Pimp Cups and Soulcraft

My Advanced Material Culture class took an interesting turn this week: we made pimp cups. (For those of you unfamiliar with these artifacts, look here, here and here.) The genesis of this project was my request for someone to share a craft with the rest of the class. I'd made this request at the beginning of the semester, but no one stepped up at the time. They claimed not to know how to make anything, or nothing very interesting. Thanks to Fiona, we all know how to make pimp cups now. She supplied the blanks, bling and glue, and I chipped in to help pay the bill. My observations:

• I have not seen a class so quiet since the last time I gave a final exam. They were totally absorbed for about 30 minutes. Even the ones who are usually checking their phones or "taking notes" on their laptops.
• They got the connections between this activity and our first text "Shop Class as Soulcraft". Yes, craft engages the mind, Yes, it's problem-solving. Yes, materials impose discipline. (Be careful with the epoxy, or you make a mess or even glue your fingers together.)
  

Today, I am going to show them how to crochet a granny square, and we'll talk about crafting as part of childhood. I have some toy catalogs to share that might help jog their memories. The first day of class, one of my students made an off-hand comment about crafts are "kid stuff", and it keeps calling me back. Nearly all of the crafts I do today I learned as child, yet I don't see them as childish. The processes we learn as children have the potential to grow and mature as we do.

Artifacts of Loss -- and Survival

My Craft and production class is discussing Jane Dusselier's amazing and heart-breaking book, Artifacts of Loss. Dusselier uses material culture -- arts, crafts, gardens and other creations -- to describe and analyze the lives of Japanese-Americans in WWII concentration camps. One of the questions I've been mulling over is whether any handmade objects survived from the Nazi concentration camps. So far, I have found only this:

Eva Klein David — Clandestine Crafts That Saved Lives

Still looking for more, will post if I find any.

Crafting as a Walkabout

For nearly two years, I've included a "walkabout" in my weekly schedule. It's an idea I adapted from a colleague's description of an Australian aboriginal practice of taking off from regular work for a short period of living in the bush. We were discussing it in the context of my up-coming sabbatical, because at the time I was trying to find a balance between setting up a rigid work schedule and wanting to have the time and mental space to "wander". I decided to experiment with weekly "walkabouts" -- days when I would let go of my work routine. I've stuck with the practice because it works. My productivity hasn't suffered, and the "walkabout" itself has resisted routinization.

When the weather is fine, I escape to the outdoors. I board the Metro at my local station; I have no idea where I'll get off, and sometimes I have ridden to the end of the line and part of the way back before deciding. While I ride, I listen to music. Sometimes I go to a garden, sometimes to zoo, sometimes a museum. if a work idea pops into my head, I write it down and let it go.

The weather was decidedly NOT fine this week; Friday was hot, humid and stormy. So I used crafting as my walkabout. Reaching into my stack of commenced projects, I spent the day making a simple shell in an autumn-hued paisley challis. Crafting lets me gather information through unused senses: feeling the soft drape of the fabric, listening to the clattering hum of my sewing machine, watching carefully as I sew each seam.  Crafting challenges me; challis loves to ravel, and I needed to figure out how to prevent that. Michael Pollan recently suggested that we have replaced cooking with watching other people cook on television. I wonder if our rich media culture hasn't done the same with gardening, carpentry and other crafts. My crafting walkabout was to a sewing show what my kitchen efforts are to Gina De Laurentis' creations. What is the advantage to working with my own hands, head and senses, instead of watching someone else? What synapses are being connected in my brain? What do I learn? How does it affect my relationship to the product of my effort? To be continued.

Required reading: Shop Class as Soulcraft

I have added one more title to my book list for AMST 498Q (Craft and Production). It is Matthew B. Crawford's "Shop Class as Soulcraft", previewed in the NY Times Magazine on May 24. (Thanks, Jacob!) Crawford also appeared on the Diane Rehm show last week, which finally got me down to the local book store. He's a motorcycle mechanic with a PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago, and he's written an engrossing and mind-bending examination of the value of manual labor. So far me only quibble is that he focuses on male-dominated trades, begging the question of the value of manual labor when it is "women's work". But that's really a small quibble; he is doing what all writers are told to do -- write about what you know -- and so far it's a marvelous book.

I spent a day last week volunteering in a museum costume collection, working with my hands and with a large group (most of them women). Crawford is quite right in his argument that handwork can involve the brain in very intricate ways, defying the modern dichotomy between "manual labor" and "knowledge work". Each object presented a unique problem to solve -- imagine trying to vacuum the dust (and insect casings!) off a child's parasol made of very fragile silk, then describing the object and carefully labeling it and preparing it for storage. Not only did we need to use our wits, we relied on each other, for expertise or suggestions or just an extra hand. The women I worked with that day were my special new friends the rest of the week!

