Red Thread Studio

Staying Connected

Looking for new posts? I don't foresee new posts on this blog right now, other than a possible wrap-up/farewell thoughts post, but the archives will remain up. For current posts and information, please visit my professional communications/writing/editing site and my evolving elainelipsonart.com for painting and textiles. I invite you to like my Facebook Slow Cloth page as well.  If you've enjoyed this blog, let me know what you've found most interesting in the comments or by email. Thank you all, enormously.

 

Slow Cloth on GreenStitch Podcast

Anne Kenlon of GreenStitch posts regular podcasts; her newest talks about Slow Cloth and her repurposing project. Go listen! And you'll find her blog here.

Building and Rebuilding

I know you probably think I've disappeared forever... not quite.

First, in honor of my 2010 blog readers as well as all the members of the Slow Cloth group on Facebook, I've made a donation to Women for Women International. It's just a small gesture, but I hope you accept it as my thanks to you for reading, for being patient when I write nothing, and for being out there in the world. Women for Women helps war survivors in some of the most ravaged countries on the planet; they help to educate women and girls, and in some cases provide them with things like sewing machines and fabric and dyestuffs to help them earn a living as they rebuild their lives.

I know I have at least some men in the Slow Cloth group, and maybe a few readers here; my choice of a women's cause isn't meant to exclude you. The education and success of women and girls is important to every one of us; they have less power in much of the world than men do, and the consequences of war are greater for many of them. There are so many textile-related, truly wonderful organizations that deserve support; this is just one that resonates for me, and I've mentioned others on the blog, so I encourage you to share what you can with organizations that are meaningful for you, or just do what you can locally to help others. It's been a tough year for a lot of humans on the planet.

Second, I'm on vacation from work until the new year, and I'm hoping to relaunch my blog during that time on a different platform. It'll be called Art Craft Culture, and I'll share a link as soon as it's ready. I know I've been threatening to do that for a while, and I've had to think a lot about whether I should blog at all. At least for now, I think I want to keep on. The new blog will still include a lot of information about textiles, but I hope to broaden the categories as well, to include more art in other media, high and low culture, and, well, whatever else I decide to write about.

It's hard to believe 2010 is almost over. I didn't even begin to accomplish what I'd hoped; I keep thinking that it's been a first-chakra sort of year; for those of who do yoga or other Eastern practices, or know the work of Carolyn Myss or other spiritual teachers, you know that means it was more about getting by and maintaining a foundation than branching out, creating, acting powerfully in the world. I'm trying to acknowledge all that's been good, let go of what's no longer useful or productive, and see if I can move the energy up into the second and third -- and fourth, the heart chakra -- in 2011.

I send you my thanks for being here, and wishes for a beautiful holiday season and new year. Let me know what you're planning for 2011!

Be a Better Writer

The writing bar is set low in the blog world, and among craft blogs there's a weird culture where nobody is ever supposed to criticize. That leaves a lot of bloggers wanting to grow in their writing and wanting to make the most of opportunities to write, but unaccustomed to criticism and unsure of how to get professional results.  

Writing a blog doesn't make you a writer; it makes you a blogger. Being a writer, whether journalist or "creative," means developing a broader and deeper set of skills, and truthfully, many years of dedicated education and practice.

This post isn't about that kind of writing. It's a set of tips that will help you write a better blog, or artist's statement, or short article for your quilt guild, or biography for your press kit. If you happen to be writing a book, it will even help you with that to some degree. 

• Understand the difference between active and passive voice. Sometimes new writers will write in passive voice because they think it sounds more important or official. It doesn't. It drags down your writing. Choose the active voice. The difference? In active voice, you always know who is doing the verb, or the action. Examples:

Passive: The piece was quilted by hand with metallic thread.
Active: I quilted this piece by hand with metallic thread.
Passive: It was expected that this painting would be completed by November.
Active: The buyer expects me to finish this painting by November.

