making

a model in progress for a pate de verre vase

unfortunately, this one did not cast well and also broke while being removed from the casting mold

This is the third (last) post in my series on making.  I didn’t know it was going to be a series when I started with my first post .  

I am a maker.  I’m also a fixer, but primarily I am a maker.  I was always making things growing up.  I loved all those craft kits.  I taught myself how to sew making doll clothes at a young age.  My grandmother taught me how to crochet.  I channeled this energy into sewing, making many of my own clothes in high school and college.  I was derailed, I think, by my parents, and it took stumbling on glass to get me back on track.  To my parents, artists were painters and so I was enrolled in and pointed to art classes when I should have been taking craft classes, although the drawing classes have served me well.  I’ve always been happiest though when I was making things.  I do call myself an artist but sculptor would actually be more accurate.  Even the etched glass is really sculpture although the third dimension is very small.  

Making didn’t used to be the sole domain of artists.  Before the Industrial Revolution, every day people made the things they needed...soap, candles, yarn, rugs, clothing, shoes, baskets, books, dishes, containers, quilts, furniture, pillows, bedding, tools, toys, musical instruments, even your own house.  And all these people making the every day things they needed to live also went that extra step to make it pretty as well as functional.  If you were doing well, you were able to buy a finished product from someone who specialized in an item or technique like blacksmithing and metal working, ceramics, woodworking, sewing, weaving, clock making, book binding to name a few, but still those products were made by a person or a group of people.  

With each generation removed from the Industrial Revolution, we have had fewer and fewer makers until now we have whole generations of people who have never made anything in their life, never needed to make anything.  Now, our products are made by factories and machines.  We go to the mall and there is everything under the sun we could ever want, all manufactured, not made.  I think that we are losing a very important part of what it means to be human; to take things, to be able to take things, materials, and turn them into other, useful and beautiful things.  Skills that had been handed down from mother to daughter, from father to son, from generation to generation all the way back to the dawn of modern humans are no longer being handed down and we are poorer as a species for it.   

I encourage everyone to learn to make something, take a class, do not let your inner skeptic dissuade you, do not get discouraged or give up if your first attempt does not please you.  If you cannot take a class, go to the library and check out a book.  The only thing stopping you is fear.  Everyone has a talent or skill.  Discover yours.  

Here is a link to the Craft in America episodes on PBS.  You can watch them for free on your computer.