Material Innovations

I grew up in hyper-urban central Los Angeles from 1971 to 1985. In that time I witnessed train derailments, riots, large magnitude earthquakes, plane crashes, raging infernos, fatal collisions of various object combinations, terrorist attacks, even Martial Law. I survived this thanks to my Vietnam Veteran father who taught me that around ever corner was a starving alligator waiting in prey to eat me.

Chairman Mo

During most of that time, my parents sent me to visit  my grand parents in rural Massachusetts.  As children, their farming families immigrated from Quebec in the early 1900′s to work in the New England factories.  They were from another time, that place where I visited them almost every Summer was from another time.  Whatever that time was made sense to me, felt right.  I could never tire of endless days spent alone in the woods.  These youthful sabbaticals make me more compassionate and less judgmental than my childhood friends who never had the benefit of nature.

I’ve always been making, at first in the form of breaking.  My hands are curious and always want to know the answer to, “How”?  I’m clearly on a journey from the technical, through the artistic, and by means of design, maybe to the spiritual.  This path has brought me to the ultimate path, a Meta-Path.  I’m literally in a labyrinth of my own making…

Mo: Labyrinthine Projection™

I can’t believe things have come to this.  All people of even minimal education, formal or not, know that our diets, food and otherwise, are killing us.  We in the West know this, even they in the Emerging West know.  It was in China, of all places – a forerunner in the Emerging West, where I witnessed the most appalling levels of waste among the new middle/business class.  Waste of food has become such a huge issue, in a country where most of its population exists in poverty, that the Federal Government imposed a law calling for restaurant owners to fine patrons who waste more than the allotted amount of waste.  In total disbelief, I participated in feasts where five times as much food was left untouched as consumed.  Grotesque quantities of uneaten food were left after a meal, scooped up by bussers and presumably discarded.  In China, there’s no such thing as a doggie-bag.  But there’s hope: China outlawed plastic shopping bags a few years ago.

Poverty is all around, even here in the Far West.  We don’t need to watch TV commercials from world aide groups to see destitution, alienation, commoditization, and pure wretchedness because if we looked, we could see it on the way to work, school, the park, or the restaurant.  Have a look today, tonight; maybe in the mirror, tomorrow.

Yet the self-deceived, as though immune to the effects of a world-off-the-wire, gather to parse, dissect, pigeon-hole, liberate, maybe even to re-sign this word Design as though all it takes to fix the decrepitude is an academically sound, philosophical understanding of the word itself.  Design has failed the world; design has to save the world; design is a way of thinking; design is a way of seeing, living, being; design is… ad nausea.  Design is a varnish saturating the entirety of Western culture and thus has become meaningless.  Simply stated: designers are problem-solvers.  Since there are problems in every discipline, and solutions found in every discipline, it follows that there are designers in every discipline in and out of the so-called creative fields.  Doctors are designers, engineers are designers, technicians are designers, too.  Your plumber and car mechanic are designers.  Design is the space between an idea and its final manifestation.  Making dinner is design.

We reflect on design propaganda, such as “We Are All Emerging Economies Now,” in which Jack John Thackara waxes boastfully about his refusal to speak at a design conference, “with a wonderful group of design peers in a beautiful location,” because, “if I go as a tourist, even an eco one, I’ll use as much water in 24 hours as a villager who lives there, uses in 100 days.” Well maybe Mr. Thackara should stay home and read read-up on simple measures to reduce one’s water consumption.  Or, if he has something of value to say to his colleagues about responsibility in design, perhaps the world might be a better place if he opted in responsibly (as opposed to wastefully).  Perhaps Thackara could speak authoritatively about the need to reevaluate the expenditure of vast capital, labor and environmental resources on designs for a handful of beneficiaries like the Burj Al Arab Hotel, UAE…

Burj Al Arab Hotel, UAE

Though the article smacks of an oblique auto-heroism, Thackara does make one significant  over-arching point: we are in need of solutions to an exponentially growing number of problems right here in our own front yard (and back yard, garage, basement, and attic, to boot).  We ought to stop meddling and de-signing in cultures we haven’t the faintest clue about when we can work to solve an endless list of problems needing solutions right here.  Also, it seems difficult to separate designing and destroying, as often conflict is allied to either the reason or the response to design for other cultures.  I say, let the designers in other cultures be affected, inspired, or otherwise influenced by our designs as best suits their needs to stimulate original designed solutions which will be vastly better suited to their culture over one imposed by another for market reasons.

