Category: Upcycling

Resistance can be beautiful

4/6/2025

Hand-making outside the dominant economic system

The news is inescapable. The Trump tariffs announced last week will “rupture the global economy,” warns the Prime Minister. This is on top of the inflationary wallop on 45 per cent of Canadians who reported that rising prices were “greatly affecting their ability to meet day-to-day expenses in the spring of 2024, up 12 percentage points from two years earlier,” according to Statistics Canada. Further, almost one-third of Canadians are “experiencing financial difficulties,” up from 18.6 per cent in 2021. It’s all led to a “gradual deterioration in life satisfaction” especially among younger adults and those with financial difficulties. On top of all this, Canada is in the throes of a snap federal election.

Yet life goes on. That robin outside my window is still doing its 4 a.m. wake-up call. The cherry tree it perches on is about to burst into pink snowballs. Below the tree canopy the Amazon vans still roar through the neighbourhood and the UberEats drivers still double-park to keep up with their orders.

Maybe, and I’m just spit-balling here, we can be like the blossoms and flourish independent of the consumer economy and the attention economy, that battleground that has us in a near permanent state of distraction. I searched how reverse life dissatisfaction and received this AI Overview:

“To reverse life dissatisfaction, focus on identifying the root causes, setting realistic goals, practicing self-care, engaging in meaningful activities, and seeking support when needed.”

Even this banal Google-bot response on the general theme of self-reflection begins with the word ‘focus’, followed by ‘practicing’, ‘engaging’, ‘meaningful’, ‘activities’, ‘seeking’ and ‘support’ — words in direct opposition to ‘distraction’, ‘escaping’, ‘frivolous’, ‘inertia’, ‘ignoring’ and ‘undermine.’ There are no Tips and Tricks in the AI Overview for reversing life dissatisfaction through retail therapy, no easy instructions to move fast and break things, or buy bit-coin, self-medicate, move somewhere else or to hang on tight to your privilege.

The beautiful thing about having a number of ongoing art projects is that there’s always one that fits the moment. Right now that’s Hearth.

Social making sessions resulted in this first installation of 'Hearth.' (Carlyn Yandle)

Started back in the beforetimes of 2019, Hearth is an infinitely-expanding grid of log-cabin quilt blocks that began with an idea: What kind of art-making would be engaging and easy enough to attract a diverse population, a big-picture zero-waste project that would cost nothing? What could create the chance to learn a new skill, meet people beyond one’s usual social circle, that would include the joys of giving and receiving, all toward a gallery exhibition?

Over the next six months, dozens of friends and friends-of-friends, neighbours, colleagues and people just happening by gathered at art studios, porches, around kitchen tables and living rooms. In groups from two to a dozen, we hand-stitched log-cabin-style quilt blocks from strips of donated fabric in improvised spirals around a central (“hearth”) square.

Some early stitching sessions (Carlyn Yandle photos)

The blocks were eventually all installed into a massive wall installation as part of my MFA thesis exactly one day before the university shut its doors for several months. We didn’t give up our will; we organized contact-free fabric swaps and took the project online, sharing ideas and stitching instead of drinking.

Socializing at a distance: a Zoom stitching session (Carlyn Yandle)

When the lockdown rules relaxed, Hearth was instrumental in rekindling social activity. Any in-person awkwardness dissipated as we focused on hand-stitching or just dug through the heap of fabric strips to create a pleasing palette, for our own blocks or to offer someone else.

RE-START: An early post-lockdown session with MFA colleagues

A street-front gallery show in the early post-pandemic; interior detail

It takes about two hours for anyone who can hold a needle to stitch a block, about the same time as any social visit. The makers, many of whom learned that in fact they could sew a straight line, were free to take their finished piece home, maybe to use as a cushion cover, placemat or the beginning of a quilt top. Most contributed their blocks to the Hearth project so their own handwork would be a part of a gallery show, with due credit.

As normal daily activity resumed, I moved the one bin of fabric strips and the other of finished blocks into deep storage. But just as sure as that cherry tree outside my window will burst into bloom, that project is coming back out for a show of its own. It’s a new chance to focus on practicing engaging, meaningful activity designed for those seeking connection and support outside this dominant, volatile economic system, away from forces screaming for our attention. In these perilous times we’re creating something bigger than our individual selves, one stitch, one block at a time.

The horror... the horror...

