enough to call ourselves artists? Is craft too often misinterpreted as that dreaded thing, a hobby? What if we work in many media and don't have the kind of focus that being an artist or artisan implies? Do we have to separate function from beauty, design from provocation? 

Identifying as a maker sidesteps a lot of this, and is liberating in that way, especially if we aspire to make beautiful things, or to make things with a clear aesthetic value, without worrying about whether it's art or craft. It also connects us with others who make things everywhere; it offers a bond between makers of all kinds, and it's refreshingly free of a gender context. And it situates us in an active, present moment -- we can make things now, whereas we often hear, "I'm not really an artist yet."

Best of all, it reflects a long-overdue appreciation for the spirit of making, without a doubt the silver lining to the recession. As much as I complain about all the junk that's out there in the so-called indie craft world, I do recognize that every entry point is a way for people to discover the joy in the process of making. From there, some will move on and others will find a lifetime of satisfaction, and possibly much more, in making.

Back at the ranch, a few links for you:

• Debra Lunn and Michael Mrowka are working with Indonesian dyers and Robert Kaufman fabrics to produce fabrics. The Robert Kaufman site has a nice slideshow here, at the top right of the page, showing some of the batik method. They've also begun to blog about their Indonesia experiences here. It's not always easy being a global textile explorer; their travel route sounds daunting.
• Via the wonderful Deux Frontieres blog and American Gypsy Living, a new discovery, I came across Bokja Design, a Beirut company created by designers Hoda Baroudi and Maria Hibri. Their mission: "To employ the age-old artisanal traditions and sensibilities of the East in the creation of contemporary furniture designs and decorative items." These pieces are sold at ABC Home in the United States, but mostly I'm including them for beauty and inspiration. The designers use vintage embroidered tapestries. If you've never been to ABC Carpet & Home in New York, by the way, you should not miss it if you love textiles. It's an extraordinary place.

 

 

Finally, over at The Textile Blog, John Hopper has been posting excellent profiles of contemporary textile artists, including our friends Deb Lacativa and Cathy Kleeman. His latest profile is an artist new to me, Peggy Brown. Peggy's quilted works are very painterly, my favorite kind of art quilts. Every time I visit John's site I find something amazing and enlightening. 

My lovely friend Betsy gave me some acrylic inks for my birthday last week. I've been eager to try these, and I'll report back.

Here, There and Everywhere

A few quick links -- sorry to send you all over the Web, but all of these require linking back rather than posting images.

• Since we've been considering Indonesian batik, head over to the Textile Museum's photostream on Flickr. There's a wonderful collection of photographs from their gala celebrating the exhibition of Barack Obama's mother's textiles from that country. The gala featured gorgeous contemporary fashions made with traditional batik and ikat fabrics. 
• Fans of now-defunct Domino magazine will be happy to know that some of its most creative staff have launched Lonny, an online home design magazine. I don't love the electronic format on a laptop screen, but it's better than no magazine at all, and it's free to viewers.
• Dijanne, the intrepid textile itinerant, has posted photos of her newest Traveler's Blanket, in blue. I love the look, intention and spirit of these textiles. This spectacular piece is for sale, so I hope an enthusiastic collector finds it. The work of Dijanne, like that of Jude, truly embodies the idea of soul cloth or authentic cloth. 
• StyleCourt has posted a wonderful inspiration board that is a mosaic of artist's palettes. I'd love to have this as a big  -- giant -- print. 
• If you're interested in Spoonflower or other online digital textile printing services, but need someone to walk you through the use of Illustrator or Photoshop to do this, here's a tutorial that looks very helpful.

Hand/Eye Magazine for Global Textile Explorers, Navajo Rugs, and Restful Stitches

Hand/Eye is a very exciting new magazine about global textile explorations, sustainable textiles and craft, and the relationship between culture and craft -- the same topics covered here. Yes, I certainly do plan to submit story ideas! I'm not sure if there is a print edition, but the online edition looks very rich. I discovered it through email from L'Aviva Home.