Vilém Flusser made an argument, reasoned purely by etymology, that the word Design means to deceive; to de-sign, or take away its signifier(s).  This is exactly what happened in India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries following British control, according to “Thinking Design” by S. Balaram.  In presenting the modern design history of India and its related cultural impact, Balaram explains that along with its independence from Britain, a reintroduction of a traditional Indian cultural aesthetic fueled social and economic reform.  He explains, “The insistence on self-reliance encouraged the development of small units of production such as the handicraft and cottage industries. The intention was to bring economic control back to the basic social group-the family.”  After reading this, I started to wonder if we in the ReMerging West might take a lesson from India’s return to sovereignty and begin to wrestle-free our diminishing individual economic power from the constricting grasp of a “Free-Market” economy in which the word itself, free is blasphemy.  Something as unassuming as aesthetic can create or destroy an entire culture since cultures are inseparable from their aesthetics.

I think if I could specialize in any form of design it would be the possibly emerging field of awareness design.  I would like to design things that snap us from our contemporary stupor and get us thoughtfully re-engaging the world we live on as opposed to running from it on our technology (Trojan) horse.  Yet I, among the self-deceived, do little, if anything at all here in the present, to solve the world’s woes; in fact, even with a person bend toward Green, am much more part of the problem than the solution.

I hope to change that balance in the near future by completing this degree program, moving to a place that is more sustainable-minded, and using my knowledge, experience, and intuition to solve problems of various descriptions and disciplines.  It could be my dream to have a large utility van filled with various tools, equipment, and materials and drive around the world stopping at one house at a time to fix some random problem.  From a leaky faucet, to a broken washing machine, to a failing garage-door opener.  I like thinking with my hands.

Hello, my name is Evan Holt and I am a creator.  I grew up in a small mountain community in southern California surrounded less by people and more by trees, creeks, and getting lost in the wilderness.  I grew up with the smells of the pines above and the dirt below.  I fell asleep more often to coyotes howling outside my window than to sounds of traffic.  I spent many, many, hours crafting tools and object for my numerous tree forts.  Life was good.

For college I moved to Portland where I have now lived since 1997.  I have a wife and a 3 year-old boy who told me while at a U-Pick blueberry farm last week that we should get back in the car because the wind was blowing his hair around.  (Obviously, nature is not as ingrained in him!)

For the last 8 years I have worked as a finish carpenter and for the last 6 have owned my own custom furniture and construction business.  I came out of college working as a book designer but realized that I wasn’t creating with my hands there, only with my eyes staring at a computer all day.  The pay was good but the ability to interact with the final work was removed due to the interface with the computer.  I decided to leave and start my own woodworking business.  I built my first commissioned bookcase at two different borrowed garages and finished the lacquering in my apartment, almost passing out from the fumes.

Since then I have added my own shop and built everything from decks, to tables, chairs, and even a prop hotdog-vending cart.  I love using wood and all the shapes it can take.  I love cutting into different species of wood and releasing the hidden aromas.  I especially love finding old abused painted wood and cutting it down to reveal the natural grain.  I love that woodworking means I need to know biology, physics, and geometry.  I need to know the characteristics of metal to sharpen tools, and the chemistry of finishes to apply them correctly.  I look at woodworking as a whole-life process that teaches me systems and relational thinking.

