Category: Craftivism

'The unknown' is a monster

12/14/2024

I'm betting its bite will be worse than its bark

Lately I’ve been asking anyone I come across: Is it just me or are we all sort of in a calm-before-the-storm, high-alert mode? So far, the score is 100-per-cent ‘Yes.’ Although in retrospect those affirmatives could mean, Yes you’ve asked me that already many times or Yes it is just you please let me pass.
My state of mind is somewhere between what former Village Voicejournalist/author Laurie Stone noted the night before this writing: “Everyone I know feels the edgy nothing” and satirist Samantha Bee’s last post: “Things are about to get fucking WILD.”

Anecdotal evidence through reading rational opinion reveals that countless numbers of engaged humans are not waiting to exhale but bracing for impact of the incoming turbulence in the Divided States of America — and beyond. The unknown is unnerving. It’s also intentional and we’ve seen it before:

Above: That other lying Donald, back in a 2002 press conference spreadingthe Big Lie that launched the catastrophic war in Iraq.

Living in the unknown has already taken its toll as seen during the global pandemic. Heightened fear and paranoia have morphed into the cultish desire for a strongman/daddy figure to fix it and us. And the geo-political trend shows no nation is immune.

To anyone prone to dismissing me by using the C-word (catastrophizing — what were you thinking?), consider this pre-emptive journalistic self-censoring under Trump 2.0: the two MSNBC “Morning Joe” hosts apologizing on air last week for possibly offending Fox News. (See “‘Morning Joe' Sorry David Frum Made Forbidden Joke About Fox News, Please Don't Hurt Them!”) To be clear, this is a left-leaning cable TV network obeying in advance by apologizing to “one of the most malevolent corporations in all of America, whose decades of lies, propaganda, and racist brainwashing are perhaps more responsible than any other single entity for America’s current slide into brain-damaged ethno-fascism,” in the words of the managing editor of Wonkette. Frum, a Canadian-American former Republican and speechwriter for George W. Bush then took issue with its apology in The Atlantic with the kicker: “It is a very ominous thing if our leading forums for discussion of public affairs are already feeling the chill of intimidation and responding with efforts to appease.”

Suffice it to say this is an early-warning signal that the way things are now won’t be the way things are after Jan. 6. But how to proceed until the big hammers come down on respected, fearless journalists and all the other perceived enemies? Is it more helpful to read Robert Reich’s latest, “How Trump could bring on a second civil war” or bingeing How to Become a Tyrant on Netflix? (True, there is no mention of the American meddling in the making of some of those dictators but the playbook tracks.)

I’ll think on that while I continue to do like the kids and live in the moment, channeling creative energy, even — or especially — the negative.

“The Unknown”, embroidered linen on hoop, 2021. Felt-pen drawing (inset) and words by young nephew Kaleb.

Tips for tired women

11/25/2024

From rolling your eyes to sinking in sawdust

Like a dream it was: A half-a-million-strong pink procession on Washington, a sea of singing, shouting, laughing people, surging forward in the shared pursuit of basic human rights, in their hometowns and around the world. There was hope in the organizing, joy in the making. The resistance was too fabulous to be ignored.

Memorializing the moment: Embroidered cartoon by Bob Krieger and Carlyn Yandle, 2017

Things are different in Trump 2.0. Social justice advocacy groups are stunned, fractured, unorganized. Those who led the last charge are feeling defeated and tired.

Screengrab of story in The New York Times

I’m running from the worst that this state of affairs can bring on: apathy. I’m so busy busy busy painting my studio floor, constructing a queen-sized quilt here, reorganizing rooms there, making so many plans! No space in this head for intrusive thoughts of how this is all going to shake out under the trifecta power of narcissistic, vengeful billionaires and Project 2025.

It is tiring work, all this busyness, but on the upside I get things done and sleep like a log. I realize it’s not sustainable. Luckily for me there’s a handy Globe Mini Mag for that.

Searching for answers from one of my Great Aunt Ivy’s many Mini Mags and Dell Purse Books.