Also in today's discoveries, a wonderful slideshow with audio on Navajo weaving from the New York Times.

I apologize for the delay in new posts -- I started this post days ago -- I'm adjusting to an intense new schedule. I'm lucky to be working in a job where I'm immersed in at least some aspect of textiles and crafts all day. Still, my diet is off, my yoga is off, I'm trying to rebalance and it's taking a lot of energy. Yet my creative urges are stronger than ever -- to sew, stitch, paint, write, design, and explore. I just need to find the energy. I feel off track somehow, like I'm not doing anything well.

Some days I can't get enough of the most complex surfaces, with layers, embellishment, printing, beads, transferred images, coins, many colors and textures, whatever it may be. Other days I want to rest my eyes on the most elemental structures -- a beautiful fabric with a line of stitching.

Kirsten Hecktermann's earthy, restful work (and go to her site and check out the amazing spoons and bright clothes, too):

 

 

From Sally Campbell Home Textiles (via Fibercopia):

 

Though it's hard to know if the producers of imported textiles are fairly paid, Sally Campbell says that all her products are handmade; here is her statement: "I travel to many remote communities, working closely with the artisans. Different areas in India specialise in different crafts. I work with women who create exquisite applique work in the desert near Pakistan, natural dye block printers in Rajasthan, village weavers in Bengal and Hyderabad, and women who do intricate hand embroidery in Lucknow. Like other Western designers working in India, I am hoping to keep these ancient crafts alive as we compete with the manic rush to modernisation."

These textiles are produced for commercial sale, but of course if you want the most real, soulful, one-of-a-kind stitching, you look to the artists; Jude's work always comes to mind first, and today, she too writes about a simple line of quilting. It must be in the air.

I'm going to go rest my eyes with actual stitching. Really sorry for the slow posting and the crankiness  -- it's a good thing I don't Twitter, or any followers would have been subjected to a rant of irritation for days now --  I'll try to keep it to a minimum on the blog!

A Weaver and a Gardener

Aimee Fitpatrick Martin is the author of "At Home with Jack Lenor Larsen," a story in the Southampton Press about LongHouse Reserve, the sanctuary Larsen founded "to exemplify living with art in all forms." Larsen is one of the best-known and most revered textile designers and craft advocates of the 20th century, now in his eighties and continuing to influence the 21st century. From the LongHouse site:

Through its arboretum, sculpture gardens, and educational programs, LongHouse brings together art and nature, aesthetics and spirit, with a strong conviction that the arts are central to living wholly and creatively. Dedicated to quality and integrity, LongHouse programs encourage a broad concept of learning. The art focus at LongHouse is ethnographic and handcrafts -- both areas of collecting with aspects for every purse. Some of these functions, at least on occasion; most merely lift the heart and expand the imagination.

Martin's article describes the residence at LongHouse and many of the artifacts, textiles and furnishings that Larsen selected. It's a fascinating look into the workings of a brilliant designer's process of creating a vision in the material world, in partnership with nature and in celebration of the handmade.

Larsen, with an astonishing list of international accomplishments and awards, says, “I am a weaver and a gardener. Both are slow and require much patience.” This struck me as remarkable; we're all trying to inflate our resumes and our titles, and he's opted for the most reductive description possible. Of course, that's easier when the world has already recognized that you matter, but it's so damn refreshing.

I was also taken by the article's opening quote, from Larsen's memoir: “I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t seeking identity through a sense of place.” In that sentence I feel like he articulated something I've been trying to do for 50 years and have never expressed so succintly -- seeking identity through a sense of place. It explains a lot. I need to ponder that for a while.

I went looking for an image of a Larsen textile to share and, as is the Way of the Web, came across another intriguing site. Craft in America is a nonprofit with a mission "to document and advance original handcrafted work through programs in all media, accessible to all. We are dedicated to the exploration, preservation and celebration of craft, the work of the hand, and their impact on our nation’s cultural heritage." Check it out -- there are about 300 pages of content at the site. Here is their page on Larsen.

