"Made by Katrina"

Slow Fashion Citizen and Exciting Updates for 2017

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 19:38:00 +0000

Hello, old friends. I'm just dropping in to announce some exciting projects for the remainder of 2017. As many of you know, since February I've been writing a monthly column, Slow Fashion Citizen, for the Fringe Association blog. In this series I share the stories of fashion designers, artists, makers, authors, dyers, menders, shop owners, activists, organizers, and otherwise slow fashion leaders inspiring my personal slow fashion journey and forging new pathways for sustainable and regenerative fashion. In short, these men and women are some of my slow fashion heroes and I'm honored to share their stories in this monthly series. Please follow along over on the lovely knitting blog, Fringe Association.

I was beyond thrilled to teach at the Sweet Paul Makerie in Brooklyn in March and I'm thrilled to be teaching at two more retreats this summer and fall. July 23-28, 2017 I'll be teaching mending in Maine at the Slow Fashion Retreat organized by A Gathering of Stitches joined by friends Cal Patch of Hodge Podge Farm teaching garment sewing and Jessica Lewis Stevens of Sugar House Workshop teaching natural dyes. The retreat will also include communal meals, a clothing swap, optional yoga classes, and several other opportunities to join in slow fashion community with like minded folks. I cannot wait to mend by the seaside.

In October 2017 I'm joining with friend and natural dyer, Sasha Duerr, to teach a Slow Textiles Retreat at Three Pines Farms in Iowa. Much to our surprise this retreat sold out in just a few weeks but there is still a wait list if you want to toss your name into the mix with the organizer, Kara Grupp. This workshop includes classes in natural dyeing and mending but also offers a weekend gathering for considering slow fashion, slow living, and how we might generally better align our ethics with our lifestyles and particularly our wardrobes.

I'm also thrilled to be an artist-in-residence at Hudson Valley art space, Instar Lodge, in Germantown, NY for the month of September. As part of my residency I'll be creating a new collaborative workshop, Medicinal Dye Plants: Natural Dyes + Remedy Making, at the intersection of natural plant dyes and herbal medicine. I'm so thrilled to conduct experiments, invite collaborators, and consider slow fashion, farming, healing arts, and sustainability in this residency project. Actually, I'm over-the-moon. Join us for the workshop on Saturday, Sept 16 from 1-5 or for a public conversation and open studio on Saturday, Sept 30.

As I'm currently blogging every month over on the Fringe Association site with the Slow Fashion Citizen my posts here will be less frequent through 2017. At the end of the year I'll reassess my monthly writing capacity and make decisions about this space for 2018. In the meantime, to stay connected please join my monthly newsletter--more like a monthly pen pal club for textile lovers--and connect with me on Instagram or my Facebook business page where I post nearly daily.

It's been such an honor to join this slow fashion and contemporary craft community and I offer my utmost gratitude and thanks to each of you cheering me in this space, social media, and in person for all these years. You're the reason I keep doing what I do. Because you encourage me to keep on going. Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere. I'm just shifting my writing to another site this year to continue one of the things I hold most dear in my work--collaboration and community-building.

Yours in Slow Fashion (Forever),

Katrina

New 2017 Monthly Project: Slow Fashion Series

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 16:12:00 +0000

I'm thrilled to announce a new monthly blog series right here for 2017: Slow Fashion Series. This will be a monthly interview with an artist, designer, maker, writer, or otherwise advocate for slow fashion. I sat down and quickly came up with a list of over 20 people I want to interview for this series and as there are only 12 months in a year I will not get to them all this year.

But I will initiate this conversation in this space because I want to engage these inspiring folks about their work, I want to acknowledge the way they have inspired my own journey towards sustainable fashion, and I want to share this information with a larger community like you. So I'll start with 12 interviews in 2017 and we'll see where it goes from here. I'm already imagining 12 won't be enough but sometimes we just have to begin.

As much as I'm passionate about mending, making, and thrifting a more ethical wardrobe I am equally as passionate about creating community and bolstering our efforts and finding avenues to engage in the conversation that will ultimately make the ethical fashion community stronger; our wardrobes more meaningful; and our "Mendfulness" more astute. I want to share this information with you and I want to participate in the active shift towards slow fashion.

Students in my workshops or folks online always ask how to get started with their own slow fashion journey. They speak of being overwhelmed, not being able to afford ethical designers, and not having the skills to make their wardrobes at home. I get it. I get all of it. It is overwhelming, I cannot afford to buy all new ethically made clothes, and I cannot make all of my clothes either. But yet I have been on this slow fashion journey, Make Thrift Mend, since August 2013 and there is so much we can do to be more ethical in our wardrobe regardless of our budget or our textile skills.

Modest shifts in our mindset, consumption, repairs, and awareness around fashion and our wardrobes can result in substantial changes over time. Sometimes, we just need a little more information to begin. I'm thrilled to provide some of that information here that might result in a catalyst for your own personal shift. I can't get enough of that Arthur Ashe quote, "Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can".

It's a new year, it's a new era, it's a new time and I want to use this blog space as a space to activate the slow fashion community by sharing stories, resources, and inspiration. I imagine this interview series could be weekly and could include various resources and links but for now I'm going to keep it simple and focus on a monthly interview series through 2017. I'm thrilled to share these stories with you. And I'm thrilled about the first feature so be sure to check back on January 31 for the first post. (Why, yes, I did manage to sneak this series in just before the end of the first month of the new year. Thank you for noticing. There's nothing like a good deadline in my book.)

One more note: Some of you have been following this blog since its earliest inception as my weekly studio blog ten years ago. I posted in this space weekly from 2007- 2015 and witnessed great changes in the internet community of artists and crafters over the eight years I was blogging weekly. I met great friends, colleagues, collaborators, writers, designers, artists, and otherwise amazing humans. Over the course of this time was the invention of Instagram and Pinterest in 2010 (Thank goodness) and several other online shifts.

But, personally, in Oct 2015 I moved from Oakland, CA to the Hudson Valley in NY to DIY renovate a 200-year-old farmhouse with my husband and our two (very) young sons. Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook are since my daily spaces to share studio insights, workshops, projects, and other news. They more easily fulfill my need to share information online and to build community virtually and locally too.

I've recently fallen in love with the creation of my monthly newsletter (Trust me, something I never imagined I'd say) as it has been restructured to now include an exclusive essay, a list of muses, shop updates, workshop news, and plenty of photos. In some ways Instagram and my newsletter have replaced my personal studio blog. But in interviewing Abigail Doan and Jessica Lewis Stevens in 2016 I realized how much I enjoy featuring other creatives in this space. Actually, I love it.

So, I'm thrilled to launch this new Slow Fashion Series next week. Be sure to connect with me through social media or my newsletter to learn of other projects and announcements in the coming weeks. I'm thrilled for this new series and look forward to the stories I'll be able to share here throughout 2017. Stay tuned... first series post coming soon.

UPDATE: This new series will not launch today, January 31st, as planned. But it will still launch soon just on another website. The series, Slow Fashion Citizen, will be hosted on the Fringe Association blog as a monthly column. Just after I announced this new series the Fringe Supply Co director, Karen Templer, contacted me to ask if I'd write the column for her site instead. I swiftly agreed. Please stay tuned while I work through some exciting prospects and make decisions about this new content. In the meantime, check out the monthly column, Slow Fashion Citizen, over on the Fringe Association site. Thank you for your interest and patience. Yours in slow fashion, K.

Artist Interview with Abigail Doan of Lost in Fiber

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:12:00 +0000

Sometimes the Internet does magical things. Sometimes it connects me with the most wonderful people and these connections go deeper than social media sites and instead they nestle into our private email boxes and text messages and then into our real life social circles and then, well, they become friends. So was the case with my friend and creative colleague, Abigail Doan, of Lost in Fiber. We met online many moons ago and then we eventually met in person and as Abigail put it, "It was less of a first meeting and more of a reunion". So true. And that spirit of generosity and warmth is something I absolutely adore about Abigail and her work.

I'm honored to share an exclusive interview with one of my most favorite contemporary artists, Abigail Doan. I adore Abigail's work for so many reasons but one of the many reasons is her visual voice. The way I can see her consistent aesthetic across mediums and the way her images, sculptures, and compositions have a language and an identity and an essence that is all her own. In each image I can hear her speaking without actually knowing her words.

I love how she uses fiber in her artwork but how she pushes so far outside of the typical world of fiber arts that her community building and social practice keep expanding her work well beyond the gallery walls. Pair all of this with her incredibly thoughtful approach, her particular way of seeing her environment, along with her insightful writing and it's simply a magical combination.

Emails from Abigail are one of my most favorite things to appear in my inbox. Each one is a combination of the voice of a curator, artist, activist, mother, and friend. All of these voices are all present in her work; It's the multitude of her experiences that come forward in her work. She resists a singular point of view and insists on complexity all the while welcoming us to stay a little longer.

Her work and her words straddle this amazing division of conceptual and personal. Her work is both intellectual and emotional. Hinging on academic it remains visceral with this incredible intimacy that offers the viewer a position that is less like voyeur--something that feels all too common in the contemporary fine arts scene--and more like invited community member. Abigail's work feels palpable and textural and, at the risk of my sounding naive, her work feels true.