After my Great Aunt Ivy died at a few months’ shy of 105 (and in her right mind until the end), I found some of her Mini Mags and Dell Purse Books. You see, kids, back in the 1900s, before checking socials or scrolling TikTok was a way to pass the time, there were these ubiquitous inspiration booklets, pumped out of publishing houses in New York City and Boca Raton. Women bought them on impulse at the supermarket or drugstore checkout, to be pulled out of a purse at some kind of waiting moment. For Ivy that would be in a waiting room or while waiting for her bus or on the bus waiting for her bus stop. She and millions of others would have found inspiration and tips from any one of the hundreds of titles, from Instant Beauty Tricks to Household Hints to 1970 Financial Horoscope to Fabulous Low-Calorie Desserts.

Ivy was 88 when Why Women Are So Tired (Globe Mini Mag #287, published 1996) caught her eye. She was retired from her job as a longtime companion for a rich lady but was still taking the bus here and there and walking down to the Seniors Centre to volunteer hand massages which was maybe tiring and why she was compelled to take the quiz at the start of this booklet:

Quiz: How Tired Are You? Score 20 statements from 0 (never true) to 3 (usually true)
“1. My eyes are strained and tired.” Beside this statement there is a small, faint “3” written in pen.
“2. My legs are tired.” Another, wobblier “3.”
“3. My attention wanders easily.” This is left blank, which could be your answer right there. Ivy went no further on the quiz, maybe because the hairdresser was ready to see her now, or she had reached her bus stop.
Having abandoned the How Tired Are You quiz she would have missed out on the score that determines her level of tiredness and there’s no hint as to whether she skipped ahead to helpful tips like, Eat a banana (Page 16) or “Sleeping Tip: 1. Eye-Roll.” (Page 60). “Take a Nap” is listed as a “preferred method of stress management of high-powered luminaries of all professions, including (long list of men).” Some other sleeping tips include “Try sleeping with your head at the foot of the bed.”

I reflexively eye-roll and feel energized already.

She must have picked up a tip or two, because this four-foot-eight, what they used to call ‘spinster’ was indefatigable and freakishly strong. (I once humoured her on this hand-massage business she mentioned and stuck out mine for a demo, wincing at her Kung Fu grip.)

More tips: “Say to yourself: ‘My eyes are twinkling and sparkling.’” (Page 34) and: “Rub It Away” (Page 37): “All you really need for a rubdown is a massage book, special sponges and hot oils, a flat surface, and your own two hands.” Or “Take an Enzyme Bath… a steaming elixir of sawdust, rice bran and enzyme powder…. No one disagrees that the bather feels great after soaking neck-deep in a tub of the stuff.” (Many intrusive thoughts here of rubbing and sawdust and hot oils and special sponges and my Great Aunt’s penetrating hands. Do those drapes need ironing?)

Page 45: Get a cordless phone. “Imagine being able to feed the dog, fold the laundry, iron — and talk on the phone at the same time.” (Alternative tip title: Prepare now for your 21st-Century state of permanent distraction.)
Also, “Memo pads: Lots of them — everywhere. In your purse, in your car and even in your bathroom. Use a spiral-bound type for your purse, and sticky notepads for leaving ‘can’t miss’ messages to yourself and others.”

This is very much not helping. Maybe I need to eat a banana.

“Take chances. The risks can be small — like… getting embroiled in a political debate.” Oh, those lazy-hazy Clinton-era days of this book’s publishing, when First Lady Hillary made that historical “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights” speech in Beijing and her husband signed into law Biden’s bill for a 10-year assault weapons ban. Judging by my trip to the US over this election, any audible political discussion is not at all considered a small risk.

Final tip for this space — and I’m paraphrasing here — if the problem is a lack of stimulation your mind is on the slippery slope toward full hibernation. Go get a new haircut.

Major score: A Dell Purse Book #4080, published 1969

Luckily Great Aunt Ivy had a purse book for “The Busy Beauty.”

Fun fodder for politically engaged hand-makers

7/28/2024

I am beyond excited at the prospect of a former prosecutor debating a current felon on Sept. 10, if Trump doesn’t wuss out. Kamala Harris has said she thinks “the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage, and so I’m ready. Let’s go.”

“Split screen.” Yesssss pleeease.

