Making Things- a short manifesto
I’ve often wondered why people who live in rural areas seem so much more at home with making things than urban dwellers. In Vermont, very few of my friends and acquaintances don’t knit, sew, crochet, quilt, spin, paint, or do something creative.
Is it that we have the space? I know that since moving back to Vermont, my hobbies have become more and more bulky.
Is it that there is nothing else to do on long winter nights? Or is it just that nobody is in your face telling you what you are doing is silly, pointless, not art, but craft, and maybe not even that.
Maybe what we have is creative freedom.
It’s true that sometimes we veer off the highway in our creative spurts. Growing up, I knew a wonderful old lady who used to glue milkweed pods to paper plates and spray paint them gold.
I have come to regard milkweed as a terrific plant: bees love its nectar, as you walk down a country road in midsummer, its sweet fragrance perfumes the air like gardenia. Poisonous to sheep when growing, milkweed dried is a delicacy sheep ferret out of a pile of hay to eat first--to no ill effect. But beautiful gilded? I’m not quite there yet.
Last year, I decided to follow my muse, wherever she led. Which was to make rugs crocheted out of old t-shirts. I made two. The first was done in blues and white, quite ugly. If you stubbed your toe on it, it really hurt. I gave it to a very forbearing friend. The second was done in Amish quilt colors, also extremely heavy. It sits on our back porch under an unused beehive body. My husband is itching to throw it away.
It was a humbling experience. I wondered, while making them, if I was going balmy, or worse, had completely lost any sense of taste I once had. I was not showered with praise. When I decided I didn’t need to make any more of them, my husband was eager to claim the last few t-shirt remnants for rags in the workshop. I was relieved to see them go.
Some of my wacky inspirations are fueled by the need to use up my ever-growing stash of materials. The toe-stubbing rugs are one such example. I had saved a bag full of favorite but worn-out t-shirts to make a quilt for each of my sons. I scuttled that idea in favor of the rugs as a get it outta here solution. Hot green tomato jam was another, more successful experiment.
A few months ago, I attended a meeting whose purpose it was to promote fiber arts in our region. We had some high-end craftspeople whose work was nationally known, and many more local people who taught, made things, or just loved fiber.
I got into a discussion with a man from New York who’d organized a successful exhibit of quilters. He admitted he didn’t know much about other fiber arts. I listed some prominent rug makers, books, exhibits and other fiber artists he should check out. It was when he asked for more details on these “fiber artists”, supplying the quote marks in the air, that I got it.
In his world, you were not an “artist” until some establishment or other declared you one. Your self-definition was juried and conferred, baby, and you’d best not forget it. Experts will tell you what is art, they will buy it at an exorbitant price and put it in a museum for people to pay to see. And it would be guys like him who made that determination.
The trouble with this model is not so much whether hicks like me get anointed as “artists”. The trouble comes when all of that marketing jargon defines what people let themselves do or try. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard people (mostly women, but that’s another rant) say wistfully, “I couldn’t do that. I’m not an artist.” It still breaks my heart.
What would have happened if the amazing quilters of Gees Bend, Alabama had believed they couldn’t arrange fabric the way they liked because they weren’t artists? We would have lost a treasure that is all the more glorious because it came out of “nowhere”, made by people who were unknown beyond their own community.
Perhaps being far away from arbiters of taste is a blessing. Spray painted milkweed pods, quilts, rugs-- follow your muse. Living in the country affords me a life that can be close to nature and creative, whether or not I am ever considered an artist.
No comments:
Post a Comment