True to what she's feeling, thinking, researching, reveling, uncovering and discovering on her daily journeys. A daily sketchbook, of sorts, told through the lens of a sculptor with deep roots in the textile and fiber communities but with a vision that steps outside these disciplines to embrace daily life as she experiences it in both urban and rural landscapes, alone and with her family, in the States and traveling abroad, in her studio and on the subway.

Her work transports us to a place that feels important. A place that feels mindful. A places that beckons we slow down just long enough to notice the objects around us but then allows us to go ahead with our busy modern lives. In many ways, Abigail's work feels like a very contemporary experience of being a working artist. But it also just asks us to look at things, regardless of our backgrounds inside or outside of the arts, just to look at things a few seconds longer. Her work asks us to notice. To witness. And once we start to pay attention we realize there is so much more than what we saw at first glance.

Without further pause... I'm honored to share this interview with you today. I considered editing our exchange into a shorter, more typical Internet-friendly length, but I ultimately decided to leave it just as it was. I didn't want to cut anything. I didn't want to condense all this thinking into smaller bites. I wanted to let the interview be exactly as it was, finding a strength in the depth of the answers and a reprieve in the collection of images. I hope you feel similarly. Welcome, Abigail.

Katrina Rodabaugh: Can you tell us about your journey to textile arts and if your environments might have influenced your interests?

Abigail Doan: I always love this question, Katrina, so I thank you for creating an opportunity to share stories about the evolution of my work, particularly as it relates to homegrown and local environmental influences. I grew up on a small family farm in New York State’s Hudson Valley, and there is no doubt that this region had a profound influence on my life’s journey and my interest in the arts.

My mother was a self-taught natural-dyer, spinner, knitter, and weaver, and even though I did not formally study textile techniques in art school or thereafter, these homespun practices were very much a part of daily life on our farm and the overall maker philosophy of our home life.

My mom, also an “Abigail”, taught me how to hand-spin and work with fiber as a young girl so that I could accompany her to craft shows throughout the Northeast. I honestly never really thought that these skills would be applied to or retrieved for creative pursuits later in life. (On the contrary, I was far more interested in conceptual art, contemporary design, and getting to the big city as a young art student.)

As time passed, I realized, though, how much the depiction of agricultural landscapes and even ideas of the pastoral, prevalent in the Hudson River School, played into my consideration of the the tilled fields, historic valleys, and the very soil of my upbringing. This specific school of painters also inspired me to travel to the far east as well as the open spaces of the west. Let’s just say my art studies at the time were a fusion of frequent visits to Frederic Church’s Olana combined with soaking up the independent spirit described in biographies of Georgia O’Keefe and the feminist art writings of Lucy Lippard.

I really believe that my sensitivity to materials and my concern for how things are made was a direct outcome of time spent alone in a rural environment. I am also a tool fanatic, even as an urban dweller, as I associate tools with personal empowerment and respect for the processes involved in making an authentic object that lasts.

KR: From working as a sculptor and a textile artist I love how your work has expanded into what might be called “social practice” or working outside of the traditional gallery structure while engaging community and considering activism or advocacy. Would you agree with this terminology? If so, what do you see as the inspiration for this expansion or shift?

AD: Oh, thank you for helping me to frame or perhaps better describe what I do. I think that “social practice” is an ideal term as well as “visual archivist” to some degree. I guess that I knew early on that I was not really going to fit the traditional model of being an artist who was focused solely on gallery representation and a formal exhibition track. I did show works on paper and mixed media pieces with galleries in my twenties and thirties, but I always felt that I wanted to do and say more about the work itself and ideally find ways to make the art process more inclusive and organic.

I also think that my early experience as a researcher in documentary film as well as teaching at the university level ultimately gave me the confidence to find new ways for interweaving various disciplines for future projects.

As an activist, one cannot simply stand by and neatly plug into existing models, so I have always felt that if a story needs to be told, a exhibition or event initiated, or a platform carved out – one must take responsibility for creating this opportunity. I also think that we do not have the luxury of worrying about failing when it comes to launching projects or tackling critical issues – particularly where cultural and environmental awareness is concerned.

KR: I first came across your work by images of your fiber sculptures. I was instantly mesmerized. The combination of materials, the form, the thoughtfulness to the fibers you chose. I remember staring at the images for hours and highlighting them in one of my online classes. Your Instagram feed has this same affect on me—it’s transporting, drawing parallels in places I might not have considered like architecture and fibers, and also this sense of movement or travel or journey. Can you talk about how your work has migrated from sculpture to photography or storytelling or—I’m struggling to name it but this sense of thoughtfulness and contemplation that is present in all your work regardless of form.

AD: It’s a funny thing, as I never really set out to be a fiber or textile artist per se. On the contrary. I think that I was a bit intimidated about working with these materials as my mother was such an innovator on this front. I first began working with fiber as a site-specific drawing tool during an artist residency in rural New Mexico. I liked the way that fiber was easily transportable and also left no trace on the land.

After this transformative experience and returning to NYC, I began building small fiber forms and soft bundles during my daily walks and outings where loose “flotsam” became intwined and often recycled into my studio constructions. I have always thought of these organic forms as being 3-D journals and/or tactile maps/documents of sorts. They are a bit unorthodox in terms of technique and archival preservation (biodegradable organic and inorganic matter co-exist). I often unravel the pieces once they are photographed or used like a visual prop or tool. I do not focus very much on the preciousness of each piece as a fixed sculptural statement in the end.

I am currently focused on building a new library of materials from my 2016 travels and solo walks. Some of these found and handmade “artifacts” are fiber-based but others are simply textural finds of a botanical, paper-based, or refuse-like nature. This latest project, Walking Libraries, is my return to a focus on environmental art practice and a quiet lab-like setting. These observations might include drawings and notations about the climate and weather conditions in one’s own backyard (rural or urban), documentation in wide open spaces, or the visual poetry of objects arranged to show connection between one another and even disparate places.

As part of this study, I have also been researching art and choreography projects by dancers and movement based artists, specifically the work of Anna Halprin and Trisha Brown. I use walking as a slowing down method and also a way of immersing oneself over long periods of time. I am also drawn toward incorporating more movement into my projects as I am now fifty years old, and it is important for me to see my body as an instrument that I might work with rather than against as time passes.

KR: Let’s talk about ethical fashion. And sustainable practices in textiles. Your work has an added layer of depth by your collaborations and curation. Do you see these projects as something that you create in addition to your own work or is this cross-disciplinary approach central to your creative process?

AD: My involvement with ethical fashion and/or sustainable textiles was basically quite serendipitous. During the early days of the eco fashion movement in NYC and beyond, several of my art/design friends were creating beautiful, one-of-a-kind pieces for their own independent labels or simply as an exploration of textiles in relation to sustainability issues. We were all supporting each other in various ways, and it was a truly inspired time in terms of pushing the movement forward with slow and considered cross-pollination. I definitely learned a lot about what was and was not working, often by writing about green design as well as eco fashion shows and collections.

This was also the genesis of my realization of the power of textiles to ideally make sustainability a relatable issue. If some one was able to talk about their connection to a specific fabric, garment or even a fashion-related story, well, this was a way into opening up future dialogue about fast fashion, textile waste, and personal concerns or worries about the state of the environment.

I basically feel that I am always open to working with others in situations where materials might empower us to look more closely at our ingrained habits, surroundings, and views on the state of the world – particularly where consumption and resourcefulness are a factor. If fashion plays into the process, then I am open to it. Otherwise, I am just as happy to collaborate with an adobe bricklayer or a scientist – all for a good cause.

KR: I’ve been thinking about how fine artists are engaged in ethical fashion either as natural dyers, designers, makers, teachers, authors, or event organizers. I see this trend where these professionally trained artists are seen as “DIY makers” but I see it differently. I see the training in studio practice as very relevant to the work in sustainable fashion at the very least as it allows critical thinking, invention of new processes, and the built-in acceptance of experimentation and possible failure. I think my MFA degree taught me more about experimentation and failure than anything else. Can you talk about embracing the unexpected in your work? And about your own experiences at the intersection of fine art and ethical fashion?

AD: This is such a great question or series of questions, Katrina. Topics that I think about a lot, particularly as some one who navigates various creative realms and social media spheres.

Fine artists might be accustomed to experimentation (and failure with materials, if you will) as this is something that is encouraged in a studio practice during the pursuit of solutions. This might relate to sustainable fashion, more than mainstream fashion perhaps, as there is an urgency and transparency to the process that does not allow one to cut corners.

I am always looking for evidence of the unexpected, perhaps as a way to discover ways of identifying or addressing vital issues. What I mean by the “unexpected” is essentially to not assume that one way of doing something or reading a form is the best way or a clear strategy. Given that ethical fashion designers are constantly faced with both production and garment lifecycle challenges, it makes sense to me that they would often have to look beyond the frameworks of set design rules in order to fuse the strength of both concept and end product.