10/22/2024

There's still time to re-think toxic and tasteless Halloween decor

I am harnessing both my irrational and quite-reasonable fears of two looming nail-biter elections — one provincial within days and that bigger scary one with the global impact — and funnelling them into Halloween. And why not? It’s the most craftiest time of the year with all the sparkle and none of the ho-ho-horrible Christmas-y treacle, that one night a year when you can lure tots to your home with candy without being branded a sicko.

True, Halloween’s not until the end of the month but who knows what kind of collective anxiety will be gripping us by then, what with the Divided States of America election just days after?
Instead, I am focusing in, drawing on my craftivist background to encourage some acts of resistance — at least when it comes to Halloween decor.

This is the time to resist that 12-foot-tall glowing Grim Reaper in Home Depot’s seasonal section. Just walk on by. Or allowing that pointy finger to drop on the ‘Place my order’ button for other petroleum-derived, environmentally-hazardous novelty crap for home delivery, made under who-knows-what kind of labour conditions. Because how can you be sure it wasn’t made in another one of those prison-factories, like that Oregon woman discovered when she opened her fake-tombstones kit to find a hand-written plea for help from a forced-labourer in China?

Also on the resist list: fake spiderwebs. The sight of dead, dangling hummingbirds, bats and moths caught up in fake spiderwebs is the kind of horror you don’t want in your display. I know; the description from the Amazon seller is enticing: “The white spider web looks like a real spider web, making your indoors and outdoors look even more creepy.” (More creepy than usual?) But is it worth all the dead fauna?

Facebook post image via snopes.com

And yes, the Amazon ad’s “office” option (as shown below) could inspire a fun prank on that useless middle manager at your workplace but is it worth all the effort? These are important considerations.

Amazon seller images

Craft tip: You want fake spider webs? Just rip the hell out of some dollar-store cotton cheesecloth. You can fold it all up after and use it next year.

My bias for homemade over purchased is clear but some minimum standards in skill and creativity are required. Just searching upcycle and halloween will take the googler to some sad and creepy places. For example, daubing black dots on Keurig-type capsules is not a spooky craft. I smelled a rat so I scanned the text: “Don’t feel guilty about enjoying those extra cups of coffee in the morning!” reads this Michigan-based retailer’s blog post. A-ha! Obviously this is all part of the Kuerig Industrial Complex. No, zero-effort-craft searcher; you really SHOULD feel guilty for getting sucked into that single-serving plastic Keurig coffee pod routine. (Fun fact: Keurig Canada paid a $3 million penalty in 2022 for misleading coffee pod recycling claims.)

Also, the instructions on the blog require painting the pods with white acrylic paint or spray paint and black acrylic painted dots when clearly you could just take a Sharpie to mini yogurt containers that everyone uses once and throws away. One-star rating from this Halloween crafter!

And while I appreciate the effort of re-using what’s on hand, such as cannabis stalks served up on Reddit at r/GrowingMarijuana, I fail to make out what these things are. My best guess is some homegrown-fuelled visions from a past life in rural Slovenia.

This brings me to another minimum standard: taste. I find no spooky fun in fashioning homemade body bags and slumping them against a front door, so close to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown when morgues were overflowing, and in the midst of a toxic-drug epidemic. I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer here, but even Halloween crafters need to read the room. (Although I appreciated the dedication to the step-by-step images and instructions. Solid one star!)

Maybe that’s me just growing soft with age, but it’s more likely to do with the reality of my neighbourhood. That first Halloween here five years ago we decked out the front door with dangling skeletons, fog machine, black lights, giant (homemade) spider creeping up the wall. On the big night the speaker blasted a Spotify Spooky Scary Skeletons playlist and when we got sick of that, Tom Waits at a too-high volume. Most of the encounters with the 45 million kids in from god-knows-where were completely transactional: knock, shout trick or treat in unison, present open bag, inspect measly sucker offering, sneer and race to the next door. But there were other kids, often without costumes, whose knocks were barely audible and who stood silent and frozen, staring up at me, mouths slack. Clearly my understanding of their faraway life experiences was as foggy as our front porch.