I advertise myself as a furniture designer.  I see that role as someone who makes to answer a specific problem with culturally aesthetic intentions.  The whole-life training comes into play here. Anyone can solve a height problem by standing on a rock, but the designer looks at all the purposes that rock might need to play. Is it stable? Will it mar the floor or scratch the user?  In being big enough to add sufficient height is it too heavy to store out of the way?  The furniture designer needs to understand the culture of the user and imagine not only the use of the object but its existence when not in use.  This is what excites me every day.

I used to describe my personal aesthetic as “Nature inspired Asian-Shaker” but those terms are becoming too generic to define and as the problem of superficial tag lines.  I now say I am inspired by the “Human line, Nature Curve” I came up with this term after looking at many of my pieces and seeing that there was very often a straight line (human line, or man-made aesthetic) abutting a gentle curve (nature curve like a tree bending in the wind.)  I realized that this dichotomy, this yin and yang are a subset of the bigger tension we humans feel with nature.  My goal, therefore, is to explore that tension and express it in craft.

Using wood can have serious implications for the planet, especially if we trade in exotic species.  I am focusing on using as much reclaimed wood and locally sourced new wood as possible to showcase the local wonders we have all around us.  I plan on working with local wood suppliers to create communities of consumers who get to know their suppliers and feel a sense of involvement with the final products.  We need to be excited about nature’s local bounty and not always seek the foreign for fulfillment in the objects we buy.  This is tough challenge but I am ready for it.  Hurrah!

By the time I was 20 I had lived in 14 spaces in 5 states. Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maryland and Vermont. My semi-nomadic up-bringing made me aware early on of the transitory nature of objects, relationships and environments.  Beyond what my parents were able to provide me, the consistency that made up my childhood was predominately internal.  Through dance, I became at home in my body. I learned and experienced its capacity as an expressive tool.  When I began to really paint around the age of 19 I was immediately attracted to making work in large scale because of the physicality it afforded me. The expressive gesture became visible. As I ventured into sculpture, my approach was also corporeally based, the decisions I made always considered the physical response the viewer would experience when coming into contact with the work.

I think it was the physical nature of sheet metal as well as working with fire that first drew me to fine metal work.  I related to the way metal could flex, bend and fold without breaking but when pushed too much, it would become brittle and structurally unstable, it required heat to relax and readjust the molecules.  After living through winters in Vermont for five years, I absolutely identified with the characteristics of this material. I learned the basics of jewelry making in an intensive month long workshop in Florence, Italy.  When I returned I set up a small studio in my apartment and continued to learn through trial and error as well as taking classes from the arts organization I was working for.  After a year of this I began to sell my work regularly and I was able to start a small studio collective in the south end arts district of Burlington.

My feelings about working with fine metals were always mixed.  I enjoyed the design process, soldering, and the alchemy of metal work as well as the satisfaction of selling my work to people who seemed to truly connect with the look and feel of the pieces they purchased. But the physical process was taxing, the repetitive motions I found meditation in also caused a lot of pain.  The toxicity of the things I was making was also a concern to me.  Not only were the required chemicals; flux, patina, and polishing compounds toxic, but the issues surrounding the mining of metals and precious stones, and the consuming culture of commodity and adornment were things I struggled with despite trying my best to use legitimate sources for my materials.

I returned to making large work and I began to address environmental issues in my work.  The issues that interest me the most are ones in which parallels to human culture and civilization may be drawn. Colony Collapse Disorder and Invasive Species are two examples of issues where I found strong connection as well as visually interesting and overwhelming subject matter.  As I move into this practicum year, I will attempting to better synthesize my desire for work that is physically gratifying, communicative on a physical level and environmentally and ecologically beneficial.

Hello Internet, I am Matthew.