If the vice-presidential debate back in 2020 is any indication, this will be a goldmine for us hand-makers. That upstaging fly on Mike Pence’s hair! Kamala Harris’s pearly manicured nails flashing as she raised her hand in that just-stop gesture! Those unforgettable two words, “I’m speaking”!

Immediately following that debate I started needling at those two words in a frilly font and fly-swatter in a raised fist. My socials were filling up with other joyful handmade responses while the entire Biden-for-president campaign capitalized on those words and that insect. “Truth Over Flies” collectible Democrat-blue fly-swatters were offered for $10 on the official campaign website, and the candidate himself posed for pics with a fly-swatter.

"I'm Speaking," 2020, created in the days after a momentous vice-president debate. (Carlyn Yandle art and photo)

Political satire created by everyone from cupcake-bakers to news-media cartoonists and comedy writers speaks truth to power and offers levity in the face of fear. At the moment, JD Vance, that loose cannon of a Republican vice-president candidate, is serving up some rich fodder for more joyful resistance.

There are some grand, slick responses to misogyny, racism and authoritarianism but I gravitate to the simple, individual gestures that meet hate with heart, like the sousaphone player who used tactical frivolity to ridicule a KKK rally in South Carolina:

I’m Speaking is now in the possession of a friend, a professional who has endured hot air from the higher-ups her entire working life. Hanging this craft in her corporate offices would be a red flag — risky, even four years later. I appreciate that potency. I also appreciate every woman who has spoken up for what is right even as they’re shut down.

Kamala Harris never needed to find her voice; it was always there; she just needed high-level support to be heard. She’s coming through loud and clear, with none of the nice-girl qualifiers and question marks that women have had to use to keep the menfolk calm.

A stitched appeal/demand during the Trump presidency, 2018, with visual references to Bread and Roses. (Carlyn Yandle art and photo)

VIDEO tour: 'Joyful Making in Perilous Times'

4/21/2021

Click HERE for a 10-minute journey through the methods and motivations behind this MFA thesis. (Film made by Ana Valine, Rodeo Queen Pictures, August 2020)

Homemade masks are not all about you

4/3/2020

We who turn to rote hand-making activity to quell our anxiety have been knitting, sewing, embroidering, crocheting and needleworking up a storm. My go-to, like countless others stuck at home, is making masks. As the death tolls roll in, I am on auto-pilot.

The thing about busying the hands with tiny repetitive motions is that it opens up time to think, to reflect on the incoming: the unfathomable graphs, reports, studies and scandals. What I’ve been reflecting on as I rotary-cut those squares of cloth, feed them into the machine and steam-press in the pleats is the great homemade-mask debate: to wear or not to wear. To that question I have no doubt: it’s a hard ‘wear’ if you are in the vicinity of others.

Sure, there is a tsunami of science that proves that the three-layered, tight-weave cotton reusable mask that I’ve been making won’t protect you — the wearer — from catching the virus but this is not about you and you alone. This is about us, about keeping our own damn germs to ourselves, a civic duty seen in east Asian nations that have been-there-done-that with SARS. As pointed out in today’s (at this writing) article in The Atlantic, a store full of shoppers in masks may be seen by those on this side of the Pacific Rim as a sign of the coming apocalypse but one of assurance on the other side: I’ll protect you if you protect me (Check out #masks4all and #youprotectmeIprotectyou).

At Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where I’ve spent the last two years, masks suddenly appeared on some student faces as Covid-19 hit the news, far before any social-distancing policies were set. My personal observation is that those taking these early precautions were likely international students from Asian countries where mask-wearing is a norm for anyone contending with even a cold or seasonal allergies. The sudden sight of all these masks in class and corridors may have unsettled the rest of the student body but it inspired me to design something I’d like to wear: reusable, washable, of natural felted fibre, sculpted so it didn’t touch my mouth, infused with my favourite “Panic Button” essential oil blend.