KR: Your work ranges from sculpture to photography to writing to what I’d call social practice to curation and beyond. What excites you the most as an artist? What holds the most potential for you as a creative?

AD: I love that being an artist allows you to creatively weave together a life and travel in ways that inform or re-jigger what you deem to be true. I like to collect things, all sorts of things, primarily as a visual database of sorts but also as a humble cultural preservationist. The more I am able to let go of certain labels about what I do, what I make, and how I must share this work, the freer I am to do better work and perhaps reach a wider audience. I never take for granted that I have a unique and rather privileged opportunity to express what I want to make and also care about. I am not so fixated on the art object per se but rather its dematerialization into something new and hopefully broader in scope.

KR: How do you see textile artists influencing ethical fashion?

AD: Oh, this is a loaded question. I basically think that textile artists are guides into a vocabulary and expansive sphere of working with materials that is constantly re-inventing itself. They are the risk takers, the storytellers, the critics, the Utopian idealists – exotically rolled into one. Mood boards for fashion as well as styling for look books are often influenced by bold acts demonstrated in the arts. Textile art might seem a bit conceptual or marginal to some, but it is really a way into what might be possible, more experimental, and visually compelling.

I am not sure that there is a direct correlation between one influencing the other, but I do feel that the community building that often happens in fiber and textile groups might offer alternatives for how ideas and materials might be shared in ways that transcend existing fashion business models and production strategies. Specifically, innovation in textile recycling, be it mending, garment re-use, and/or legitimate up-cycling technology might first be visualized in a ground breaking textile art installation or materials experiment. This is where we really learn from one another and let categorical roles and thinking simply fade away.

KR: On your website you list your work in categories including fiber/ sculpture; enviro drawings; lost in fiber/ artifacts; performative; walking libraries; and work on paper. And in your bio your mention your work as an artist, writer, and curator. I absolutely love how your resist categorization and also how you complicate your position as an artist by including several forms. This makes me cheer! But I also always sense this continuity to your work, this recognizable voice and sentiment, and also this insistence that your work continue to evolve in any form necessary. Do you think this is something that comes with experience as an artist? Meaning, do you think this consistency across forms, this willingness to honor the work regardless of category, this understanding of complication as necessary to creative work… do you think that grew alongside your creative practice or was it always in your work?

AD: I recently looked back at early nature drawings that I did as an undergraduate, and in all honesty, my visual language has always there in terms of how I originally tried to link natural forms and organic architecture (my thesis), the attraction to micro-macro textures, as well as my interest historic events related to agriculture, labor, and landscape studies. There has been a lot of trial and error for me over the years (with numerous jobs wedged in between chapters of my creative work), so perhaps in the end, the consistency comes from a journey that came with a bit of toil.

I really never shy away from complexity or the prospect of needing to evolve, so this is probably what keeps things fresh for me. I also do not feel beholden to a certain agenda besides answering those questions that I feel are important or crucial for awareness.

KR: Who do you think are the most exciting textile artists right now?

AD: In no specific order, as there are truly so many that I could name:

    •    for textiles as topography : Alexandra Kehayoglou
    •    for heritage concepts and social practice: Crossover Collective
    •    for current events/economic topics explored in textiles: Kathryn Clark
    •    for color and ‘plant palette’ studies: Sasha Duerr
    •    for ideas about painting and textile (canvas) cross over: Victoria Manganiello

KR: Lastly, for anybody reading this who might not have a background in fine arts or the training in sustainability but who feels this insistent passion to be engaged in this work in slow textiles or slow fashion, what’s your advice? What would you tell somebody without access to a formal degree or without decades of training? Where should they begin?

AD: I would definitely hunt around for local resources, as this makes the most sense to me in terms of building a community for the sharing of events, workshops, and eventually expanding your circle. I think that it is important to connect with others (in person, that is) as a means to help sort out directions for your work and also access resources that others may have already assembled.

I always feel that saving textile materials and scraps that have meaning or special resonance will lead you to want to experiment with them at a later date. I have secret stashes of such things in the places where I live, and this keeps me inspired to play when I have free time – without an agenda or certain pre-defined expectations.

I do feel that it is important to make a zone for yourself in order to do your work, be this a studio, a bedroom corner, a nook in the garage, shed, basement or even a tote filled with your tools and supplies that you bring on the road. I still do not have my dream studio per se, but I always feel that I am working as I need to no matter where I roam.

I think that folks are too proud about ownership over creative practice, and even though I fully support artists and makers receiving proper credit, copyright, and pay for their work, I also feel that paralysis comes from certain territorial ideas about methods and skills that formerly might have been more open-source or standardized, i.e. in the era of the guild, for example.

In the end, it is important to value what you do, what you are carving out time to do, and also be kind to yourself about pursuing these interests to begin with. The good work will come, and most importantly, your projects will speak for you, particularly when you are able to document what you do with care and attention to why even a small slice of time dedicated to doing something well can make all the difference.

---

Thank you so much for joining me for this exchange, Abigail. It's an honor to share this space with you.

xoxo,
k.

(Please note: All images are courtesy of the artist, Abigail Doan, and should not be reused without her written consent. To contact Abigail directly and/or for a more extensive view at her artwork, please visit her website: Abigail Doan )

Four Years of Slow Fashion: My Fast-Fashion Fast, Make Thrift Mend

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Tue, 13 Sep 2016 13:30:00 +0000

I can't believe I'm entering the fourth year of my fast fashion fast, Make Thrift Mend. If you'd asked me if this was possible on August 1, 2013 when I started my first yearlong fast I would have told you, "No way". I started my fast tentatively. Hesitantly. Passionate about committing to sustainable fashion and gaining insight into my shopping habits but, truth be told, I was also worried I'd feel off-trend and that I'd miss those trips to the sales racks of my favorite boutiques or the impulse shopping of a really good deal on a really cute dress. It sounds shallow, I know, but it's true. I love fashion and I feared that a fashion fast would mean I'd be deprived of fashion. And who wants that?

But I don't miss those impulse buys. I don't feel deprived of fashion. I feel relieved to better understand my own definition of what's fashionable without following the season's quickening trends. I feel more connected to my wardrobe and to sustainable fashion now than ever before. I feel more mindful of my fashion choices, more insight to my favorite clothes, and more knowledgeable about making, mending, and caring for my garments.

I've built a select list of beloved ethical fashion brands that are on my wardrobe wish list for those special new purchases...when I actually need something new or when I find something that I will certainly wear 100 times and want to invest in ethically made. Otherwise, I buy very little new and still primarily shop secondhand or make simple garments myself though I'm buying less and less these days. Focusing on what I really want to wear meant stepping aside from trends and wearing my beloved garments over and over again.

But it's been a journey. A journey of researching, sewing, mending, teaching, reading, and getting really intimate with my shopping habits and my fashion habits too. Why did I start this fast? Why did I abstain from buying any new clothing for 365 days? Well, it was a handful of events that boiled up to one moment when I launched my fast. But I actually think that handful of moments was a few decades of work. I think we find our way by doing. I think we have to trust our journeys even when they don't make perfect sense. Maybe mostly then. So what's my story? Why did slow fashion become the sole focus of my art studio practice in 2013? Well that might be a novel. But let's just start with 2013 and the series of events that spring.

Three years ago on August 1, 2013 I started my fashion fast, Make Thrift Mend. I started this fast four months after the Rana Plaza garment factory collapsed in April 2013 in Bangladesh resulting in nearly 1,200 deaths or what's now known as the largest garment factory disaster of all time. That's right, of all time. On the heels of this disaster I listened to Elizabeth Cline's informative and inspiring interview on NPR about her book, Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, and I read Natalie Chanin's blog posts about slow design and her intelligent and mindful call for slow design in fashion. Something clicked. Something shifted. I decided to make a change.

I wanted to focus on reclaiming my wardrobe from the fast fashion trendmill. That's right, trendmill. I wanted to take a break from consuming new clothing altogether. I felt exhausted by fashion trends. I wanted to know what it felt like to take a break. I wanted to be part of the solution for a more ethical and more environmentally-friendly wardrobe and I knew I just had to dive in. All at once. I decided to use my training in the arts to create a social practice project that would allow me to engage with sustainability, build self-sufficiency, improve my sewing skills, and engage my community. In short, I decided to start right where I was with what I already had and give myself a year to abstain from new clothing.

I wanted to make clothes again. I wanted to mend. And I wanted to stave off factory fashion in a big way. Somehow this moment in my creative life allowed my varied experiences to come together into one single project. But my journey didn't seem so straight-forward when I was living it and Make Thrift Mend was more intuitive and even impulsive than carefully calculated. Looking back I could have been more strategic but the strategy followed. At that moment it was all heart: Something has to change now. But our history aids us in creating our future and I have no doubt that all my years prior to my fast prepared me for the work I'm doing now.