Currently I am a Northwestern based and Southeastern influenced maker that primarily works with wood and incorporates a variety of other materials and processes to achieve my goals. The passion of simply making has always been part of me, and strong enough to influence my transition into the educational and professional explorations of such. Working with wood and simply having creative freedoms on a day-to-day basis has gone from being merely a joy to now a necessity, and is a pattern that I feel will stay with me until my end.

Most recently I have been exploring the concepts of Spatial Design with the use of environments, fixtures, furniture and objects and their relation to the human experience of spatial interaction. I am looking for different ways into which my skills as a designer and maker can focus on not merely crafting an object or individual piece but on examining the whole of a situation and applying my manipulations to the development and refinement of that situation and interaction.

On a broader note, my realization as a young, craft-based maker is that I am repeatedly confronted with the responsibilities of being part of a long tradition that is in a struggle with the modern pace of the world. This is not a struggle in the sense that one side must prevail, but in the way that they must incorporate, and each side must find its place next to and within the other. With a rapid condensation of global information, there is a risk of losing a sense of locality and neighborhood culture, replaced by a homogenization of ideas and sensibilities. My goal as a maker and an easily-influenced youngster is to try and find the perfect balance between representing my generation and culture to my practice, which is steeped in stubborn heritage, and vice versa, representing my values of integrity and individualization as a maker to my generation which is becoming increasingly analogous with the mass spread of media and technology. With this impending loss of individual integrity in mind, I find hope in the ideals of makers all over the world and the fact that they are in essence the last evidence of authenticity in a world being consumed by its dependence on mass technology and industry.

EDITORIAL ADDITION

ART IS FAKE

It can’t be helped to think that art is merely a catering to a cultured and overpriviledged segment, when the understanding of future world conditions are fully appreciated. In the next 20 years, one out of three persons will be born into conditions of poverty (CITIZEN ARCHITECT). How does art apply to this group? When in reality art is only bought and appreciated by a much smaller segment of the remaining two thirds, how can we say that art is a cultural foundation?

Obviously characteristics of art which apply to culture and understanding of the human condition are highly invaluable, but do not go much beyond the realm of speculating the wishes for the better, or highlighting the conditions of the unfortunate.

The striking chord seems to lay in the nature of humanitarian design, which to a degree fully envelops and understands the nature of art, while appreciating all of its formal applications, in an effort to use these benefits in order to better the prementioned human condition of those for which it is intended. Making, which is an off-shoot of design and ultimately the final culmination of all good design, can be seen as the most authentic and final hope for integrating the most well intentioned aspects of art into a practice which will ultimately be the future in which we find the most satisfaction as a culture and community. Making is therefore the realization of art and design in action.

Hi, I am David Boekelheide from Portland Oregon.   In a sense, I was building furniture before I was born:  my mother cut dovetails at a night furniture class while pregnant with me.  She and my father met and received their graduate degrees at University of Oregon where my grandfather headed the chemistry department for thirty years.  As a kid I spent much of my childhood building forts in the dense evergreens along the Tualatin river.  I’m now 34 and find myself revisiting personalized hand built environments.

Growing up in Oregon provided me with a support group of family, peers and teachers committed to social and environmental consciousness.  In Portland, I was fortunate enough to attend The Catlin Gabel School, where we were introduced to thinkers from Henry David Thoreau to Edward Abbey to Buckminster Fuller.  Every year each class would participate in environmental restoration projects.  We spent days on Mt. Hood thinning too-closely replanted fir trees, stripping their bark and branches to build buck and rail fence to exclude range cattle from fragile streambeds.  Designing, organizing and planning to improveenvironment and community is a part of my life.

Studying furniture and metalsmithing at The Oregon College of Art and Craft indulged my desire to create.  I was introduced to fine art, and the conceptual language of art furniture, and the dynamic tension between form and function.  Graduating with a B.F.A. in wood and metal, I spent the following eight years building within Portland’s design community creating work ranging from two story mobile meeting rooms to art deco inspired cast bronze handles.