I wasn’t always cool with milling around with the masked ones. When I landed in Japan for what would be an 18-month stay in the late-’80s my first snapshots were of all kinds of people in masks in Kyoto, from little kids in black uniforms on their way to school, to teens picnicking under the blooming cherry trees to old ladies in the narrow streets of Gion. I came to appreciate all the masks worn while cheek to jowl in the infamous Midosuji subway in Osaka, starting with the official charged with gently pushing the commuters into the cars. Reflecting on this (now, while I sew), I wonder what those socially-responsible commuters must have thought about being stuck up against these gaping, mouth-breathing, sniffling foreigners.

I’m reflecting on the real, insatiable need for masks in my own vicinity, right now, for those who are jammed into shelters and squalid hotel rooms with shared bathrooms. While I await reports on how this pandemic is hitting the sick and homeless, I’ll assume masks are a basic need. And until I am tested, I’ll assume that I am an asymptomatic carrier.

I mask up for your protection when I go out for my essential business and when I return I disinfect it, put it back in its baggie, then get back to the task at hand. See my simple three-ply pleated pattern below, or, for you non-sewcialists, check out the T-shirt version at bottom.

No sewing machine? This can be hand-stitched too (46" total stitching). No elastic? Cut 1-inch-wide strips from an old T-shirt, stretch to curl, then replace the elastic directions with two 7" strips, to be tied by user.

Hoping for heat in this log cabin

11/5/2019

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I have this idea for building healthy community in this pretty/cold city through hand-making. It’s a process of making peace with ourselves and connecting with others, transforming individualized desires (thanks, capitalism) into shared desires for a sustainable life and world.

Vancouver artist Jenn Skillen — collaborator No. 1 — beta-tests a freeform, no-measure hand-stitched log cabin block method. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

That's the idea. 'How' is the big question.

I start with a few rules of thumb. (I love that phrase for its controversial origin that is a deep-dive into human history and etymology, but also for the visual of the hand-as-tool.) First, the activity must be low-barrier enough to open it up to as much collaboration as possible — no need for special skills or equipment or fees or even shared verbal language. Second, the project must use only found material: freely available, with no better use (because there's already too much stuff in the world). Third, the project must spark interest, otherwise, why would people bother?

A decade ago, these rules of thumb resulted in The Network, an ever-growing public fibre-art piece engaging a wide variety of folks around Vancouver, co-created by Debbie Westergaard Tuepah. That knotty piece continues to weave through my work, mummifying a perfectly good painting practice, winding around ideas of alternative space-making, shelter, and safety nets. Now it's needling into my current project: the Safe Supply collaborative quilt.

'Safe supply' were the two words on the lips of the crowd at a CBC Town Hall gathering two months ago. Providing a safe supply of opioids would go a long way to addressing all the problems and fears raised by everyone from student activists to local businesses, from concerned politicians and developers to Indigenous elders: the toxic-drug death epidemic, violence, homelessness, sexual exploitation, theft, vandalism, mental illness. A safe supply is inherent in the view of addiction as a public health issue, not an individual, moral failing.

'Kettling' homeless people into Oppenheimer Park has resulted in a colourful display of a national humanitarian crisis. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

Ground zero of this humanitarian crisis is the colourful, chaotic tent city crowded in Oppenheimer Park straddling Chinatown and the old Japantown. The sight of all those bright, tenuous shelters layer up with this history of racism and injustice, stolen land and lives, and soon I am binding up ideas of found colourful material and that call for Safe supply!, embedding it all in a design, with designs for this as a group project destined for exhibit in more privileged spaces. It is planned as a comforting activity in this often ruthless, discomforting city: a dis-comforter.

Historical clipping from the llinois State Museum website reveals the log cabin quilt has ties to ending slavery.

I begin this overarching theme one block at a time, and that block is, fittingly, the traditional 'log cabin.'

There's a long history of the log cabin block, ingenious for its simple construction that makes use of even the smallest, thinnest available scraps as well as its history as a vehicle for social justice.

I am attracted to the name that stands as aspiration for home and all that that entails, beginning with the hearth, the centre of the block. From the hearth, the block is built in a spiral of connected scraps to form a foundation for countless quilt designs (traditional examples below).

The work has not yet begun but like all collaborations it begins with faith in people and trust in my practice. Something will emerge. We will engage. We will generate some heat in this log-cabin community.