When we know better we do better so the following Hallowed Eve I ditched any obvious triggers except the giant homemade spider; I set that up every year to torment an arachnophobic friend. I omitted the wails and Waits. I learned to never ask kids why they don’t have a costume or demand they say the customary words to get a candy. I’m just glad their dads and uncles, moms and aunts are all here, braving this bit of strange so their kids can be kids. Now I greet them with a smile, wave at the adults looking on and hope they all remember that although the treats may suck (they’re literally suckers — hundreds of suckers) this household is a safe place, all year round.

But there’s nothing wrong with macabre crafts; last year my studio became a horror show of upcycled useless things, at the hands of two evil-minded 13-year-olds:

Repairing is caring

9/21/2024

Making things better requires thinking creatively, not throwing it all away

Can you do me a favour, a neighbour-friend asked, and I knew his sweet, destructive dog had done it again.
The pup, bred to herd, over large tracts of land, has made uneven progress adjusting to his home in an inner-city townhouse. Over the past year I’ve patched up a sofa seat cushion he was on his way to destroying; re-stuffed his new, disemboweled dog bed; and fancy-stitched an L-shaped rip on a beloved, specially-ordered Western-style shirt (the friend’s, not the dog’s).

On his most recent visit, his owner held up Exhibit A: a favourite art T-shirt with a bite-shaped chunk out of the edge of the sleeve. And then Exhibit B: the same cherished Western shirt I repaired a while ago, now with gaping hole in the lower back.

Do you think the dog might be trying to tell you something? I asked. He gave me the look of one who’s heard that line a lot. But I kid. It is my pleasure to do these repairs. He knows it and I’m sure he felt just as good about bringing over a slow-cooked pork roast when I was consumed by grief.

Making is connecting. I share this no-sew method to inspire others to think twice before chucking a favourite piece of clothing. To me, this twice-repaired shirt is a perfectly imperfect object, now rich with the layer of meaning of That Time the Puppy Ate A Hole In My Shirt, over the previously added layer, Fancy Embroidery Where the Puppy Ripped My Shirt. It all connects with the Japanese idea of kintsugi, the obvious and artful repair of broken objects:

Making useless stuff like artwork is fine for the gallery but I get more satisfaction making useful things out of material that’s already in the world, items that would otherwise be thrown away because we know there’s no “away.”

This week, that satisfaction came from taking a can of flat black spray-paint to a metal filing cabinet (everyone’s dumping them; the local Craigslist listings alone showed 36 for sale and three for free this weekend) and converting it into a bamboo planter on casters.

Perfectionism is part of a runaway capitalist system of productivity and purchase. It exists as a superlative in a black-and-white worldview. I distrust this fixation on perfection and what some will do to try to get there.

There is no time or space in this system for down-to-earth conservation ideals like “make do and mend” or “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” Those Great Depression directives feel quaint in this Great Production era of stuff, even in the face of climate catastrophes.

Repairing is caring — for the object or material, for the person who connects with it, for its history and against wastefulness. It’s a wabi-sabi mindset that values time-worn objects and materials in direct opposition to the sterility of perfectionism. Sharing ideas and building on that knowledge knits up community and reinforces our commonality despite divisive political forces.

This is how repairing a shirt for a friend or finding new life for a throwaway thing and sharing those ideas are small political acts of resistance to market forces that see us as individual consumers to be fuelled with desire for luxury and novelty.

Living simply, with our imperfections relegates self-identifying artists and makers to the fringes in a perfectionist world. I happily make do with that.

I'd rather be at craft camp

8/9/2024

Vacationing with extended family or acquaintances at the campground can be awkward for those makers who devote a good portion of our waking hours to making artwork.
Unless you’re cranking out objects for your Etsy shop you will be faced with that one question that could throw you into an existential crisis. You (and by you I mean I) have no problem answering questions like What it’s made of, How did you make it, Where did you get the idea or When did you make it. I am happy to open up my studio to perfect strangers of any age to answer these and any other questions, as there are no stupid ones. But in the context of slightly inebriated or jack-assy folks, it’s best to avoid the Why. Trying to answer that around the old campfire is a trap.

Above: an actual text message from a fellow artist last month.

A weirdo? Or a material-explorer?