Building on an industrial scale has made me acutely aware of the time, energy and material that can be lost as a result of inefficient design.  The objects and built environments we occupy are too often a result of a disconnected design process.  Architects shape our cities and towns, but the citizens often have very little input throughout the process.  The United States were formed by self sufficient pioneers striving for independence.  Currently we exist in a capitalistic consumer driven culture where so many decisions are made for us, with out our knowledge.  Too much of the production and industry that sustained us has moved outside our borders.  As a country we are realizing we need to regain a mode of self reliance.

This realization is exciting, it is a chance to reconnect with the shape of our surroundings.  People are hungry for ways to cut out the corporate middle man.  Hope lies within our strong D.Y.I. movement and the resurgence of craft in the art world.  Value is now placed on local production and distribution creating a market for Community Supported Agriculture.  We are learning the importance of holistic design that considers the life cycle of the materials and products we consume.  A sense of belonging, and cultural identity develops when we become a part of local self sustaining systems.

The movement towards local, sustainable methods of production will soon change the way we build our environments.  I want to close the gap between design and building in my community.  A small design/build company can respond directly to the needs of their clients.  Projects built through a design firm, architecture firm, engineering firm then to a construction company have so many chances for the initial vision to be lost.  It is my goal to create personalized environments, interiors and objects specific to individuals needs.

My creative production for the last nine years has been driven largely by my material: clay. I began studying ceramics after receiving a degree in sociology, and immediately fell in love with the physicality of the material and the making process, in contrast to my earlier intellectual pursuits. I love the literal earthiness of clay, its plasticity and versatility. I am drawn to the history of ceramics, the various cultural applications of clay, the vessel tradition, and the development of contemporary sculpture. Clay taught me early on about principles of non-attachment: we do what we think will work, maybe we even do our best, and then cracks appear, forms warp, glazes turn ugly in the kiln, things break. Even with tests and practice, there is almost always some element of uncertainty in reaching the final ceramic product. This uncertainty is both extraordinarily frustrating and exciting.

Surprisingly, I did not work with clay earlier in my life (play-doh doesn’t count). Growing up in Atlanta, GA with an art-teacher father, I had plenty of paints, pastels and papers, felt, found objects and other materials at my fingertips, and I spent many childhood hours working on various creative projects. I also helped my grandfather weave Nantucket baskets and my grandmother paint wood cutouts when I visited them in Ohio; they sold their baskets, furniture and décor to the local community. Craft and art were an important part of all our lives, but not anyone’s livelihood (my father had jobs other than art teacher). I eventually went off to college in the northeast with no expectation of pursuing a profession as a maker.

When I finally discovered the joy of clay in a beginning ceramics class in San Francisco (where I moved after college), I found myself in an environment steeped in the arts, surrounded by creative professionals, creative seekers, and cultural diversity. I felt encouraged to use my new medium for personal expression, which ran parallel to but did not intersect with my “day job.” Beginning in college, I have wanted to do work that I feel is of some service to the world, i.e. benefiting and not harming; I’ve been motivated in part by progressive-minded parents, my sociology curriculum and observations during travels through Latin America. My professional experience in various non-profits ranges from working in a food bank, to promoting coral reef conservation, to providing arts education to underserved communities, to coordinating university medical education. According to the “Scoping the Territory” chapter reading, my work has incorporated activism and sustainability goals, but not necessarily intentional design.

I haven’t considered myself a designer to this point, but am excited by the possibilities of design partnerships across the world, as described in “We Are All Emerging Economies Now.” I’m especially drawn to the potential of the informal economy, perhaps because I’ve made and sold things myself outside the formal marketplace. I would like to see governments take responsibility and provide solutions for problems caused by their own policies, but I also would like to see people continue to reclaim power and create innovations on the local level. As John Thackara notes, every community around the world has its assets, and joining forces is our only viable path forward. I am unsure how I will participate in this future. Although my creative work is not issue-led and I do not begin ceramic projects with the goal of solving a problem, I do work through problems. Design-thinking is new to me but logistics-thinking comes naturally, and has been an asset in my previous jobs.