The intersection of art and sustainability is what interests me the most. This isn't a new interest but a continued interest that started right around declaring myself a vegetarian at age seventeen. Sure, I declared myself many things at age seventeen but somehow being a writer, a vegetarian, and an environmentalist are the things that stuck. Thankfully, the taste in music and the haircuts did not. But that's another story. I was an environmental studies major in college but, mind you, this was 20 years ago before my college had a proper environmental studies program. This is the result of a sustained movement: 20 years and suddenly most colleges have environmental studies departments but in the mid 90s this was still activist territory.

I keep this in mind as we're on the front lines of sustainable fashion today. Change is possible. We just have to keep our hearts open and keep our minds focused and know that every effort makes a difference but systemic change takes sustained work. So instead of choosing an existing major I had to create my major as what was known as an independent study-- petitioning to the college that the major should exist and that I could take classes across disciplines to gather enough credits in my area of focus to warrant a college degree. In short, I had to convince the faculty an alternative approach was valid. As a side note, I made dresses for a local boutique for extra money while I was an undergrad student but never thought to combine my two interests: Art and sustainability felt separate.

So with a stack of paperwork and some persuasive argument the college agreed that my interests warranted an academic major in Environmental Studies. Working interdisciplinary across departments felt natural to me. It made sense. It gave me more options. It allowed me to work with professors with varied expertise and it allowed me to tailor my degree to my own suiting. While I felt comfortable looking at sustainability from various points of view I still didn't consider adding art to my cirriculum. I took art classes but they were separate from my major. I hope that college students might now have the option to assess sustainability from the stance of the art department but that might still be a decade away too. I didn't realize this would become a theme in my work and in my studio too: That an interdisciplinary approach would allow me to feel more comfortable straddling disciplines or interests than a singular or conventional approach. I try to maintain this position in my sustainable fashion work too.

I think we have to stay open to diverse solutions to ever achieve maximum impact. I also think we have to consider various cultures, economics, geographies, aesthetics, and lifestyles when considering sustainable fashion. What works for one individual or family might not work for another. The solutions are as varied as the humans living them so we have to resist our soap boxes and ultimatums. There are SO many ways to a more sustainable future. Embracing different voices and different points of view strengthens our movement and allows it to solve the question of ethical fashion for a larger group of people.

Back to my story. So I finished my degree and went directly into working for nonprofit theaters, galleries, and community arts organizations and never looked back. At the time I thought I had a made a switch from sustainability to the arts. I was in my early 20s and thought that sustainability was my personal passion but the arts would be my formal career. I insisted on office recycling and shopped at farmer's markets and tried my best to grow vegetables and herbs on the front steps of my urban apartments until I finally had a tiny yard for veggie beds. I didn't realize I was just gaining experience in another industry so I could ultimately combine the two: Sustainability and the arts.

Fast forward a decade later and I entered a Masters of Fine Arts program focusing on creative writing or more specifically on poetry and book arts. Using recycled fabric to print Gertrude Stein poems with a letterpress printer and turning the fabric prints into handmade dresses seemed natural. I didn't think of this as sustainable design. I didn't think of this as a precursor to my interest in slow fashion. I didn't know anything about the term "slow textiles". I just thought I was making the work I needed to make.

I was working on my master's thesis when my book arts professor pulled me aside and asked me about my work with textiles. She questioned the training I'd received from my mother and my mother's community of crafters. She asked about the dresses I made and sold in that local boutique for extra cash when I was in undergraduate school a decade prior. She pushed me to talk about my sewing skills. My measuring skills. My tendency to create patterns and make my own clothing. She questioned my mother's crafting tendencies. My exposure to women's traditional textiles and to a rural community of crafters that raised me alongside their handwork and their "hobbies".

After several conversations she convinced me to consider my informal training in textiles as part of my formal training as an artist. This was a huge shift for me in considering education. She pushed me to consider my work in bookbinding and letterpress printing and paper sculpture as part of a larger lexicon in fiber arts that included my handmade dresses and community made quilts.

She validated my informal education of textile arts learned through watching my mother and my grandmother and my mother's closest friends. She validated this training in what was typically women's traditional craft work. She thought it as interesting, if not more interesting, than my undergraduate degree. She also shifted my thinking about textile arts: Informal training is just as important as formal training and there isn't just one "right" way to learn about our materials.

Fast-forward another five years of working full time in nonprofit galleries as a program director and events manager and somehow figuring out how to oversee 120 artists at once; working steadily as a textile artist and writer by night; and then add my marriage, the birth of my first son, and signing my first book contract and right about then is when I started Make Thrift Mend.

It wasn't necessarily the perfect timing. I had a 21-month-old baby and a new book contract and small busy apartment in a busy fashionable city. But this was the moment that it needed to happen. I just needed something to change in my relationship to fashion. I knew too much to ignore the effects of shopping at big box fashion retailers. And I wanted to go deeper with my relationship to fashion.

All my training and experience came to one singular focus. I'm not sure it was an epiphany as it was just something that was compelled forward by utter passion. My undergraduate degree in environmental studies and my interdisciplinary approach to college; my graduate work in writing and fiber arts; and fifteen years of organizing programs and overseeing arts projects while exhibiting and publishing my own work; combined with my personal experience with making garments and witnessing the power of craft communities all came together: Sustainable fashion. The light bulb went off. Why didn't I think of this sooner? Because I wasn't thinking. I was feeling. I was doing. I was making my way along a life. And sometimes we just have to trust our process and begin.

I never imagined I'd spend the next three years teaching mending workshops, studying slow fashion theory, or conducting natural dye experiments from foraged weeds and wildflowers. I never imagined that mending would be my way to a more sustainable wardrobe or that I'd have the privilege of teaching hundreds of students how to mend their clothing and how to think more critically about their wardrobes and make their relationship to fashion more meaningful. I never imagined I'd be so energized by this work that somehow four years doesn't seem like nearly enough. Forty years doesn't seem like enough if I'm being totally honest. So let's hope I've got another forty to give to this movement. Yes, please.

As I continue with this work in slow textiles and slow fashion I am astounded by the community of artists, designers, makers, authors, teachers, and activists that I have found. I'm amazed at their formal and informal training in the arts, design, sustainability, systems, crafting, sewing, making, and their incredible ability to rethink their shopping habits and enhance their mending skills.

As I round the third year of my Make Thrift Mend project the parameters of my fast will shift yet again. Because each August I take a moment to reflect on the prior year's activities and how I can deepen my own relationship to sustainable fashion in the year to come. This isn't just an exercise for me now it's a lifestyle. And it's a passion. And it's role in the center of my studio work is more insistent than ever.

In the first year I didn't buy any new clothing but instead focused on making simple garments, buying secondhand, and mending. I also quickly focused on only buying biodegradable fabrics like cotton, linen, wool, and silk. In the second year I opened the parameters to include purchasing new garments if they were locally or handmade. In the third year I broadened the fast to include select newly purchased clothing from ethical brands. And in the fourth year of the fast I'm considering how best to move forward. I think focusing on how best to source ethical materials for handmade garments is my next focus.

How to sustainably source new fabric (organic cotton, ethical linen, secondhand silk, etc) for my art projects, classes, and the construction of new handmade garments. When you live in rural America without a handful of indie fabric shops at arm's length this is an even bigger challenge-- but I'm going to start researching my options now. I'm going to turn my attention to this challenge for the next 12 months. This doesn't mean I'll do it perfectly, of course, but that I'll be as sustainable as possible.

I'm in no hurry to rush back to fast fashion and the sales racks at trendy shops. Instead, I feel more compelled to forge ahead into more complicated territory and further deepen my commitment to slow fashion and slow textiles. I wouldn't be surprised if I convince my husband that alpaca are in our distant future! Well, maybe after my babies are school aged I'll be ready for a fiber farm. Right now I'm just gearing up for a barn cat or a few chickens. I digress.

As I begin this fourth year of my fast I'd also like to focus on the community engagement goals of my original Make Thrift Mend project. To achieve this I'll keep offering classes, engaging in community events, working to strengthen my (new) local textile community but I'd also like to use the powers of the Internet to highlight a handful of artists, designers, and makers who inspire me to delve deeper in my work. To this end I recently added a "muses" section to my newsletter to highlight the work of artists, authors, designers, and other inspiring folks forging the way in sustainability, art, lifestyle, and/or fashion. Coming from 15 years of work in nonprofit galleries and theaters there's a part of me that insists on linking to the greater community around me and so I'm hoping to continue fostering this mindset in my own studio work.

I think the role of social practice--or working outside of traditional gallery structures to consider social issues and/or participate in community engagement--suits my project perfectly. It allows me to continue my studio practice as an artist but it allows me to teach, organize, and write about my work all under the umbrella of a fine arts vocabulary. And sometimes we have to reach back when reaching forward. I had no idea that my undergraduate degree in environmental studies and my practical work in arts galleries and theaters would come together to create the biggest project of my creative career: sustainable fashion and my fashion fast. Sometimes we just have to trust our process and keep following our instincts and just commit to start right where we are. I believe life gives us numerous opportunities to realign. To recalculate. To redirect. To re-position. It's just our job to listen.