And here is a living archive of Jack Lenor Larsen fabrics at the Minneapolis Institute for the Arts. From the archive:

Larsen Design Studio
Conquistador, 1966
Collection: Andean
Materials: Cotton
Classification: Surface Ornamentation- Dyed

99.1.188

Conquistador, introduced as part of the 1967 Andean Collection, was particularly successful and soon became one of the signature cloths of the company. In a note in the company archive Larsen writes that “Conquistador is my concept of how an Inca might handle a baroque motif. That is, flatly and without the robust movement typical in Europe. More like the stone walls of Peru.” For some of the colorways the cloth was dyed twice for a contrapuntal vibration of close value colors such as bronze and amethyst, or amber and brown to suggest a tortoise shell. The Spanish Colonial motif was scaled to fit upholstery cushioning and the total impact is one of great antiquitiy.



In addition to the initial four colorways (wild honey, tortoise, crimson and bronzed amethyst) Topaz, Blue Blood and Pigeon Blood were added at a later date. In 1977 Wild Honey was discontinued, but Tortoise and Pigeon Blood remained in production until 1985 when the company ceased batik production.
(Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, Larsen archive)

S-words: Sustainability, Slow Cloth, Slow Fashion

I haven't written much about the world of sustainable textiles and clothing lately, but here are a few interesting links:

• Anaka has a provocative post, Giving Crafts a Bad Name, on her Getting Down To It blog for BrassTacks Madras. Her caveats apply to everyone who makes handmade goods; quality still matters, and is too often left out of the craft equation these days. Scroll down to the April 30 entry (for some reason I'm not able to isolate a link for the post). Anaka works with artisans in India and is able to thoughtfully critique what many of us in the West romanticize about traditional textile techniques:

Most craftsmen will argue that handmade goods can never have the same perfection as a mill-made product. That is true, but there is a line (and it is not such a fine line) between the charming irregularities of a good-quality handmade product and a downright substandard job. Pressed further, the craftsmen will tell you that good quality (“the way our ancestors used to do it”) is no longer possible because it either costs too much or no one is willing to do that kind of painstaking work anymore.
With my understanding that good craftsmanship is possible (because I have seen good craftsmen produce outstanding work), it really gets my goat when traders or even some craftsmen prefer to blame the craft rather than take the effort required to improve their quality.

• Rajboori makes beautiful, colorful silk quilts and home textiles using silk that they say leaves the silkworms unharmed. I've frequently said that I'm more concerned about human rights and labor issues in silk manufacturing than about the silkworms, but let's assume, so our heads don't explode, that people making "peace silk" are committed to ethical human labor as well. Rajboori has an interesting blog here. While they're a little self-congratulatory -- okay, a lot -- they are making beautiful products that seem to be made with a Slow Cloth attitude: "The designs would be contemporary but the artisanship would be traditional." (The link came from Fibercopia.)

• I struggle with the S-word -- sustainability. It means nothing and everything. This helps: Charles L. Redman, director of the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University, where President Obama recently gave the commencement address, offers these five elements of sustainability to the New York Times' dotearth blog: 

1. Awareness of the challenges facing us and the interconnectedness of the world and of our actions
2. Creativity to deliver innovative solutions in technology, business and social relations
3. Stewardship of limited and precious natural, human and cultural resources
4. Institutions that are flexible and effective because they continuously learn, adapt and provide leadership
5. Values that enhance equity, justice and inclusiveness

•  The beautiful Resurgence magazine has published "The Tyranny of Trends," an essay by Charty Durrant, former fashion editor of The Sunday Times, the Observer and British Vogue. This is a wonderful treatise on the economic, social and psychological costs of fast fashion, and the need for a true paradigm shift to a Slow Fashion model. I'm quoting one paragraph here but I really encourage you to read the whole thing:

Modern fashion is made from many seemingly incompatible ingredients, but the cornerstones are built-in obsolescence, fear of humiliation, and sexual attraction. Warmth, comfort and personal style have for the most part taken a back seat. As the ‘trend frenzy’ deepens, we can see that fashion is no longer about style and self-expression: it is primarily about judgement – self-judgement and judgement of others. A toxic media reporting how women ought to look, and celebrity obsession further enforce this strange new paradigm. Our self-image is distorted and it is now an indisputable fact that our collective psyche is in deep pain. 