I entered this MFA program with a desire for intentional design, hoping to find an intersection of my personal creative expression and work that serves a larger purpose or provides some service. I am still unclear about what I can make with my own hands out of clay, or clay in combination with other materials (or other materials all together?), that will be of larger service to the world. I also am somewhat apprehensive about making more things, adding more products to our product-saturated society. I do believe, however, that providing utility, beauty, and decoration are important functions of art and craft. My contribution may be in that arena, or in a new place I haven’t yet discovered.

The work I like to pursue doesn’t necessarily involve a deeply personal expression, rather one that is benevolent in nature.  I prefer it that way.  I’m more interested in solving problems.  I like the challenge and continuously changing constraints posed by the context and intended users.  I believe my philosophy and work falls squarely in line with the definition of design activism offered by Alastair Fuad-Luke in his book Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World.

Design activism is ‘design thinking, imagination and practice applied knowingly or unknowingly to create a counter-narrative aimed at generating and balancing positive social, institutional, environmental and/or economic change’.

That said I do draw a distinction between humanitarian design work done locally and abroad.  I don’t feel it is my place to solve the world’s problems.  I can’t assume to know the first thing about another country’s culture and I would consider them to be a resource for the problems we are facing and about to face. Check out this rousing debate initiated by Bruce Nussbaum on Fast Company this summer questioning whether humanitarian design was the new imperialism.

You should know, I’m a ‘why’ person.  I’m also analytical and enjoy solving problems creatively.  At 17 I thought a degree in marketing would allow me to best utilize those qualities.  In earning that degree I realized I was more interested in the crafting of a message that stems from a deep understanding of consumer behavior.  I was more fascinated to learn why people wanted or didn’t want to purchase/use/desire certain things than actually selling more things.

Did you know it’s easier to find an entry level position in sales than it is on a creative team?  It is, and I got my first job as a business development consultant at a global design consultancy.  It was an extremely valuable experience to be surrounded by creatives.  I always wished I was part of the creative team developing a strategy to overcome a problem than how to gain more clients.  After several years climbing the corporate ladder I realized my interests and morals no longer aligned with the type of work I was doing. I worked there for five years prior to pursuing this graduate degree in applied craft and design.

The same month I entered the corporate world I started taking a metalsmithing class as a creative outlet.  I couldn’t believe how incredibly tedious metal work was and how under-appreciated the tradition is in our manufacture driven culture.  I was attracted to the heirloom quality of metal work and took great pleasure in designing and hand making jewelry that people loved wearing.  I decided it was time to invest in my creative pursuits and started searching for graduate degree programs.

I chose this program because I believe in the combining of design and craft to create work with an applied purpose.  I wanted to leverage my business, marketing and design background as a means to make a living while making a difference.

As for my read on the state of affairs of the planet, economy, and American culture I suggest you tune into The Colbert Report.

That might be surprising considering I grew up in a small rural town in north eastern Ohio.  The town is situated in an area known as the steel belt where jobs have been disappearing for the past three decades.  I craved city life growing up and still do, but not because I don’t have an appreciation for how I was raised.  We didn’t talk about sustainability, but we lived by those principles.  We rarely bought something we didn’t need, we gardened and canned food for winter months, annually bought part of a cow with my extended family, my sister and I preferred to make believe to Nintendo, and we almost always ate a home cooked meal at the dinner table.  It was pretty wholesome.

My fear as a maker is to create objects that don’t need to exist and inadvertently feed desires for consumption.  I believe our culture has become starved for relationships and experiences and wrongfully seek objects for fulfillment.  I’m hopeful that a shift in those beliefs and perceptions will occur with careful nudges.