At the campground or on the deck or at the picnic, do not take the bait when you’re asked in the nicest, qualifying way why you do what you do. The desire to “engage in the art discourse” is fine for the gallery or classroom or lecture hall but as soon as that phrase leaves your lips, eyes will roll. Phrases like “embodied experience”, “finding flow” and “material exploration” will lead to some head-shaking while peering into their Hey Y’alls. And do not mention art school. On the other hand, if you’re spoiling for a fight or looking for a laugh at any cost, mention your Masters in Fine Arts. That always gets them going.
At the moment when the group has clearly decided you’re a freeloading waste of space I think about Mister Rogers and look for the helpers. It might just be that one other person who isn’t engaged in a general critique of mainstream media, that one head not bobbing along when the talk turns to vaccine-pushers. If I can’t find that safe harbour in these turbulent seas, I make a French exit and go find a kid.

Hanging out with a kid is a chance to transport the self into an exploration of the actual here-and-now world. Little kids at these kinds of events are constantly testing the boundaries of water, earth, air, fire, plants, bugs, and their own physical abilities. If they’re quite young, they’ll happily engage with me and the parents are happy for the break. Tweens may tolerate me but teens, forget it; I don’t need any parents suspicious of an adult artist hanging with teens.

I once had this idea of running a kids-type sleep-away camp for adults: bare-bones bunkies, communal mess hall, forest trails, a couple of acres on a lake or oceanfront. The only difference would be a lack of programming. It would be the opposite of corporate team-building or any kind of self-improvement or indoctrination. The whole objective would be fun without — get ready for it — alcohol or any recreational drugs and that includes non-essential electronic devices. But there would be musical instruments, costumes and basic tools for creating stuff. It would be a self-organizing singular or group-directed experience of the immediate environment, with some basic facilitation as required — kind of like art school. There would be no agenda beyond meal-time preparation and dining and a basic structure for communally keeping the place ship-shape. It would be a space to explore, to gather or to enjoy solitude, to sing and dance, go quietly read or walk or nap, or to try on different personas for performance or personal discovery.

I abandoned that plan because I couldn’t bear any questioning of the value-for-money of the camp fees, or the lack of goal-setting or networking opportunities or skill-building programs, while I’m questioning whether wetland mud can create sculpture or if it’s possible to harvest sea salt in an outcrop of sandstone.
So instead over the years I have enjoyed hosting a sort of loose Craft Camp on one of the Gulf Islands, just for the kids in my life and fellow adult artists. We have hammered, power-drilled, sawed, glued, wrapped, woven, drawn, gathered, knotted, painted, whittled, categorized, braided and built a cob oven.

Vancouver-area artists building a cob oven (Connie Sabo photo)

Completed or ongoing projects include beach-glass mosaics, free-store costumes, rusty-metal assemblages, comic zines, braided rugs, seagrass weavings, driftwood sculptures, leaf collages, fabric pillows, cyanotype paintings, papier-mache vessels and pressed seaweed and flower pictures — all without a master plan, or mandatory outcomes.

Kids instinctively know how to get in the flow. (Carlyn Yandle photos)

Kids know how to be in the flow of experiencing the world. My goal is to bush-wack through the trappings of late capitalism to find it.

This is why.

Halloween a reminder of fiery end to a neighbourhood hub

10/22/2022

Just a week before Halloween — prime creative costume time — we in these parts are again reminded of the tragic, toxic end to our local Value Village.

The general love-hate relationship came to a fiery finish one summer night four months ago yet I can’t shake thoughts of all the stuff that went up into black, acrid smoke that hung over the East End the next day. Those long aisles thick with petroleum-derived clothing, incinerated. The shelves on top of those aisles crammed with knicknacks, contorting in flames. The baskets would have burst first but would the candles, as accelerants, have melted the glass vases? I would like these images to stop.

The Hastings/Victoria Value Village linked the communities of Hastings Sunrise, The Drive, and the Downtown Eastside. Until it didn't. (Found photos)

I’d like to make peace with the fire, seeing it as the ultimate cleanse, a final decluttering. But there’s a bigger hole beyond the charred rubble that remains today; after 40 years we’ve lost a social hub that attracted a colourful congregation of non-conforming fashionistas, DIYers, vintage-hunters and regular folk of all ages and on limited budgets from all over Hastings Sunrise, the Downtown Eastside and The Drive.

Yes, the prices were crazy by the end — you could get the same wine glass for a buck cheaper at the newish dollar stores a few blocks away — and the recent switch-over to self-checkouts led to some comical performance-art moments. But the diverse, unpredictable clientele was generally served well by employees and security guards with the steely nerves of air-traffic controllers.