(The link came from my beloved Alabama Chanin blog.

Housekeeping:
I realize this could have been four separate posts - this week I'm going to try to switch to shorter, more frequent posts to make it easier on everyone. Also, a few weeks ago I turned off the annoying Capcha function for comments, hoping to get more of my readers to reveal themselves. Now the toxic spam is showing up, and I'm not getting any more comments than usual, so I will give it another day or two and then likely will have to turn Capcha back on. Sorry, but that's how it goes. And please do comment!

Life continues to be really strange but interesting. I think things will settle down in the next few weeks; I'll be very busy but at least the path will be a little more defined. I'm looking forward to the Surface Design Association conference, from which I plan to blog later this month; please do let me know if you'll be there.

photo of golden silk fibers by woowoowoo. Some rights reserved.

Sari Quilts

"The world is madly beautiful and art is the alchemy." Sara

In a 12-hour space, turtles have appeared twice in my world in some fashion, so I await the third visit. The enchanting Peggy Markel, global culinary adventuress and wonderful writer, took this photograph, below, of two old and beautiful creatures in the Italian countryside. 

In Native American lore, Turtle Medicine bridges earth and water, what is "real" and what is imagined. Turtle is a nurturer and protector. From this site: If you have Turtle medicine, you value both the power of the earth, the waters of the earth, and the magic of the heavens, for Turtle symbolizes both the grounding quality of earth energy, and the magic of the mystical.

I've been light on textiles lately, but I want to share these vintage sari quilts from the Sundance catalog. Now, I think I'm fairly immune to marketing eye candy, but I am pretty much a slave to the mystic-cowboy/cowgirl Sundance aesthetic, and a new catalog is always a gift. (And I say slave lightly - I generally don't care for the language of addiction and disempowerment, for lack of a better word, in art and craft conversation. But that's another post.)

Anyway. The jewelry, the furniture, the leather, the carefully edited artisan goods - being a buyer or designer for Sundance would be a dream job, and living with some of these objects would be so lovely. The collection of sari quilts uses vintage cotton fabrics and the pieces are hand-stitched in India:

Sundance is also offering some unusual patchwork rugs. This one is made from Turkish carpets:

The catalog also has a red patchwork kilim rug that's very beautiful.

There's also this lovely Jaipur quilt hand-stitched in Rajasthan:

These are modern constructions, not the same as the patchworks you see at Sri Gallery, for example. But they're simply wonderful to look at.

Handmade is not Homely

Fast Company blogger Michael Cannell reports from the Milan Furniture Fair in "The Hand Strikes Back":

"But in the absence of a driving design movement, visitors will see a conspicuous increase in stitching, embroidery and other hand-crafted items as designers react against mass-market globalism and tune into a new appreciation for homespun virtues."

I say yes to the stitching, embroidery and handcraft, and a resounding yuck to his description of these things as "homespun virtues." For one thing, the images he includes look neither homespun nor virtuous -- they look like well-crafted, sophisticated pieces made with skill and an eye for color and carefully edited elaboration.

Homespun is loaded with negative baggage - even Merriam-Webster defines it as simple and homely. These objects (including the modular sofa below by Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola) appear to integrate textile traditions in beautiful ways, and are linked to artisan communities in what we hope is an ethical, non-exploitative production model.

If we separate the clearly visible trend from the blogger's description, it's good news, but I'm rejecting, obviously, his condescension about things handmade, because it trivializes what looks like a positive trend -- and not, incidentally, one that just showed up yesterday. So can we dispense with the homespun virtues garbage? These are serious international designers taking craft and artisanry seriously.

Okay. I feel better now. On to the yoga mat, and maybe a little extra caffeine this morning.

Oh, wait. One more thing. Maybe this new appreciation of handcrafted objects, stitching and embroidery, and all that it implies, IS a driving design movement.