Marybeth's Jacket - A True Story

Wordsmithing is a very odd craft. When I write blog posts, or work on my book, it sometimes seems I have nothing to show for my effort. It's hard for me to feel satisfied looking at characters on a screen, or a sheet of paper. This year I have probably spent more time making things -- cooking, knitting, crocheting, sewing -- than I have writing. Writing empties me, and making things restores me. Does this mean I am not really a writer at heart?Last week I wrote every morning, wrestling two recalcitrant chapters into order. Now I have a pile of paper, not unlike the pile of paper I had the week before. In the afternoons, I cut, stitched and ironed fabric, restoring a friend's battered thrift store jacket. The story continues here.

I wanted to do this project because the jacket needed it, I needed real work (the kind that ends with something tangible) and Marybeth is one of those women who always serves the cake at the party and forgets to save a piece for herself. Thank you, Marybeth, for trusting me with your jacket and for being my friend.

DIY: my cheap little sheep

Speaking of DIY, my latest passion is feeding my knitting habit with thrift store yarn. Most stores combine several skeins into a bag according to someone's idea of a "color story" and charge around 2 or 3 dollars for the whole set. Given that there are usually 5-7 skeins of yarn in a bag, this a is  GREAT deal. The first bag is going towards a granny square afghan that won't be done until next winter. About a month ago I scored a wonderful assortedment of neutral-colored wool and wool/acrylic blends, including an undyed alpaca (now a double-cable scarf) and some curly wool blend that is turning into a herd of these:

 

The pattern is from Toy Knits by Debbie Bliss.

Course description: Advanced Material Culture: Craft and Production

So I have a more formal description for my fall course! AMST498Q Advanced Material Culture: Craft and Production. This course will build on the theoretical foundation of AMST 205, using multiple approaches (ethnography, object analysis, history) to examine the
production of objects and the relationship between maker and artifact. Topics will include historical reenactment, professional craftspeople and amateur DIY (including gardening, knitting, furniture hacking, and all forms of cookery). Students will be expected to be willing to work and interact outside the classroom (required field trips and online activities).

I also have two books on order: Jane Dusselier's Artifacts of Loss (crafts in Japanese-American internment camps) and Shaping Things, Bruce Sterlings' very interesting (and very rich) work on the future of things. Dusselier's book will be a great way to reposition the discussion about crafts, which can get stuck on the mindless-hobby level. I actually don't believe that most amateur crafting is just so much meaningless filler;  when any activity consumes someone's time, money and energy, it has meaning and is worth serious consideration by cultural scholars. Being dismissive of scrapbookers is elitist and probably sexist.

There are seven students registered for the class so far and we don't start until August; exciting!

Circular blogging: craft=power

It's the truth: my daughter writes better than I do. Here's her take on the importance of craft. How did "crafts" ever, EVER become a dirty word? Happy Earth Day, y'all!

My academic side: teaching a new course on craft and production

I've been blogging here as a side interest, while a book project gets most of my attention. (It's related to ethical fashion on the gender vs. gender-free side of things, being about pink and blue and all that.) It's been a real luxury being on sabbatical; time is everyone's most precious commodity, and I was willing to go on half salary in return for a full year to research, think and write. (also knit, cook and take afternoon naps) With just under six months before I am back in the classroom, I now have my teaching schedule and and trying hard not to get too excited, lest the book slip to the back burner. Fortunately, next year's courses include two new courses which will be making frequent appearances in this blog.

Advanced Material Culture: Craft and Production (Fall 2009). Most material culture literature and teaching these days seem to emphasize either object analysis or consumer culture, as opposed to the production of objects and the relationship between maker and artifact. Given the interest in DIY (including gardening, knitting, furniture hacking, and all forms of cookery) and my own lifelong fascination with how things are made, this seemed to be a great, fresh angle to pursue. I am looking for good readings, but want the course to be very hands-on, not text-heavy.

Consumer Culture: Simplicity and Anti-consumption in American Life (Spring 2010). This is a course I've been imagining ever since I migrated from textiles to American Studies. Consumer culture literature and courses tend to focus on advertising, marketing, consumer-identity/branding aspects of purchasing behavior, but American culture has always included movements which resist or oppose excessive consumption. David Shi's The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culturewill provide the historical perspective.

I'll be posting about both courses here as they progress.