And yes, this was no mom-and-pop shop but one of more than 300 locations here in Canada, the U.S. and Australia. Savers, Inc. is an international, privately-held company far removed from its original San Francisco thrift shop that opened in an old Mission District theatre in 1954.

To fully appreciate our local loss you would have to go back to 1980 when this Value Village opened, the first one in Canada (near as I can figure; someone please correct me on this). Before that, the only cheap one-stop clothing/housewares store in the vicinity was Zellers, further east up the hill, which used to be Fedco. (Insert Napoleon Dynamite sigh here.) All that changed when the department-sized thrift store opened us up to a whole world of self-expression. We could actually afford to take fashion risks, and they could include long wool coats from the '40s or '50s, '60s glam boots or ’70s caftans — the opposite of the flimsy fast-fashion mall stock that fed the summertime fire. (“I took pride in being alternative,” my youngest sister says. “I was teased by some random teens though.”) It was also an escape of the day, the kids, the worries, where one can mindlessly flip through those racks of clothes like beads on a rosary, with no chance of encountering pushy sales staff.

So I guess this is an overdue obituary, the kind that would be written about someone who was quite the opportunist and just a little creepy but who also opened up the door for us to question the status quo, think creatively, fly our freak flags and mingle with the all-sorts people in the neighbourhood.

Above: The East Hastings Value Village was one of the few hassle-free spots left where a diverse community of regulars could find basics, fun stuff and common ground. (Found photo)

work-in-progress 'Unbridled' stitches up pain and pleasure

8/31/2022

Exploring tattoo tropes (Carlyn Yandle photo)

Thirty years ago this month I floated down the aisle in a pearly silk dress. Recently I pulled this relic out of deep storage to give it new life.

It is a ballerina-length A-line number, a fitted silhouette of crisp, Japanese Dupioni silk festooned with faux pearls, featuring a winding pattern of woven ivory ribbon stitched around the shoulder and ruche bodice, and bateau neckline edged with mini pearls. A strand of 14 pearl shank buttons nestles into handmade button loops running down the back, disappearing into a bustle of box pleats. A puff of shoulder sleeve slims to a fitted forearm, leading down to three more pearl buttons and ending in a pointed edge at the wrist edged in more pearl trim. The pattern was painstakingly customized by the maid of honour, possibly still this city’s most skilled professional in design development. The sleeve itself is an architectural feat, with three delicate darts at the elbow and invisible underarm gusset for ease of movement when slow-dancing.
The dress was a big effin' deal, is what I'm saying.

Covid-era expression

Following the one night of festivities, the gown and accoutrements — ivory silk pantyhose, pearlescent strappy heels, pearl-bead tiara-hairband thing and matching teardrop earrings — were cocooned in a cotton sheet, placed inside a garment box and embalmed in clear plastic. The box took up precious space, first in an Eastside housing co-op unit, then a Westside condo and finally back to the Eastside where it has been languishing as a past attachment out of place in my much different life. Clearly I needed to address this fetish I had for this dress.

My first job as a full-time newspaper reporter included re-writing submitted wedding announcements — a bit of a comedown after an intensive year of journalism school wrestling with ethical issues and the craft of long-form investigative reporting. Banging out descriptions of sweetheart necklines and fingertip veils was tedious work that made me crabby.

"Nevertheless, she persisted", a Trump-era memento

I resented the notion that this was a ritual of every young woman’s life worthy of space in the local newspaper and the time of a salaried employee. The only vow I was willing to make was to not end up as that girl in the accompanying photo. But question marks hung in the air all through my 20s, not about If but When. Over time my replies of ‘never’ turned into ‘not now’, then ‘who knows’ then ‘soon’ and before the end of my 20s I was a married person with a useless dress in a box.

I’m not nostalgic about the whole patriarchal wedding ritual and its objectifying notions of purity but I did love that dress. Whenever I re-organized my deep storage I would unfurl it from its wrappings, a little ashamed at my attachment to the thing. I needed to poke holes into the whole notion; I needed to break through this pure silk skin.

I texted a friend for support, someone whose own actual skin is needled with ink here and there like it’s no big deal. Do it. Why not just do it?, she texted back. I took a deep breath and plunged the needle into the silk, embedding stitches of ink-black embroidery floss into the ivory cloth. I winced at the first piercing but like tattoos, there was also a flood of pleasure. I began embroidering significant moments of this significant era then hung it on a hanger in my studio until another compulsion came on. This is how this dress and I work together now: it is a work in progress, like that bride who is always still becoming.