Some useful how-tos and overall pattern examples:

Traditional quilts made from colour variations of the log cabin block (clockwise from left): Straight Set, Barn Raising, Light & Dark, Courthouse Steps, Courthouse Steps Variation, Amish Crib Quilt. (From http://www.museum.state.il.us)

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We're taking on capitalist forces, one stitch at a time

8/30/2019

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Back when I was still transitioning from workaday newspaper editor to mainly work-for-free artist I applied for a Nexus card.
"Whaddaya you do for a living?" asks the clerk in her American drawl, without looking at me.
When I get this question I always wish there was an easy answer, some simple keystroke like in the relationship status options on Facebook.

"It's complicated," I say. She sighs.

I start in about how I was a journalist but then quit to go into full-time Fine Arts studies, then after graduation I got a studio and am now developing an art practice and doing work for upcoming projects... and stop as her eyes fall to half-mast. We go back and forth for a while like this when she announces: "I'm gonna put you down as housewife."

Even though I've always been self-supporting I decide not to waste my breath defending my non-conforming life choices. But really, I'm using the best skills I have to be a contributing member of society and I'm grateful to be a part of the ever-expanding, borderless community of crafters, craftivists and visual artists, all connected beyond language by hand-making for peace of mind and social, political connection.

Craft creates wellness, it brings humanity during turbulent times, it breaks down hierarchies and is the connecting thread between those who make for personal, tactile pleasure or for use and those who make art for art's sake. Craft is as at home in the home as it is on Etsy or in the white-cube gallery. It has footholds in ancient practices and the avant-garde. It complicates categorization and won't be fenced in (or out).

One of my pieces is currently at home among the works of 20 spinners, weavers, felters, quilters, garment designers, knitters, rug-hookers and others in a current Gulf Island fibre-arts show. Some of those sharing their work self-identify as artists and some as specific kind of makers but all of our pieces hang together in conversation, sparking more conversation and more ideas among visitors.

This exhibition is another reminder that craft is embedded in deeply-personal making activity, the tactility of the culturally-rich materials and the creative communities we live in.

Making and their makers form an essential humanizing force more encompassing and enduring than even advanced capitalism but there's no way to show that value on a Nexus form.
I reject that line of questioning. And I am not married to a house.

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My needling starts with a need to build community

11/10/2018

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The other day I did this because it really needed to happen. All that gleaming new-campus architecture, surrounded by other gleaming buildings and gleaming buildings yet-to-come was begging for a little fuzzying up.

I did my undergrad at the old Emily Carr University of Art and Design campus which was decidedly less smooth and metallic and more crafty, situated as it was in the Granville Island artisan mecca on the ocean's edge. I liked running my hand along the old wooden posts carved with decades of scrawled text, and all the wiring and ductwork that in the last few years looked like a set out of Brazil. I miss the giant murals on the cement factory silos next door and the funky houseboats and the food stalls in the public market and Opus Art Supplies 30 feet away from the front entrance.

The new serene, clean Emily Carr building is surrounded by new and planned condos that most students could never afford, high-tech companies and, soon, an elevated rapid transit rail line. As much as I wanted to return for graduate studies, I was not convinced that I would be a good fit here, so asking for permission and access to the sign was a bit of a trial balloon for me. I got quick and full support for the idea and its installation, and now see this new white space as a blank canvas, ready for the next era of student artistic expression.

This is my first solo yarn-bombing foray. A bunch of us attacked the old school back in the day for a textile-themed student show but I have yet to meet my people here. So the Emily Carr Cozy is not just a balloon, it's a flare. Is there anybody out there?

As I busied my freezing fingers with the stringy stuff (in hard hat, on the Skyjack operated by design tech services maestro Brian) I kept an ear out for reaction. And it was good. Sharing the fuzzy intervention on social media (#craftivism, #subversivestitch etc.) reminds me that I am not alone in my need for needling authority. Indeed, this public performance includes behind-the-scenes connecting with my community of makers to collect their leftover yarn and thrift-store finds even before the main act. (You know who you are.)

Textile interventions in the public sphere have a way of provoking polarizing responses. Some love the often-chaotic hand-wrapping of colourful fiber; others view the crafty messing with architecture with disdain of all things cozy and crafty and engendered female. I liked the idea of having to wear a hard hat and working for four hours in a Skyjack, in the mode of construction workers in the immediate vicinity of my rapidly changing hometown, to complete my knitting job.