• Use correct punctuation and spelling. Not everyone agrees that it's important on the Internet, but I believe you should know and use correct punctuation. If you don't know the difference between it's and its, loose and lose, you're and your, or how to use a semi-colon, try to learn if you plan to be a self-edited blogger. You need to know the rules before you break them, and then break them with intention. The purpose of blogging is to communicate and connect, and bad punctuation and spelling inhibits that. Blogs are fast by nature  and everybody makes mistakes and typos, but they should be the exception. 
• Write like a grown-up. There's a kind of baby-talk that seems almost contagious in some art and craft blogs, even some that aim to be professional and serious. I'm not a fan, and I like to limit exclamation points and OMGs and LOLs. I understand that sometimes these are ironic or tongue-in-cheek, but if you're not sure if you're being ironic, avoid.
• But write simply. Big words and pretentious phrasing don't make you a better writer. That said, avoid saying that everything is "great." Words are wonderful, so try to expand your vocabulary.
• Write with authority. Instead of, "You maybe should think about trying gesso resist," say, "Try gesso resist." Instead of, "I suggest you consider sending your work to an agent," write "Send your work to an agent." All the qualifiers are unnecessary. They muddy up your writing and weaken your position. We know it's your blog, and therefore your suggestion; it's okay to be direct, and it makes for cleaner, more powerful writing.
• Don't imitate other bloggers. See above. Things travel fast in blogland, for better and worse; one person uses a phrase or style or writing tic and it goes viral, and then it quickly gets very, very tired and self-conscious. Avoid this.
• Know who you are and who your reader is. Many people do well by imagining one particular person that they're writing to. At least have a general idea of who you're writing for, their skill level, their age, their reason for coming to your site. Have a good idea of who you want to be writing for and why you're writing. Don't expect to please everyone.
• Read things other than blogs. If you want to be a good writer, be a voracious reader.
• My pet peeve: I'm turned off by diminutives like veggies and congrats. I realize many people are fine with these.
• My other pet peeve: Impact is not a verb. I don't care what your dictionary says.
• My other other pet peeve: Unless you're writing a blog about animals or children, a little information goes a long way. I once read a recommendation that a blog should be at least 80 percent on-topic; that sounds about right. A little bit of kids/pets in context is fine. If you want to post more than that about your darlings, say right up front that that's what your blog is about, or keep a separate blog for your family and friends.
• Finally, if your fabulous blog earns you interest from a magazine or book publisher, understand that writing a long-form article or a book for publication is universes away from writing a blog post. It's hard work. It goes on and on, with rewrites, corrections, instructions, and deadlines, and your writing will be edited, often heavily, by someone who has spent years writing diverse material, reading everything in sight, and learning to connect the dots and organize material in a logical and elegant way. They may have even written a few books themselves. Don't be angry or passive-aggressive. Appreciate what they do to make you look good.
• If you're planning to self-publish a book, you too need an editor and a proofreader, and possibly a technical editor.

Full Flower Moon 2010

Okay, have I bitched enough? Been gone long enough for you to miss me? Thank you so much for all the kind comments on the last post, and please forgive my low moment of feeling territorial and unappreciated. It's been an energetically challenging year.

But now we have the beautiful May full moon on Thursday night, the moon of flowers, and may it heal the wounded Gulf, the people in Tennessee still recovering from floods, people all over the world still rebuilding from earthquakes or suffering from war or just trying to figure out who they are and what they need to do. Including me.

I've mentioned the StyleCourt blog before--it's one of my favorites for art, textiles, and design, and she has a lovely post on vintage editions of Out of Africa with fabric covers or textile-design covers. 

I also recommend Elis Vermeulen's fascinating blog.

As for flowers, I've been thinking a lot about botanical art lately, and wishing I could take some of the cool courses at the Denver Botanic Gardens. Katharine Tyrrell at Making A Mark often writes about botanical illustration, and has good books to recommend. Flickr has many, many beautiful flower photographs. You could take a new look at Georgia O'Keeffe's 100 Flowers. Or just step outside into the intoxicating May moonlight and find some lilacs. I spent last weekend making fabric flower brooches; I can't post pictures just yet, but I will, down the road. And finally, I've had some initial conversations with my friends at Finca Luna Nueva Lodge about the possibility of a group art/textile/slow cloth retreat there. It's just a little seed that's been planted, that may or may not yield, but doesn't it look like an amazing place? 