I feel zingy about this mark-making with no overall plan that will not be erased, this disruption of expectations for young women — of my time and place, at least. Unbridled is a work in progress, an unkempt keeper, that weaves the pain in with the pleasure.

Reminder of the Women's March on Washington, 2017

The chemotherapy drugs code of a family member close to my heart

Sciatica source, as depicted in tattoo-style lightning bolts

Weather bombs and forests in flames: Tattoo-style flames licking at hem of dress

A bicep full of vaccination pharmaceutical company logos

Moths in flight: symbols of transformation and regeneration

Tripping on this troublesome rug

12/6/2019

In the final critique of my final work in this second-to-final semester of graduate studies, I could see that there was going to be trouble.

From the start, there was the trouble of actually getting a full view of this sprawling, chaotic, twisted mass of deconstructed jeans. It required everyone to stand around the perimeter of the low-lit white-cube gallery, in a circle, facing in, looking down at this problem child.

There was the troubling of its position: Why not on the wall or hung from the ceiling? Since it’s sprawled out on the floor, does it invite being walked on?

There was the troubling of method: Why the knotting and weaving and braiding? Why the obvious waistbands and labels? Why spend all this time and labour? Why not just a pile of denim strips?

And there was the troubling over concept: Is it too obvious? Too simple? Too many signifiers? Not enough points of entry? Or too many? Is it art or craft? Who is this talking to? And to what end?

And those are just my questions.

I question everything, especially as I work, with my hands, intuitively. But my first line of questioning is directed at the material itself. What do you want from me? (Or, to borrow from my then-eight-year-old nephew, in an inexplicable situation: What are we even doing here?)

As much as I could have sat and gazed at the striated piles of folded jeans collected, machine-washed and line-dried by my mother and hauled to my studio by my others, now those jeans demanded more of me.

Seams, the index of the work by mainly women in foreign factories, needed to be exposed, so I cut them away from the yardage, bound them up in my own hand-stitching into tight, potent fast-fashion/slow-craft units. For what? For now, just for today: my daily reminder not to overthink or force solutions.

The labels and tags required daylighting, too, and the more collisions the better between fonts and texts and all that those brands try to stand for.

That left the denim textile, the fabric of this whole fraught, toxic industry. Shucked from their constraints of style and function, I ripped them into strips and watched them fall from my cutting table into heaps on the floor like tidepools.

Image-searching "jeans industry" produces a blue-stained global-reality horror show.

As much as I love the immersive works of minimalist textile installations, more would be more here. I would be mining all my own making methods and circulating them into this circles-within-circles piece, in allegiance with all of those who work with their hands for a living or for the love of material. Or both.

Like most makers I know, I love the challenge of constraining the work to some specific rules of material engagement so I limited mine to a single material, a knotting/binding additive process and two tools: scissors and sewing needle (well, three, if you count my hands).

I intrinsically start from the centre in an almost innate process learned over a lifetime, from macramé plant-hangers (1970s) to braided rugs (1990s) to crocheted giant doilies (2000s) created to cover and protect in the public sphere.

The work begins with a gathering of material-energy into a tight nucleus of force (I’ve been mixing up issues of astrophysics and making over the last year) and spreads outward, finding pattern then breaking that pattern toward new horizons. It’s a process of allowing the material to ebb then roil up again into forces that break into near disintegration, a rhythm that keeps me in the swim of things. As it flows outward into small tsunamis, then eddies, I feel an oceanic, topographic, geologic personality wash over this thing.

And this definitely wants to be a thing, not an immersive installation. This is an object that requires some finishing, a symphony of soundwaves that started with a bang but wants to end in a hum, in the round. It is a rug you can’t walk on, borne of Seismic Rug that emerged while I was confined to the floor with sciatica, watching footage of the horror of the 2011 Japan Tsunami flood in.

It is a resurgence of that making, and that fear of that flood and of the oncoming higher waters, but also the resurgence of my ability to grab hold of physically-challenging handwork after falling on the low-tide foreshore this summer and breaking my ‘good’ arm in two places. I cast aside those fears of not being able to make/do from the cast-offs of this unsustainable era of human history.

Resurge feels right for the piece formerly known as the Monster that raises issues from the ground up, this fuzzy menace.