This umbrella of social practice also allows me to care less and less about the terminology of the work--that dreadful old debate between art, craft, and activism--and to simply keep pushing myself forward. Keep pushing outside of my comfort zones to increase my self-sufficiency and improve my technical skill while sharing my knowledge and techniques with a larger community. But I also think there's a correlation between textile artists and sustainable fashion leaders and I'm very interested in examining this connection. To that end, my next post will be a feature on one of my favorite contemporary fiber artists and her incredible thoughtfulness in considering her materials and the various forms of her work.

Thank you for sharing this journey with me, I'm incredibly honored to share this work with you. And humbled by the stories and questions and concerns you've shared with me online, at workshops, and over tea. This project wouldn't be what it is without you. That's right, you. So thank you for participating in this community and today, simply for reading this post and considering my journey to slow fashion. Start where you are, I promise you have what it takes to make your relationship to fashion more meaningful and more mindful and probably quite a bit more fun.

xoxo,
k.

Artist Interview with Jessica Lewis Stevens of Sugarhouse Workshop

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 15:26:00 +0000

I'm honored to share this interview with artist, quilter, natural dyer, and friend, Jessica Lewis Stevens, of Sugarhouse Workshop. As you might know Jessica and I have been working on a three-part collaboration, Field Study, that will culminate in an opening exhibition at Hawkins NY in Hudson, NY on August 20; a daylong retreat at Whistle Down Farm with Drop, Forge, & Tool on Sunday, August 21; and an ongoing photo documentary sharing our work in-process on Instagram with the tag #fieldstudyfiber.

I wanted to share a conversation with Jessica in honor of the upcoming weekend and all of our work together. But also because Jessica is such an inspiring human and I wanted to highlight some of her creative practice, her studio work, and her seasonal approach to sustainable textiles. Not to mention, her heartbreakingly beautiful quilts made from naturally dyed fabrics and a few cameos of her home.

KR: Hello, Jessica! Thanks for joining me today. I thought it would be nice to share some insight into your work in honor of our upcoming collaboration, Field Study, and our pending exhibition, workshop, and process over on IG. Thank you for agreeing to join me here. I’ve loved your work online for many years and it’s such an honor to join forces for this collaboration. Can you tell us about your creative journey? And maybe share some of the highlights that led you to the work you’re making today?

JLS: Hi Katrina! Thank you so much for having me here. I’m so thrilled to be collaborating on our Field Study project, and to have a chance to share our work together later this month in Hudson.

I feel as though I’ve always been fascinated by artists, makers, and creative folks of all kinds, and I’ve always made room in my life for making. My mother ran a frame shop growing up, and I spent many of my teen years interacting with art and learning to make frames and stretch stitchery and match colors just so. I worked in framing to put myself through college and graduate school, after which I took a position as the Program Director of the Western New York Book Arts Center, a non-profit organization in Buffalo dedicated to the traditions of letterpress printing and making books by hand.

I fell in love with the processes of printing and bookbinding there, and beyond that it greatly inspired my continuing interest in reconnecting with the more analog craft traditions of the past. Once I had made these things the “hard” way and had a chance to see what a remarkable difference the human hand can make, it was hard to ignore the beauty and sense of pride and effort the more modern, automated processes lack. This eventually led me to explore beyond the paper arts to textiles, where I feel as though I found my home in making quilts and soft goods using traditional patterns and techniques.

KR: I love your use of natural dyes and sewing to make beautifully handcrafted objects. Your work ranges from quilts to buntings to project bags to baby goods to thoughtful children’s toys and beyond. Can you talk about your approach to making these objects? And your interest in creating objects with such attention to detail and craftsmanship—dyeing the fabrics by hand with plants from your yard before you begin any construction?

JLS: So many of the objects I create, and how I create them, are tethered to the idea of making a home a home. I have always really enjoyed seeing how others integrate good design and usefulness into their lives. I have shelves of books of interiors and antique quilts and boards and boards on pinterest of objects and homes I love to look at. But so often, these things are either out of reach, or manufactured without the human hand. Both out of necessity and a desire for well-made, thoughtful objects, I started making those things I wanted myself. And I think if you’re going to make something, you should make it well, give it a life beyond its utilitarian value.

For me, that means using the bedstraw root growing in our field to color a changing pad cover for our new baby, or making a bunting for my son’s play space with marigold flowers we grew together last year. It became obvious to me through conversations and feedback on these things I was making that a lot of people want that kind of connection to their objects. Not so much added preciousness or expense, but added care and consideration and authenticity. It’s those values that really drive my shop collections, and the things I make for our household.

KR: Your work is very tied to the land and to place. Perhaps it’s your gorgeously curated Instagram feed but I always see your work as inherent to your surrounding, to your home, to your garden, to your kitchen—can you talk about your relationship to place and how that might influence your projects?

JLS: We live in southern Vermont now, and the landscape here is out of a dream. Every season is so perfectly itself and so completely enchanting. Living in the country forces us to change our lives with the seasons, what we do, what we cook, what I make, and I really love that about making a life here. I can dye fabric all summer when the plants and fresh water and sunshine are abundant, and spend lots of time in winter putting hand stitches into quilts and knitting sweaters for my son when keeping warm becomes a priority. It allows me not to tire of a specific part of the process, and constantly be inspired by the new colors and moods of each season as they come and go.

KR: I love how you so seamlessly tie together your domestic life and your creative life. I love seeing images of your son, Henry, and your baking and glimpses of your home throughout the season next to your creative work in quilting, dyeing, and running your online shop. Your version of domesticity is definitely something I want for myself and my children. It feels chosen. It feels liberating. It feels thoughtful and intentional and meaningful. Can you talk about this overlap and how one might relate to the other? Again, the work seems inspired and tethered by this sense of place.

JLS: I feel like it all feeds into itself in a really fulfilling cycle. In order for me to be home with Henry and our little one on the way and focus on my creative work instead of being employed outside the home, we’ve had to make a lot of sacrifices and really intentional choices about where and how we live. I find often that it’s the stretching of what we have and the need to be creative with our resources that encourage creativity in every part of our lives. From using what we have in the garden to bake and cook, occupying the days with a small child in ways that are meaningful and fun, working slowly on projects that help us to live well, it all requires a great deal of creativity and thoughtfulness and it all feels very connected.

I’m so glad you use the word liberating – I feel sometimes like I never leave the house, but truthfully it’s deeply freeing to need less, to depend on ourselves, and to let each part of our day-to-day be a part of the creative work of building an intentional life.

KR: I noticed that on your website you talk about your work as a natural dyer and a quilter. Did the quilting come first or the dyeing? Or did they evolve alongside one another as your quilts allowed for a use of the naturally dyed fabric and vice versa?

JLS: Quilting came first for me, though dyeing didn’t follow far behind. When I began to learn to quilt, I was less concerned with materials than I was with design and construction. I had stashed fabric for years for various projects, and it was really useful to have those yards around for all the experimentation and mistakes that come with teaching yourself to quilt. Following the birth of my son, my perspective shifted in a major way. I began to really question my practice in terms of what I was buying, what I was wasting, how my fabrics were made and colored. It was no longer enough to make a beautiful-looking quilt, it became important to me to consider my sources.

I had for many years made it a priority to buy clothes second hand, to make what I could, to avoid big box store clothing racks because of the conditions in which these goods are produced (I spent my 16th birthday at a panel talk and protest with former sneaker company sweatshop workers, if it’s any indication of my future priorities) but I realized I hadn’t applied the same ethical standard to my raw materials. At the same time, we had recently moved to the upper Hudson Valley where I became endlessly inspired by the abundance of plants and flowers and produce growing around me.

I began exploring natural dyes as a way to further connect with this abundance and limit my own chemical footprint, experimenting with easy things to find like queen anne’s lace from the roadside and onion skins from my kitchen. Slowly I started integrating these colors into my work until I no longer felt like I needed to buy conventionally dyed fabrics. Because each of these lengths of color felt so precious to me, I saved every scrap, and they eventually became buntings when my son had a birthday coming up or a needlebook to hold my hand-sewing tools, or a bag for my next knitting project.

My own needs have always been a muse; trying to make what we need has a way of inspiring some of my favorite projects. When I launched my shop, I realized other folks might appreciate these slowly made goods and I integrated them into my collections. Your Make/Thrift/Mend project was a big inspiration to me as I was continually trying to make these shifts in my practice – it felt like I had found community in considering these issues and I’m still so inspired by what you do to inspire others to make thoughtful and sustainable choices as a consumer and as an artist.

KR: Back to this idea of place, you also live in rural Vermont, complete with four distinct seasons including a humid summer and very cold, sometimes snowy, winter. How do the seasons influence your work? Do you plan your dyes according to what’s available throughout the year or do you tend to quilt more in the winter when you’re naturally indoors?

JLS: Yes, absolutely. I love the changing of the seasons. I spend a lot of time in summer dyeing. There is an abundance of dye plants growing midsummer, and it feels like there is hardly time to capture them all. But it’s worth the days after days of stirring hot dye pots to have a quilt on your lap or mittens on your kids’ hands in winter that are made from fibers dyed with summer’s colors. It’s easy to forget how cold winter can get in Vermont, but when it does roll around it’s wonderful to have little reminders of summer imbued in the objects we use every day.

