Home Wheel!

We're officially into Christmas Break at the Craft College. My last day of classes was yesterday. With all my final projects complete and handed in, I'm a little at a loss for things to do. I find it really difficult to do one thing at a time. I can't watch a movie without knitting, looking online, sewing something. The more distractions I have available, the happier I am. So I went and built a spinning wheel! It's an Ashford Kiwi, which I lovingly stained, painted and assembled myself (not without many swears). You can see my disinterested cat in the background of this photo.

Before the holidays, I still have about a million presents to make or acquire otherwise...although maybe some handspun yarn would make a good gift...hmmm.

Artist's Statement

I have always been compelled to create through craft. From the time I was a child, I loved making small things with yarn, string and cloth. After years of experimenting with different methods of creation – music, drawing, photography, writing, I decided to teach myself how to knit to combat the cold of our slum apartment. It grew into a constant companion activity: I knit whenever my hands were free, creating everything I might need from looped yarn and straight sticks.

Through knitting, I came to understand the versatility of wool. I love how it can be made into anything – any type of cloth, for any function: from the most delicate knitted lace to solid felted forms. Even as yarn waiting to be worked, it is strong and yet soft, a form of cloth unto itself. I find it comforting to be around, its soft strength and natural appeal, its animal smell.

I am inspired to create by the world around me. The simplicity of my chosen medium is well suited to inspiration through the everyday. The plants and animals that inhabit my world, the turn of the light at different times of the day and the year, the comfort of familiar surroundings, and the primal excitement that grows out of finding new and unexpected elements in your world. Through my work I seek to strike a balance between the traditional, comfortable and functional elements of craft and the playfulness and delight in the unexpected and unconventional. It is important to me that my pieces are both functional and beautiful. I want people to touch my work, to use it and to feel involved with it. I strive to create with precision and quality, but also to preserve a sense of wonder and spontaneity.

Reading Response: Art and Fear

It's hard to create without fear. Perhaps that's not exactly right. It's often easy to create, in a frenzy of vision and ideas; to allow a project to grow and take shape and fly. The truly hard part is letting our creation out into the world. It's a cold place, full of criticism and potential misunderstandings. How will your work hold up under close scrutiny? What will it say to viewers when you are not there to speak for it. Will it tell them all that you're a fool once your back is turned? As an artist, the difficulty lies in finding a way to trust in your own creative abilities, and to put a piece out there, in the public eye, trusting that it will be meaningful to some audience, somewhere.

In my experience, it is most difficult, as a fledgling artist, to get past the doubts of my non-artsy friends. I've reached an age where most of my friends and acquaintances have been working on a specific set of life goals for a while now: Find a "real" job, buy that first house, get started on that whole family thing. My goals are not the same. I went back to school, which isn't really all that uncommon. But I chose art school. Not a high-ranking choice amongst my 30-something crowd. I suspect that most of them wrote me off as insane a while back. Social gatherings devolve into awkward silence as I answer those "So, what do you do?" questions. "Fibre arts. Interesting. But what will you DO with that?"

In my mind, the answer is pretty simple. I will do what I've always been driven to do. I will do what I do already, and what I have done since I was a child. I will just do it better. I will have invested the time to cultivate and mature my visions and techniques. I will have taken the time and acquired the skills to make a business out of it. I will do art. I will do it as my living. It is what I am good at, and what I love. So I will do that.

Of course, that's my answer on a good day.

There are many other days where I wake up wondering if I've lost it altogether. Maybe this creative life really is just a series of hobbies that will keep me living in shabby one-bedroom apartments for the rest of my miserable life. Maybe I should just drop it and go to accounting school. Honestly, though, that seems ridiculously over-dramatic to me. I must, as an artist, learn to trust that I can make a go of it. Life is short, and I am creative. I think that it is wiser to cultivate the things that you honestly love, than to waste years cultivating a bank account in a job you hate. It is acceptable to use certain, lucrative skills to succeed: math? Sure. You're good at typing? Public speaking? Understanding systems? Those are great! You're sure to succeed. You're good with wool? Hmmmmm.....

In my mind, success is doing something that you love, and making a living at it that lies somewhere on the spectrum between modest and fabulous. I love creating, and making finely crafted, beautiful things. I feel that my responsibility is to infuse the world with as much beauty as I am able. It is hard to be confident, especially knowing that even those who appreciate art will scrutinize my work. There will always be those who don't think the world needs beauty (I respectfully disagree, and think they would change their minds were they to see a world without art, but that is another discussion entirely). All I can do is try my best, and the best I have to offer is art.