The reverse side of the Emily Carr Cozy, seen only from the interior of the school, is like the work behind the scenes in my making: chaotic, improvisational and maybe more interesting than the public side. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

A visual of the process, below. (All photos by Caitlin Eakins)

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A beautiful craftivism in a flowery part of the world

11/8/2017

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MORE THAN DECORATION: Flower images carry deep cultural significance for the Maya. Left: A figure dating from 600-900bc nestled in a lily. Centre: Needlepoint detail from a huipil (top), part of a traditional everyday dress. Right: Jesus emerging from a lily in an oil painting of the Immaculate Conception. Carlyn Yandle photos

I've made it my mission to shake things up by injecting the handmade domestic — doilies, quilts, sweaters and rugs — into austere, authoritative spaces and places, from pristine galleries to sketchy undersides of my city, pushing back on everyday misogynistic descriptors like 'girly' or 'old-lady' or the slightly derogatory 'frou-frou' and 'flowery.'

Then I landed in Merida, Mexico, last week where there is no fight against things flowery and archetypical feminine. Here in the capital of the Yucatan state and the ancient Maya culture (not dead but flourishing against all odds, by the way, like Canada's indigenous people) the streets are a flowery visual field of richly needleworked garments and handmade decorative traditions woven throughout the city, from tiled floors to architectural details and murals.

Above and far right: Carpet-like ceramic tile floor artworks are more than decorative. At left, a four-petal flower signifies universal realms; Centre: Merida's impressive El Gran Museo Del Mundo Maya pays tribute to the importance of the handmade floral motif in one of its exhibit salons. Carlyn Yandle photos

Flowers are so sacred and symbolic in the highly complex Maya culture that the Franciscan missionaries, in service of the Catholic Church, appropriated specific flower designs in their battle for their souls, in a cultural war of the roses (and lilies and other healing, spiritually-weighty blooms).

Left: This rare depiction in oil of Fray Francisco de Santa Ana appeals to the Mayan sense of the sacred. At right, typical religious imagry is embellished with rich floral motifs in a visual appropriation of Mayan culture. Carlyn Yandle photos

Coming from the land of yoga pants, I'm fascinated by this idea that an acceptable form of everyday dress is one's own hand-stitched art piece in the form of brightly-coloured cultural patterns of flowers on white cotton or linen tops and tunics, over an underskirt edged in a thick band of white lace.

No made-in-China. No apologies, no fading away.

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How mosaic 'Tagging' made an east van alley someplace special

9/13/2015

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I'm sure I didn't come up with the term 'mosaic tagging' but the idea of embedding found remnants of domestic culture into the built landscape has been rolling around my brain for a while.

It finally happened this summer, in an East Van back lane. In the space of one (hot!) half-day, the tiny tarmac'd alley was transformed into someplace special, as neighbours turned found colourful shards of china and pottery into mosaic-ed markers of their home and family.

With a plan in place weeks before, each household thought about a particular design (or not — serendipity works too) and collected chipped china dishes, old toys, and mementoes, the whole endeavour of collecting pieces becoming a conversation piece itself among neighbours. The day before tagging day, someone from each household used chalk to draw a shape of their choice for their mosaic and some of the handier people carved out the layer of tarmac by tracing the chalk lines with a jigsaw. As night fell, the sound of smashing plates could be heard.

On the morning of the laneway intervention, kids helped stir up cement mix and water, and everyone got busy inserting their bits and pieces into the concrete and touring the lane to watch their neighbours' progress.

I love the thought that these upcycled bright bits of pottery and china have created sweet little urban interventions in all that grey tarmac that will withstand our soggy seasons and be around long after the kids grow up and the families move away.

It's the kind of project that would never get permission, but the city is forgiving when it comes to community-building. In fact, the block party that night was funded by a small neighbourhood grant from the Vancouver Foundation just for that purpose.

Mission accomplished.

The mosaic tags remain there as emblems to those families, this time and place, and that one connective neighbourhood event — well, until the developers win.