I love to change the colors of my shop collections with the seasons too. In summer, I dye a lot with indigo because my vat is healthy and vibrant, and I love to make things that are useful for that season- dyed linen totes for the beach, or bright rainbow buntings. In autumn I like to focus on more subtle shades, and in winter I’m always drawn to the darkest colors and the most pale, neutral ones.

KR: What’s your favorite dye material right now? Could you share one recipe for a dye, mordant, and fabric with our readers? Just one combination you particularly adore.

JLS: Lately I’ve really been enjoying using iron to add some quiet depth to brighter colors. I’ve been dyeing with marigolds from last year’s harvest, and the iron gives a beautiful rusty gold character to it. Like a bridge between summer’s bright color’s and autumn’s rich browns. It’s not too late even in the northeast to plant a patch of marigold seeds if you’ve got even a little space or a big pot, and they yield a lot of beautiful color.

KR: I’m thrilled about our collaboration! When we first began I imagined we’d offer a workshop on natural dyes and stitching; that we’d create an exhibition of 10 collaborative pieces; and that we’d somehow document this process online to include community that might not be able to join in person. But I never imagined the process would feel so intimate! And so vulnerable. We’ve both written in emails to the other about how sharing our work and our thoughts about the work have felt incredibly intimate. Do you think this intimacy is often overlooked online? Or do you think the work is somehow more intimate than our other work and it’s just close to the heart in someway?

JLS: I really couldn’t agree more. I think for me, I’m not often so explicit when talking about my inspirations, what drives my work, why I chose the colors I chose. I often let my small shop collections speak for themselves or hint at the seasonal touches inherent in each object. But with Field Study, we’re really baring those connections that are important to us, sharing more elaborately the ways we’re interacting with our art, and it’s a vulnerable place to be. And a beautiful one!

I do think there can be an intimacy that is often overlooked when we’re constantly sifting through new images online every day. Things can sometimes feel very surface-level. I love knowing more about what inspires a makers work, and I’ve really loved having the chance to do that myself through this project. It has evolved in a way that I think is not only exciting for this project, but will continue to impact my future work in a wonderful way.

KR: Who are some of your biggest inspirations? I know there are so many, but if you could just list 3-5 who would you include that’s particularly inspiring to you today?

JLS: As far as other dyers and quilters, I am always inspired by Maura Ambrose of Folk Fibers. Her work is beautiful and intentional in a way I deeply admire. I tend to draw inspiration mostly from folks who work in a different medium than I do – I love to think about how my quilts might look with someone else’s weaving or pottery or print on the wall, or sometimes a person’s writing style really strikes a chord I keep coming back to.

Some of my favorites include author Ben Hewitt, The Letowskis of North Country Folkware who make beautiful kitchenware, the cooking videos of Aube Giroux. I’ve been collaborating with artist Emily Halbardier on a series of seasonal baking books, and her illustrations are always so inspiring. She captures a playful, folksy sort of feeling so very well.

KR: Lastly, for somebody who might just be starting out with natural dyes what would you recommend? Are there any techniques or approaches you find particularly forgiving? Or any books or websites you adore?

JLS: Work with what you have! If you want to try natural dyeing, don’t wait for the perfect opportunity, or become intimidated by all there is to learn. Start where you are, boil some onion skins or avocado pits, and dip an old t-shirt in the pot. Just go for it. A beautiful book came out last year called The Modern Natural Dyer by Kristine Vejar from A Verb For Keeping Warm. It’s an amazing resource for the beginner or intermediate dyer, and it’s full of projects for any level of experience.

KR: Thank you so much, Jessica! I cannot wait to teach with you at Whistle Down Farm in August. It feels like something of a dream come true.

JLS: Thank you so much for having me, Katrina! I am so, so looking forward to it.

xoxo,
k.

Field Study: Exhibition Opening at Hawkins NY

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 14:06:00 +0000

Friends,

I've been quiet over here lately because I've been so very busy in the studio. Teaching, writing, mending, and making new textile work. But mostly, I'm thrilled to announce my upcoming two-person exhibition, Field Study, will open at Hawkins NY on Warren Street in Hudson, NY with a reception on Saturday, August 20 from 5-7pm. This is part of my three-part collaboration with natural dyer and quilter, Jessica Lewis Stevens of Sugarhouse Workshop and we are so excited about this project! I want to shout it from the rooftops. Or the farmhouse tops. Or the Hudson Valley barns. Well, you know what I mean.

Our exhibit runs August 20- September 18 and will be on view during regular shop hours. (Thank you, Hawkins NY!) We've worked like crazy to make ten new, original, textile art pieces from naturally dyed fabrics, yarns, fibers, and hand stitching. Field Study is an exploration of the relationship between art, agriculture, traditional textile crafts like quilting and mending, and the underlying importance of place in sustainability. But it's all rolled up into one Instagram photo documentary; one daylong farm retreat; and one new exhibition. I am truly over-the-moon to debut this new work.

Also, because we want to break the rules of traditional exhibitions just a little bit, for my friends out-of-town we have arranged that you can contact Hawkins NY to purchase the work remotely while the exhibit is open. They'll even ship it to you. Hooray! All details will be on my website before Aug 20 but if you've been following on Instagram and want to purchase an original I just want you to have the details first: You'll call Sean at 1-844-HNY-3344 or email at sean@hawkinsnewyork.com between Aug 20 and Sept 18 and he'll walk you through the process. For those of you nearby, please join us for the party on Saturday, August 20. We'd love to celebrate with you. Oh, yes, we are ready to celebrate this project.

Also, just a quick update that we only have a couple of spaces left in the Field Study: Natural Dye & Stitch Farm Retreat on Sunday, August 21 in Hudson, NY. This daylong retreat is hosted on my dear friends' organic farm and includes two textile workshops, an organic farm fresh lunch, and the most beautiful sweeping valley views. Plus, we're making sweet little gifts and Jessica's making berry pies. All workshop details are on the Drop Forge & Tool website. If you're already joining us for the retreat we hope you'll come to the party the night before too. Follow along on Instagram at #fieldstudyfiber

So. Very. Excited. To. Share. This. Project. With. You.

xoxo,
k

Field Study: Natural Dye & Stitch Farm Retreat

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 15:49:00 +0000

I'm thrilled to announce a new workshop offering this summer: Field Study Natural Dye & Stitch Farm Retreat is something of a dream come true. I'm collaborating with the ever-talented textile artist, natural dyer, and quilter Jessica Lewis Stevens of Sugarhouse Workshop to offer a three-part project this summer, Field Study. This project will result in an exhibition of 10 new works by Jessica and I; it will share an ongoing dialogue of our work-in-progress through a photo documentation with the tag #fieldstudyfiber over on Instagram; and it will offer this textile retreat on Sunday, August 21, 2016.

This daylong retreat will take place on my dear friends' working organic farm, Whistle Down Farm, just 10 minutes outside of Hudson, NY in the heart of the Hudson Valley. The retreat will include technical textile instruction in natural dyeing and hand-stitching from the cover of the beautiful barn on the farm and will include ample opportunity to explore the landscape and soak in the natural beauty of our surroundings. Jessica and I are preparing all sorts of special treats for the retreat participants in addition to the bounty of workshop supplies. Imagine special booklets, handmade gifts, and Jessica's berry pies! In addition to a vegetarian farm fresh lunch that will be provided.

When I visited my friends' farm for the first time a few years ago I stood at the top of their driveway and looked over the fields and the greenhouses and the barns and the cottage and the various outbuildings they have built entirely from scratch and I thought, "My gosh, what a magical place. I'd love to build community here", and this workshop is the manifestation of that instinct. It's an honor to invite an intimate community to gather with us on this farm. It's a beautiful place that embodies the ethos of sustainable living.

As I continue down this path of sustainable fashion and the fusing of my art practice with slow fashion I am constantly brought back to the image of the farm. To our dependence on the farm. To the absolute need for our communities to support local farmers. To the beginnings of food and fiber in plants and animals that are raised on the farms. I keep considering how cotton, flax, hemp, wool, angora, mohair, and cashmere come from farms. And our dependence on these farms for textiles and fashion.

Slow Food has done for the food movement what I can only hope Slow Fashion will one day do for the fashion industry--it allows us to be mindful in our choices and to reconsider the true value of food or clothing and the many lives that touch that food or garment before it reaches our home. Enter into this conversation the idea of "slow textiles" or considering the materials, processes, and resources in textile work and engaging in handwork, honoring traditional practices, and considering ethical design.

This Field Study workshop will be firmly rooted in place. A very special place. A very important place. And a place that is very dear to my heart, Whistle Down Farm. This collaboration with Jessica is a multi-approach to exploring our thoughts on the intersection of fashion and farming; the crossing of fiber and farm; the importance of place and geography and localism; the dislodging of migration or relocation; and the pushing of traditional craft techniques like quilting and mending into a fine art medium.