Those who read the stars and the cosmos say that this is a big, big full moon, an energetic watershed and a border between the past and future. Julie Demboski always has a brilliant and complex analysis, too. But you don't have to believe in astrology even a little bit to feel the power of a bright full moon in the sky, and to appreciate the symbol and sensibility of the Flower Moon.

Slow Cloth, Once More with Feeling

Edited on July 6, 2010, to add: Someone is eagerly searching this blog with the question, "Is Slow Cloth trademarked?" That process is underway, and to repeat, the material here is copyrighted and I originated the concept in 2007.

It's been a while, hasn't it? Between some unintended consequences of the Facebook group on Slow Cloth, and a few other things, I've been disheartened -- I just haven't been able to bring myself to post. And work/life has been very busy.

So. The Facebook group? Facebook is a mixed blessing at best. The group was meant to be a placeholder while I developed a foundation for Slow Cloth as a more formal organization, but it grew much more quickly than I expected and seems to have become something else. Now all I seem to do is try to correct misconceptions about me and about my work, and all that was good and joyful fo rme about this blog seems to have been subsumed by  it.

Quite a few people seem to have made up their own idea about what Slow Cloth is, and a few have been downright abusive to me when I ask them to link back to me so people can read for themselves what it's all about, to give me credit when they adopt the idea, or to stop writing outright fiction about it. On the one hand, I'm glad that it's captured people's imaginations. On the other hand, it's frustrating as hell to have to keep saying the same thing over and over, and to have to defend my right to attribution for my work. And I'm sure, dear readers, that endlessly reading about this same frustration on this blog is not fun for you either.

So. One last time, for those who may need it:

1. Slow Cloth is my creation. I began writing about Slow Cloth here in December of 2007, and was talking about it to friends and colleagues before then. I'm a good researcher, and I researched the term thoroughly. Nobody was using it, at least not in a publicly visible way. For me the term emerged from my familiarity with and respect for the principles of Carlo Petrini's Slow Food organization, and from nearly two decades of serious work in the organic foods and natural products industry, and it's influenced by the principles of the Slow movement as well as more than four decades of being an artist and maker myself.

2. After I began to write about my Slow Cloth concept, someone suggested that I write a manifesto of sorts. I did that with my 10 Qualities of Slow Cloth. The work and the words are entirely my own; it isn't just me writing about someone else's generic idea. It isn't the end-all, be-all of what Slow Cloth is or can be--that's still evolving--but it is the fundamental framework of it. Yes, obviously there have been theories of craftsmanship and design before, and the  principle of quality in design has been advocated by many people; I'm not claiming to have invented the idea of quality, but I created this particular framework in this context.

3. My work is copyrighted. Enough said. I've been writing professionally for many years; I know exactly what the risks are of writing for free and putting work on the Web, but I also know what my rights are. If you don't understand what attribution means, or the Internet etiquette of linking back to your sources, you should learn before you write public material. This goes for the Hand/Eye article as well as the writing on my blog or the Facebook group - please attribute it and link it if you quote it or reference it. And yes, I'm aware that a well-known textile artist has changed the name of the concept slightly and is using similar language to mine with some slight repackaging, and without attribution.

4. Slow Cloth is not a technique or a project. It's a philosophy and a set of guiding principles for giving meaning to working with textiles. If you think that my way of defining it is too vague, well, expand your mind. Those who are blogging about their "Slow Cloth project" are furthering this misconception. I intended Slow Cloth to be a framework as much for the professional sustainable design and art community -- entrepreneurs, designers, and thought leaders -- as for textile artists and craftspersons working in every medium.

5. Slow Cloth doesn't necessarily mean handstitching. Quite a few people are associating Slow Cloth with what Jude does. Jude is a very, very fine artist and craftsperson and a friend, and I support her wholeheartedly and greatly appreciate her support of my work and her references to Slow Cloth as a way of talking about her work. But you don't have to use her particular method of working -- handstitching with cloth fragments and telling a story -- to embrace Slow Cloth. It's her approach to her work that makes it Slow Cloth, regardless of technique, because quality, skill, integrity, and all of the other qualities of Slow Cloth are inherent in the way she works.

