Crafting a Life, Part 2

These things are true as I continue to ponder them from a previous blog: I crafted as a child. I designed as a livelihood. I make art because I can. I made art as a child. I paid my bills by design. Crafting a life. Artful living. 

Thinking about craft and life and politics and art and what happens is; I remember parts of my childhood. In the past, I have done cross-stitch pieces, quilting, sewing, puppet making, art with yarn and fabric, card crafting, knitting, clay, batik, macramé, plastic model airplanes, you name it I’ve tried to make it with my hands. 

An Original Suzanne Utaski, created in ceramics class 8th or 9th grade. Inspired by Goodnight Moon.

I regularly created costumes and dressed up and did performances with friends, for friends, with family and for family. My life as a child was full, provocative and exciting. I did not grow up in the United States. I grew up without TV and the Internet had not been invented yet. The idea of crafting or making things was that it was a part of children’s play. 

I think inherently people enjoy using their hands and making things. We’ve begun to loose that joy as we swish our fingers across screens – even children as young as 9 months can now be seen “playing” on their parents iPhones or iPads (and parents find this so cute, sad but not the subject of this blog). Making items by hand: whether we call it Crafting, Craftivism, or Studio Crafting it’s the innate desire for using our sense of touch that all humans posses, in my opinion, that keeps the genre alive. Most Art requires the use of the makers’ hand as well.

I remember as a teenager in about 1979 going into New York City with my mother to see a museum show that was all about American Quilts, many of them Amish but, also an exploration of the tradition of quilting in America. The quilts were beautiful, the show had a historical framework that enhanced the story of the quilts and all of them were hung like paintings would be hung on the walls of the museum. 
Here is an example of a current-day quilter who makes beautiful work: Chantelle on Etsy.

Modern Organic Quilt

I enjoyed the show so much that I spent the next year designing and making my first quilt. I took the quilt that I made to college with me. I took the quilt across the country from Pittsburgh to California for my first job and moved into my very own apartment. 

One night while enjoying a date in San Francisco my boyfriends’ car got broken into and the quilt was gone. I do not remember what else was taken from the car, not very much I imagine, we did not have much. All I can remember thinking was that I hoped that the person that took it needed it for warmth and that they hadn’t broken into the car for stuff to sell to buy drugs. I still hold the image of the thief as needing the warmth. 

Yes, objects made by hand hold more value than those purchased in big box stores. I ran into this quote while thinking about what to write for this post: “Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.” (Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy) This quote says what I feel so nicely, art is craft and craft is art. My head and my heart make all the work I have ever created. There are those who persist in the separation of Art and Craft, and they should because it helps both sides to stretch and grow, but I am happy to be the middle person and persist in working and believing in both camps.