In so many ways this collaboration with Jessica, this multi-faceted approach to collaboration, and this resulting workshop are the truest expression of my current work with sustainable fashion. The collaboration allows for dialogue and the sharing of ideas and the influence of form; the photo documentation on Instagram is a way for us to experiment with using social media as a core part of our collaborative project and sharing our processing with a larger community; and the daylong retreat allows us to come together in physical space to share our techniques, our muses, and our thinking about slow textiles from the location of a working organic farm.

Oh my gosh, I'm excited. Join us on Sunday, August 21 if you can. And for those of you coming from out-of-town feel free to ask any questions about lodging, food, shops, etc. and I'll be sure to answer in the comments. Hudson, NY is a magical small city fueled by arts and antiques and it has many wonderful accommodations, eateries, and special shops and spaces to crate a wonderful weekend getaway. I'm so honored to be offering this retreat to the world and I can't wait to meet the participants that will join us. I'm eager to hear your reactions so please feel free to leave any comments or questions below or over on Instagram.

Hooray for slow textiles and creative collaborations and organic farms!

xoxo,
k.

Slow Fashion is a Revolution

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 20:30:00 +0000

Last week marked a very important event on social media. It marked the tremendous organizing efforts of the eco fashion advocacy group, Fashion Revolution. It marked the creation of a virtual sustainable fashion community consisting of designers, artists, makers, crafters, hobbyists, advocates, and otherwise concerned citizens looking to engage in the conversation regarding ethical fashion. These are the very best moments in social media. When online platforms are used as a tool for community organizing, public dialogue, and political advocacy. And the moments when this tool actually wants anyone and everyone to participate. People like me. And people like you.

This week marked the three-year-anniversary of the collapse of the garment factory known as the Savar building or the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka, Bangladesh. On April 24, 2013 the building collapsed killing over 1,100 people and injuring over 2,500. The building collapsed because of a structural failure that could have been avoided. It resulted in the deadliest garment factory accident in history.

From this tragedy grew an urgency in the grassroots Slow Fashion movement that was already gaining momentum with environmentalists, textile artists, and select fashion leaders worldwide. But the collapse created an urgency. An outrage. An international call for action. Slow Fashion called for a revolution in the fashion industry to better consider the welfare of people and the planet involved in the making of our clothing.

Fashion Revolution had a simple premise, to draw attention to the horrible conditions of garment factory workers by asking fashion labels one question: Who made my clothes? This question quickly inspired droves of concerned consumers to turn their clothing inside out, show their labels, and take a selfie on their cell phones that they'd post to social media outlets with the hashtag #whomademyclothes.

It was effective. It was instant. It was an inspired action to convince participants to share their labels and charge factories with a responsibility that was missing after Rana Plaza collapsed. It also humanized the movement by forcing us to consider the humans in the factories making our clothing. And remember the lives of the workers who were killed in the avoidable collapse. These images quickly flooded the Internet on the first anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse, April 24, 2014. And again on April 24, 2015.

Along the way designers and makers turned the phrase around to declare, "I made my clothes". And from this declaration other sustainable fashion advocates and artists added their own spin on how they were not only calling for a fashion revolution but participating in one. This year at the third anniversary Fashion Revolution organized worldwide events and increased the daylong memorial to a week long event.

This year the advocacy group took a longer approach and asked "makers" or designers, crafters, seamstresses, and other fashion enthusiasts to spend the week considering the potential of a fashion revolution from seven different angles. They invited followers to post on a different prompt each day for seven days. The topics included: 1. I make my clothes; 2. By hand; 3. I mend my clothes; 4. Upcycled; 5. Second hand first; 6. Skill up; and 7. Goals.

It's impossible for me to participate in this work for Fashion Revolution without considering my own fashion fast that started three years ago. One of the goals of my project was community engagement and sharing resources and techniques I learned through the project. So this organizing effort is close to my heart as I continue to focus on these interactions and conversations outside of making, mending and teaching. It's incredible, the momentum that the Slow Fashion community has gained in the past three years since I started my project. It's thrilling to witness.

As many of you know, on August 1, 2013 I started a clothing fast, Make Thrift Mend, with the intention of abstaining from purchasing any new clothing for one year while I focused instead on making simple garments, buying secondhand, and mending. My fast was also largely inspired by the Rana Plaza factory collapse. It was also influenced by Natalie Chanin's writings on slow design and the book Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion by Elizabeth Cline. I wanted to DO something about fast fashion. I wanted to change my shopping habits. I wanted to challenge myself to go deeper in the name of eco fashion. I wanted to align my wardrobe with my values.

Through this journey I also discovered mending as a form of art. I studied Japanese Boro and Sashiko and developed my own techniques for mending clothing. I started teaching mending workshops because it was part of my Make Thrift Mend project goals. With a background as a textile artist and an arts organizer I wanted to push myself to focus on what's known as "social practice" or community engagement or finding a way to work outside the structure of galleries and shops to engage community. I hosted mending circles, I won a grant to offer a free mending workshop online, and later I organized textile artists on Market Street in San Francisco in lunchtime demonstrations.

The first year of my project turned into the second and I shifted the parameters to include the purchase of new clothing from local brands or independent makers. The third year suddenly appeared and I included the purchase of select new clothing from ethical brands. I taught more mending workshops.

I wrote about Slow Fashion. I published an article on what I like to call, Mendfulness, and I gathered in community with other artists, makers, designers, and authors working for eco fashion. My interest in the project only continued to grow as the years gathered--I can hardly believe I haven't purchased new clothing from a big box store in three years. If you had asked me if that was possible before I started my fashion fast I would have said, "No way. What would I wear? I don't have the money. I don't have the time".

Somewhere along the line I surrendered the rest of my studio practice to my Make Thrift Mend project. I had a second baby. I bought an ancient farmhouse 3,000 miles away from my apartment and studio in Oakland, CA. And I moved my growing family from that small apartment in a beautiful urban center to a sprawling old farmhouse in the beautiful rural community of the Hudson Valley.

But somehow mending and Slow Fashion and this combining of sustainability and fashion and textile arts centered my creative work in a time when my life was arguably busier and more demanding and more chaotic than ever before. The mending practice became metaphor for mending in general. For repairing. For focusing. For accepting imperfection. For experimenting. For embracing the natural process of breakdown and reinforcing what was torn with my stitches. It became a meditation, Mendfulness.

I taught more mending workshops. I bettered my techniques. I listened to my students about what they wanted and what was working and what wasn't. And I started teaching at new venues and considered multiple requests to travel to teach in locations across the US. I admitted to myself that this one-year-project had not just turned into a three-year-project but it had turned into the core my creative studio work. And it had altered my relationship with fashion so deeply that there was simply no turning back to the sales racks of my favorite boutiques of yesteryear. Thankfully.

But this week brings me back to the catalyst for this project that quite frankly changed my life. It brings me back to the people. To the humans. To the lives lost. To the photographs of the factory collapse that could have been avoided. And to the aftermath of various mega fashion brands refusing responsibility and refuting pressure to shift their manufacturing practices.

But it also brought me back to the makers. To the designers. To the advocates. To the activists. To the community of people around the world that are so dedicated to this cause that they cannot, not do something. They are motivated to create change. And they are inspiring. They are designing, making, selling, mending, altering, plant dyeing, and otherwise creating an alternative fashion industry that aligns with their values. They inspire me to keep moving my own project forward too.

They remind us that we do have options. We can buy less. We can support independent makers. We can consider the fibers in our clothing and educate our selves about the journey from farm to factory to retail. We can decide to take a break from the fashion "trendmill". We can say, enough is enough.

We can find other outlets besides impulse shopping. We can mend our clothing. We can buy secondhand. We can even consider the design elements in mending and making to create repairs that actually add value to our existing garments. And we can release our selves from the pressure to make perfect seams on handmade garments and instead just go ahead and begin. Where we are. With the skills we already have. We can say, "I'll start right here, right now."

The three-year-anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse, the organizing efforts of Fashion Revolution, and rounding the third year of my own fashion fast offer an opportunity to reconsider choices. To confront the system I support in my garment purchases. To stop focusing on what I can't do to support sustainable fashion and instead decide what I can do to better align my values and my closet. At the end of the week of online activity the prompt was "Goals".

I took a few moments to jot down my goals and realized that advocacy is still my number one priority as I move ahead with this project. And by advocacy I mean social practice, community engagement, public dialogue, and reaching outside of my studio and classrooms to support change. I also want to continue to step outside my comfort zone in making garments--approach sleeves, pants, and other contours I've been avoiding. And to develop a handful of projects that use castoff fabrics because let's admit it, sometimes the garments are beyond repair but the fabric has so much potential.