6. I am not "just the person who started the Facebook group." I read that the other day.  Slow Cloth is also not going to be a Yahoo group -- not now, not ever. The person who has been writing that is mistaken. There is a Slow Cloth group on Flickr; it's a request-to-join group managed through the Facebook page. However, I do have a lot of ideas and plans for a Slow Cloth organization, publication, possibly a retreat. If you're interested in knowing more about those things or being on a mailing list, let me know. 

8. I've put a lot of valuable time and skill into the writing I do on this topic, the Facebook group, speaking at events, and having conversations with people I've never met. Most of it is rewarding and I'm incredibly grateful for the people I meet and for the wonderful feedback I've gotten. I've been public with my blog, public with my email address, public with my Facebook page, and generous with allowing reprints, sometimes to my detriment. That's left me open for disagreement and criticism; that's fine. But it doesn't give anyone the right to be abusive and disrespectful to me in personal emails.

9. Yet I'm truly glad that what I've written has inspired some people to look at what they do in a new way. If you are sincerely interested in having me write or speak about Slow Cloth for your publication or organization, please contact me. If you'd like to talk with me about a vision of what Slow Cloth can be in the world of textile art, craft, culture, design, and sustainability, contact me. If you'd like to be a part of it, that's wonderful and amazing. If you don't, no problem. If you prefer a quick-easy-cheap approach to making, or just don't want to think about it, it may not resonate for you. No problem at all; it's not meant to be for everybody. But please don't attack me for it, or to try to reduce my concepts to something you like better, or decide that I don't need to be credited for my work.

10. Please do not send me a message about how I should "relax" or "lighten up." Just don't.

Questions? Contact me. Now back to work, back to creativity, back to art, craft, culture, cloth, sustainability, integrity, truth, and other things that matter. Will Slow Cloth continue? Yes. Will the Facebook group continue? I don't know. Will this blog continue? In some form, no doubt. But right now a few essential ingredients are missing, so I have to right the ship.

On the First Day of Spring

I want to paint a picture

Botticelli style

Instead of Venus on a clam

I'd paint this flower child

"You are the air my flowers breathe,"

He calls, and the ladies turn around

On the first day of Spring

I'm looking at the only joy around

--- Joni Mitchell, The Only Joy in Town

Well, we made it through. The season changes at 11:32 this morning, my time, and it feels like we've been through a major challenge. I always have a hard time with winter, and this one was long and trying. I hope spring arrives for you with whatever joy happens to be around. 

I'll be overjoyed if any kind of health care reform passes tomorrow. I'm on pins and needles. And I think people who oppose health care reform -- and indeed, oppose a public option -- are domestic terrorists. There. I said it. And ignorant: see The Tea Party & The Circus: Final Healthcare Reform Protest. You will laugh and cry for America.

edited to add: I also think it's obscene and sad that our only hope for any kind of reform will probably come at the expense of women's right to choose and right to privacy.

A few lovely textile links for you:

• I love Christine Mauersberger's blog. She seeks out interesting and beautiful art and craft of all kinds, and is a wonderful textile artist herself.
• There is an absolutely spectacular gallery of traditional and contemporary Japanese sashiko textiles here. Download the excellent backgrounder PDF also.
• Maryam at My Marrakesh has beautiful images of traditional crewel stitching in Kashmir.

And, oh yes, I have my new camera (except I bought local and, hmm, paid a lot more). Here are some random samples, mostly shot on the automatic function. The color tilts slightly warm, and I haven't yet figured out how to correct that in the shot.

Here is a photograph of the floor of a Japanese restaurant I was in last week:

And books on the shelf:

 

Fabrics on the floor:

And the peace mandala, almost complete:

 

Back at the book shop, I'm finally seeing completion of some of the books I began to work on as an editor when I started the job last June. I especially love Ann Budd's Knitting Green, available soon (Ann does her own excellent editing but I was able to offer some assistance on the essays), and Jane Dunnewold's Art Cloth, which is just going to press and will be available in a few months.