Left: A colleague lists initial reactions during critique; right: pattern and collapse seen in one section.

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

8/30/2019

Comments

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.

Comments

'Foundlings': Kids' works of terrible beauty

7/2/2019

Comments

Clockwise from top left: "This Little Lump", Sylva and Shyla; "Garbage Catcher", Coco; "Little Worker", Kahlio, Basha and Ari.

Everyone is feeling that relentless creep of plastic that is threatening to consume us, the consumers. I felt myself drowning in the tsunami of stuff over this past year of grad studies at Emily Carr University. Art, as one instructor stated, is a wasteful business.

Even as I retreated back to my green, pristine Gulf Island I was hit with it at the end of the long drive through forest to the local dump: a mountain of garbage. This, from a small off-grid community known for its environmental consciousness.

My art practice is driven by a need to physically grapple with the unfathomable when words are not enough. In the strange way that an idea for an artwork takes hold, that sight of that mountain of petroleum-derived recycling-rejects led to my latest project: Foundlings.

For a while I’d been trying to land on a low-barrier, low-skill technique that could involve kids in the making of objects from found, non-recyclable and non-biodegradable materials. Then I landed on the work of late American sculptor Judith Scott, whose many exhibitions of her curious bound and woven fiber/found objects have led to discourse on “outsider” art, disability (she was profoundly deaf, non-verbal, and had severe Down’s Syndrome), intention, new sculpture forms and the privileged art world.

Within a month of escaping the art institution I was driving a pickup-truckload of colourful non-recyclable, non-biodegradable bits from the home-grown garbage mountain to the island’s only elementary school.

Before we got to the making part I sat down with the students and shared some images of Scott’s work for inspiration. We talked about how this artist’s method of wrapping, binding and weaving fibre around objects adds curiosity to what is on the inside. We talked about how working with familiar objects and materials in unusual ways can lead to new ideas. And we talked about how an object can be terrible and beautiful at the same time, does not have to be a recognizable thing nor have utility.

‘Curated’ materials gleaned from the island’s dump.

We worked over time on the pieces, some kids on their own and some in groups of two or three, adding even more fibre and found plastic detritus from their year-end trip to the local provincial marine park. On the final day of school I arrived to pick up the final pieces and was astounded at the creations. They were richly textured, humorous and foreboding, and proof of why I collaborate with children: they consistently demonstrate the importance of letting hands and imaginations fly.
They each titled their pieces in their own hand and I installed them for exhibit on forest plinths (moss-covered stumps from the last big clearcut) in time for the annual Arts Fest. With no chance they’ll degrade in the weather they remain there, pretty and pretty disturbing: our inescapable stuff.

Kids assembling the armatures of their pieces in the first phase of the Foundlings project.

Part of the Foundlings project, installed in a Gulf Island forest.

Snow Pillow, by Mikiko

Comments

A useless thing with many functions

4/10/2019

Comments

The brilliant part about being an aging female is your growing self-acceptance. Maybe this is because you don't feel that ever-present gaze anymore so you’re not feeling as judged. Or maybe it’s because you’ve just had enough of all that and it’s tiresome and dammit you like to be cozy so screw them.

Part of my self-acceptance is stepping out of the ‘should-storm’ of art-making and doing what I love to do with my hands: hunting down materials that have already had their first use and playing up their inherent qualities through knotting, weaving, tying, stitching and binding. I want to work repetitively, easily, without technological assistance and without haste or waste. And in doing so I’m carving out space and time to calm down, reflect and to think deeper — more crucial as the distractions threaten to take over.

Nate Yandle photo

In this way the work is not just in the form or connotations but the well-being and challenge that is relatable to makers who may or may not self-identify as artists. Wrapped up in there are issues of endurance, innovation, history of labour, the learning of the skill, dedication (and frustration), the specific culture and history of the method, the muscle memory that extends back to childhood, and the relationships built through the gathering of the materials.

Through this making I make some hay over the established boundaries between the privileged art world and real life, between craft and sculpture, between tactile and political action.

Scaffolds is composed of found spun-polyester building wrap, tarp and nylon cord over an armature of waste construction materials including caution tape, PVC piping, rebar, conduit, baling wire, and junction boxes, all attached through simple knots.

Special thanks goes to the construction workers who delivered these materials from their many jobsites to my studio for my useless work with many functions.