Last summer my mom got me and Wonder Boy passes to the Contemporary Art Center for my birthday. It’s proven to be a fabulous gift that we’ve used every time an opportunity presents itself. We’ve seen great art, gone to a swanky art opening featuring blinged out motorcycles and this past Monday attended a showing of the movie Handmade Nation, followed by a discussion with the movie’s director, Faythe Levine.
The documentary was great. It focused on the craft movement that has take hold across the nation. There are craft fairs all throughout the year and sites like Etsy help make crafting a viable business venture, though not always a lucrative one, for just about anyone. Levine discussed what is happening now with crafting as a social movement and while she used none of the technical terminology or theory behind what defines a social movement, she is right in her use of the term.
All throughout time women, and some men too but their numbers are so much lower that I won’t focus on them, have been making things. Think of your grandmother. Mine could preserve her own food, make baked goods that would certainly sell at the church bake sale, knit and sew her families clothes, do needlepoint, etc. Later in life, she did those things for fun but earlier in her life they were done out of necessity. Women today are embracing all the same activities my grandmother partook in but because of genuine interest or as an enjoyable hobby. That’s a distinctly different motivation.
If you want, you can now buy just about anything you would normally purchase at a big box store from a local person. You can know who made your clothes / jewelry / kids’ toys, who grew / baked / made your food and who created the art on your wall. The price might be higher because the individual artisans are making items in such smaller items, but you know you are supporting a person rather than a company.
Handmade Nation made me reflect on some of my own buying habits. I buy a lot online. A LOT. A have made numerous purchases via Etsy, The Sampler and random sites I find out about through blogs. But I also have giant piles of Christmas gifts in my attic and bedroom. A lot of those items were purchased from Target and Amazon. I like to pretend that Target isn’t a big box store … but it is. It’s just a prettier one than, say, Walmart. And Amazon is essentially a big box store. Just miles away from Cincinnati is a giant warehouse in Northern Kentucky housing all of the Amazon items I order.
Every gift I purchased, well almost every gift I purchased, could have been bought by a local craftsman. It would have cost a little more and would have meant driving to different stores, but I could have done it. And should have done it, really. Handmade Nation has that stuck in my head, challenging me to make smarter purchases. (It’s also a great film to inspire your inner creativity, but that’s for a different post.)