I’m interested in human behavior and how our irrational behaviors affect our decisions.  I believe there are many solutions to problems that have been solved by science or otherwise that fail because they lack an exploration of human behavior.  We have many irrational tendencies that can impede good intentions.  This TED Talk from behavioral economist Sendhil Mullainathan references this challenge as the last mile opportunity.  I plan to pursue work that combines science, design, and behavioral psychology to create positive change.

Hello…my name is Leslie and I am a maker.

I live and work in Portland, Oregon which sometimes seems like worlds away from where I grew up. I am an East Coaster, born and bred, from a little town called Westport Massachusetts. To give you a little background, I grew up in a large Portuguese farming family by the sea. I am one of 15 cousins, and I am the first to leave New England.

As a child, my mother was an artist and calligrapher. I was enthralled by her obsession with fonts and straight lines. I would often sit and watch her as she turned our kitchen table into a meticulous studio space. As my mother worked, she would repeatedly proclaim the importance of templates and practicing repetition while the smells of inks and sounds of matte cutting would fill the room. When I was around ten years old I became her assistant in sign making. We were a team. I looked forward to our summer days when we would select and lay out various typefaces and have discussions about balance and color. During my childhood I always had my hands in something. I think this is why I am draw to physical processes. I feel a connection through the materials I work with that leads me to understand what I am making.

My primary creative skill is probably my ability to paint and draw. I had a formal training in two dimensional arts at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. As I mentioned earlier, I really enjoy process based modes of working and often end up making even a simple drawing overly labor intensive. During my time at the university, I also worked at a Craft Center. Having this job, and learning new, craft based ways of working had a strong impact on my work and desire to see more physical interactions with my materials. This led to another systematic form of production that I am becoming more and more taken by, sewing and textiles. I tend to approach these works as an outsider and as a two dimensional thinker, which I find to be both challenging and exciting.

In both fields of working, two dimensional and three dimensional, I often find myself looking for ways to reuse materials, or perhaps better put, simply, to use the available materials. There are several reasons for this. First, cliche as it might be, I am broke. Go figure, a broke, artist, graduate student, what a surprise. There is another driving force however, and that is the ridiculously over abundant amount of “waist” that we seem to be surrounded by. There is stuff everywhere. Despite the fact that I do, like most people, enjoy shopping and the rush that is involved with a new buy, I also feel like there is often no need to buy new things or new materials. I feel, as a mildly conscientious maker, a responsibility to use at least some of what is already there in front of me.

The act of making is universal. Some people create to survive and some for entertainment. I find myself in the middle of the spectrum. I need to make in order to feel as though I am moving forward.  Various ideas and responsibilities rack my brain and as I struggle to find my place, I know that the only way I will understand anything is through my hands, is through making.

Bonjour world! I’d like to introduce myself as a creative individual who hails from a small town in Connecticut and also happens to really enjoy making things. While I have not yet determined a favorite primary media, I feel passionate about producing objects with wood, fiber, weaving, photography all within the context of space.

My beginnings as a creative started like many others in that I’ve been creating objects and things ever since I was small and haven’t stopped since. My first memories of making things were from kits. From what I can remember weaving kits, bracelet kits, drawing kits, card-making kits, calligraphy kits, and painting kits were all new experiments that I loved to try.

As I got older and continued to follow my passions (art and athletics) in school, I decided that I wanted to pursue the profession of an interior designer when I went to college. After completing my undergraduate studies in Interior Design, I felt proud for accomplishing my goal but couldn’t help but feel like I was missing something. During my undergrad experience I lost touch with my hands. There was very little that was actually made with my own two hands (this frustrates me greatly with interior design education today). The program was heavily focused on the use of AutoCAD and very little in hands-on making. What I found I missed the most was the intimate relationships that develop when working with specific materials. Having been an athlete and a creative my entire life, I am attracted to processes that can be found in both athletics and art. I seek out processes and materials that are labor intensive and challenging as well as enduring and repetitive.