That's all for now. Enjoy the first day of spring!

MoreCloth.com Site and Blog

I've been meaning to post a link to this for some time -- MoreCloth.com is a very cool site with a color portal that allows you to find fabrics on Etsy or Glorious Fabrics. They also have an excellent blog on textile design and printing. The fabric selector works like this; you click somewhere on a color strip:

And it takes you to a selection of available fabrics in that color range:

 

Top: 100% Cotton Japanese Fabric

Bottom: Joel Dewberry for Free Spirit

And then you click on the swatch you like to go straight to the Etsy listing or Glorious Color listing (Glorious Color is headquarters for Kaffe Fassett fabrics). 

This is a fantastic tool; the blog is interesting and fun, and the color strips alone would be inspiring if they didn't awesomely find fabrics for you. I know it's sacrilegeous to say this, but I find Etsy to be not the most useful or compelling interface, so I appreciate this highly visual and colorful way of navigating its fabric options.

Full Cold Moon

Turn that TV off now baby

I'm so low I don't even sing

Tell me something about my country

Tell me one good thing

King and Malcolm, lamb and lion

Setting Alabama free

Thirty thousand angels flying

From Montgomery

Put that paper down now, baby

I'm so low I don't even sing

Tell me something about my country

Tell me one good thing           

                - one good thing, by anais mitchell

The full moon is beautiful in the sky, bringing a bitter cold front with it. It seems like winter has already been too long, and I'm dreaming of beaches. It's hard to believe that December is here, and the next full moon -- a Blue Moon and the Wolf Moon -- will be at year's end. I don't really know what to think about this year. It's been full of disappointments for me, yet I'm not sure the whole story has unfolded yet. It's been full of progress, too, though it feels too slow. And it's been full of hope; on some days that feels foolish, and on other days, powerful.

I drove to work today behind a van with this bumper sticker: I'll keep my freedom & money & guns, and you can keep "the Change." That's their bad punctuation, not mine. I've been behind this vehicle before; we seem to be on the same schedule. It's pretty much a guarantee, if I see it, that it's going to be a bad day. And now I've just listened to the president that this woman hates announce escalation of a murky war, and I wonder if this pigheaded moron in the van is happy now. Of course not.

It doesn't seem as if humans will ever transcend hatred, war, and violence. But fortunately, we'll also never stop creating, envisioning, loving, and happily, stitching.

A few links I've had bookmarked:

• The wonderful Tai Gallery in Santa Fe has revamped their Web site and it's full of beautiful textiles and bamboo baskets, with many of their gallery publications viewable online. There are dozens of amazing ancient and modern textiles, and the photos can be sent as e-postcards to your friends. Here's one:
  Mantle, Chimu Culture
  Peru, North Coast?
  Late Intermediate Period, 1000 - 1476
  Design: Bold blocks of pelicans and tuna fish motifs in a bright palette of red, yellow, blue, white and brown.
  Technique: Slit tapestry, warp and weft camelid fibers

And another:

Heirloom textile

Made in Gujarat, India
Collected in Sulawesi, 17th century
Technique: Resist and mordant dyed handspun cotton

• I think Jude scooped me on this one, but the new community Hand Embroidery Network has launched Needle, a new online magazine for traditional and contemporary hand-stitched embroidery. It's beautiful; go see.
• Britex Fabrics, the legendary brick-and-mortar store in Union Square in San Francisco, finally has a blog and online shopping for some of its ribbons, trims, and buttons. I lived near the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Street back in 1986 with Dave the Drummer, and worked in downtown San Francisco, not far from Britex. I used to walk there on my lunch hour. I'd rarely buy anything because the choice was so magnificently vast that I couldn't ever pick just one thing. On the weekends I'd paint silk fabrics for a designer named Connie Romweber and shop closer to home at the much funkier Mendel's on Haight Street and Satin Moon. What a luxury it was to have so many great fabric stores.

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.