According to my family I am considered to be the “creative” one in the bunch. However I tend to disagree with this statement. While both of my parents’ professions are in the science and math fields, this is not all they know or do. My mom has always had a colorful and playful creative side to her (whether she admits this or not is up to her) and has been quilting, crocheting, knitting, and creating clothing ever since I can remember. The same goes for my dad. His love for wood and metal may just be a hobby for him, but is nonetheless an incredibly resource and inspiration for me.

It’s no question that at this present moment times are tough. Whether we want to admit it or not, we have to make sacrifices and cut-backs in order to get by. These new parameters and adjustments in our lives are largely viewed in a negative way. The fact that the economic recession has seen little improvement over the last few years, and current environmental disasters, gives us little reason to smile However, having constraints and limits can actually be freeing in a certain way. It allows you to be truly innovative. This is something all creative makers, artists, and designers can relate to.

As a maker it is easy to fall victim to current trends and fads that may not be true to oneself. Like many other creative individuals, I feel the need to make things with honesty, pride, and authenticity, however I fear that since I do not specifically work with one material, I may be viewed as someone who is simply a “jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none.” Yet I still feel compelled to explore processes and materials I know nothing about. While this can be viewed as uncomfortable and risky to some, I am fueled by the initial excitement for learning something new. In the end it’s hard to say what I will do with the rest of my life but as a start I know that essentially I am a creator of things and I want to continue to physically create what I want to make (objects crafted for the home) and by trusting my process of making, find a happy life.

I am interested in the questions and concerns of material consciousness. Specifically, I am interested in the traditional craft materials of clay and wood.  The histories and uses of these craft materials have developed my notion of self as much as I have manipulated the possible forms they intrinsically offer.  Clay, a material I have been trained academically as well as technically, from elementary through undergraduate school, is a medium of the utmost amorphous.  With out the limitations of form, I find I become overwhelmed with it’s potential – in form as well as introspective exploration.  Subsequently, I return to wood occasionally, a material with physical limitations due to it’s rigidity.  Also, in choosing to stay technically naive about wood, I am free from the confining traditions craftsmanship has held strict to the material.  With this perspective I can become aware of it’s inherent qualities of shape and color through the non-clouded awareness of touch alone.  With a more refined sensibility of material, working with other craft mediums such as wood, has benefited my clay practice.  Some times it’s hard to remember where one started after a long journey.

I grew up in a conventional and conservative suburb out side Detroit.  These attitudes were not strictly verbalized, it was just the way things were done.  In silence, I remember pondering that there must be other, equally viable ways to live.  Thus began my anti-conformist attitude.  Neither agreeing or disagreeing with the status quo, I became more observer than say, activist.  These introspective curiosities naturally lead me to wonder more philosophically.  Working with clay, during my developmental years,  I’m sure had an impact to these open-ended considerations of my environment and the things that defined it.  Since moving away from this conventional environment, and integrating with more of a liberal social attitudes of living, I find the need to challenge the status quo less.  Furthermore, and I consider if this is more to do with maturity, I have been curious to find the connections and similarities between conservative perspectives of living and that of traditional craft practices.  In these increasing virtual times, is a traditional haptic practice more radical by comparison?  In a time when social awareness is needed through positive human to human consideration, can the spiritual be formed by the work of the hand?

I believe my role as a maker is to address through the symbolic forms I create, the need for a more psychological, sociocultural and spiritual awareness.  By utilizing the qualities that traditional craft materials possess, of which all cultures have a history of knowledge, a higher consciousness between the peoples of today could be established.  A sympathetic community of all peoples could be established if we all could see ourselves as products of our shared craft ingenuity.  The forms that human-kind has made collectivity, have served their physical functions.  The craft forms that have sustained our survival, that of containers, covers, and shelters, (Howard Risatti), can now serve a greater meaning for our collective existence through their use as relational symbols.  We all need to remember why it’s important to get in touch, before we forget how to do so.