This week, this anniversary, this tremendous organizing effort by Fashion Revolution allows us to pause and notice our habits. That's how my fashion fast began--I wanted to notice my shopping habits by abstaining. I wanted to create a break in the habitual and this came through fasting and ultimately re-approaching fashion through an intentional lens, Mendfulness. This week allows us to just decide on one thing we can shift to better align our wardrobe with our values. Just one thing. Anything. Just a specific place to continue. Or to begin.

xoxo,
k

Upcoming: Slow Fashion Forum in Oakland, CA

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 16:33:00 +0000

Friends,

I'm thrilled to announce that on Friday, March 11 at 7pm I'll be co-hosting a free, community-building, slow fashion event at A Verb for Keeping Warm in Oakland, CA. This event was recently added to my lineup of mending workshops and I've asked several of my favorite slow fashion/ sustainable fashion/ slow textile artists to join me in public conversation. This is something of my Bay Area Slow Fashion Dream Team and I couldn't be more excited to join forces with these amazing artists for an evening of community building, conversation, and sharing our projects with the public. Here's just a brief biography on each of the artist who will join me for the panel:

>>> Sasha Duerr <<<

I'm honored to be joined by friend and fine artist/ natural dyer/ expert colorist/ slow fashion advocate/ and kindred artist Sasha Duerr. Sasha approaches natural dyeing and natural color like nobody else I've ever known. She has a sensitivity and intuition and engagement with the natural world that is somewhat spellbinding. Truly. If you have the opportunity to take a workshop with her and the Permacouture Institute please do it! She's also an author, fine artist, teacher, mama, and community builder very active in the Bay Area creative community.

>>> Sonya Philip <<<

I'll be joined by my dear friend/ artist/ fashion designer/ maker Sonya Philip of 100 Acts of Sewing. If you're at all interested in making your own clothing and you don't know where to begin I highly recommend checking out Sonya's project, patterns, and her various social media feeds. She's taking the fear of "perfection" out of handmade clothing and providing simple, stylish patterns and so much information on fabrics, sewing, styling, knitting, and creating a handmade wardrobe. Sonya is also a writer, artist, teacher, mama, and all around dear creative.

>>> Kristine Vejar <<<

Next is the wonderful and inspiring Kristine Vejar artist, dyer, organizer, and owner of Oakland's finest A Verb for Keeping Warm. Kristine just published her first book, The Modern Natural Dyer, and it's a treasure trove of images, narratives, and DIY projects focused on natural dyes. This book is visually stunning. Kristine teaches workshops, hosts events, advocates for slow fashion and handmade textiles all while managing AVFKW--a yarn, fiber, and fabric shop complete with a classroom, dye studio, and beautiful outdoor dye garden. Kristine is a wonderful resource and also an inspiring entrepreneur, artist, author, and sustainable fashion advocate.

>>> Alice Wu <<<

Lastly, we'll be joined by the very talented designer, producer, curator, and artist Alice Wu. I met Alice many moons ago when we both lived in Brooklyn, NY and she was in the early days of her ethical fashion label, Feral Childe. She co-founded this fashion label with distribution in over 100 independent retail shops and some of the most creative, stylish, unique, and totally awesome clothing I've seen from a small label! The label has since come to a close but we are thrilled to have Alice's insight and her added perspective. She's now working as a curator, organizer, and fine artist and she's a wealth of knowledge regarding slow fashion.

I am so honored to share an evening of conversation with these talented women. When I launched my fast fashion fast, Make Thrift Mend, nearly three years ago one of the priorities was to host community events and participate in social action and what's often known in the art world as "social practice". So organizing mending circles; writing grants to offer that free online slow fashion workshop; last summer's Social Textile Experiments in our tiny art studio on Market Street in San Francisco; and this upcoming Slow Fashion Forum all help to push realize this goal in my project. And it's an honor to share this work with the broader public.

Lastly, we've added one more workshop to my offerings at Handcraft Studio School on Tuesday, March 15 from 11-3pm. (Saturday's workshop is sold out and there are just a few spots left on Sunday, March 13.) It's wonderful to be returning to the Bay Area to engage in this work and to continue making connections with this incredible community. And for those of you outside of CA, stay tuned, there will be more offerings for you in 2016.

xoxo,
k

Exciting News: Mending Workshops in NY, CA, and Maine

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Mon, 11 Jan 2016 19:49:00 +0000

Happy New Year!

I'm thrilled to announce upcoming mending workshops in three different locations. In March I'll be back in California at the beloved Handcraft Studio School teaching my favorite Sashiko Mending workshop; in April I'll be offering this same Sashiko Mending workshop locally at Drop Forge & Tool in adorable Hudson, NY; and in May I'll be traveling to Portland, ME to offer a special daylong Mindful Mending workshop at A Gathering of Stitches.

If you've been curious about modern mending inspired by Japanese Sashiko and Boro; about sustainable fashion through creative and personal repairs; or about taking a workshop with me in-person... now is the time. These workshops often sell out so be sure to register quickly if you want to attend. In 2016 I'm also hoping to offer an online slow fashion workshop complete with mending tutorials so be sure to hop on over to my mailing list to be the first to know. For daily studio updates let's connect over on Instagram--my daily photo outlet to the big virtual world.

On Saturday, March 12 and Sunday, March 13 I'll be back in my beautiful California teaching Sashiko Mending with my dear friends at Handcraft Studio School! Join me in the San Francisco Bay Area for this favorite workshop. These workshops will include a Sashiko embroidery project, sustainable fashion resources, and individual attention to mend your garments. If you're anywhere near Emeryville, CA come join me for an afternoon. This is a truly gorgeous space filled with wonderful students and it's always a lovely gathering. I can't wait to return.

Saturday April 9 I'll be offering my Sashiko Mending workshop back in the beautiful Hudson Valley in Hudson, NY at Drop Forge & Tool. The owner of DFT is a friend of mine from California and I love what she's creating to support the local arts community here in Upstate NY so this workshop feels extra special--California meets NY in the best possible sense. This is currently my only local workshop so be sure to sign-up soon if you are in the area and want to join me. I'd love to meet you! Hudson, NY is just about two hours north of Manhattan by car or train. And it's adorable.

On Memorial Day weekend I'm thrilled to be teaching at A Gathering of Stitches in Portland, ME on Saturday, May 28. This workshop has been developed specifically for the retreat sessions offered by this amazing venue. It will be a daylong workshop focused on Mindful Mending--diving deeper into sustainable fashion, mindfulness, and the creative opportunity in repair. It will also give participants a chance to spend more time considering the design aspects of repairs and the beauty of slow stitches.

I'm honored to join the line-up of *amazing* teachers working out of AGOS in 2016. Seriously, have you seen the offering of classes on their website? I want to take every single workshop. Portland is such a wonderful and vibrant city that I haven't visited in years so I'm thrilled to return. I hope you'll join me if you are anywhere nearby. Or it could be a great weekend destination too--hint, hint.

I'm thrilled to be partnering with these three amazing spaces, run by three amazingly inspiring women, to offer mending workshops in three beautiful states. I've selected these spaces very carefully as I feel they truly embody the philosophy, aesthetics, community, and professional practices of a leading contemporary craft school. They are working diligently to create beautiful spaces that not only offer craft workshops but build creative community, support artists & makers, and consider the inherent value and importance of handmade objects.

Join me for these workshops--it will be a honor to share my sustainable fashion resources, to help support you in your own slow fashion journey whether that's mending one garment or starting a fast fashion fast, and more practically to work with you to mend your clothes through beautiful and purposeful stitches.

Happy 2016. Happy mending. Happy making. Happy wintery days that sparkle and shine.

xoxo,
k

Giveaway: The Modern Natural Dyer by Kristine Vejar

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 19:38:00 +0000

Dear friends,

Today is a very special day. Today, I'm thrilled to host a book giveaway of my friend and fellow slow-fashion artist, Kristine Vejar's, gorgeous new dye book, The Modern Natural Dyer. Have you seen this beautiful book? It's been traveling through the Internet at rapid speed with guest appearances on beloved sites like Selvedge and Design Sponge and many other beautiful, virtual spaces. Each time I see this book featured in a new location I cheer a little bit, oftentimes aloud, I confess.

Kristine is a dear friend, a fellow fiber artist, a generous spirit, a thoughtful advocate, but also someone I respect SO much for the work she's done to build community and support slow fiber, slow fashion, and sustainable textiles throughout the Bay Area and beyond. She's the founder and owner of the ever-inspiring shop A Verb for Keeping Warm (AVFKW) in Oakland, CA where she sells yarn, fabric, sewing patterns, books, tools, offers workshops and special events, and where she conducted all the research for her gorgeous new book.

If you live anywhere near the San Francisco Bay Area I highly recommend you sign-up for the AVFKW mailing list so you can attend the wonderful fiber events and workshops hosted in this magical space. Not to mention, you can purchase the book, the dye kits, a dye journal, and oodles of other wonderful crafty goods from the AVFKW website. (Hint, hint Christmas shoppers.)

The Modern Natural Dyer must be one of the most gorgeous craft books I've ever held in my hands. Is that an overstatement? Well, I don't think so. It's actually that pretty. I first got an early glimpse of this beautiful book this summer when Kristine joined me for my Social Textile Experiments on Market Street in our tiny art studio on wheels--Range Studio.

I saw the cover and I gasped. So pretty! Then I flipped through the photographs and I paused at each one to notice the dye projects, the raw materials, and the incredible composition and intention in every single photograph. The book exudes Kristine's refined sense of design, beautiful aesthetic, and also her incredible insight into the natural dye world. I want to make every project in this book!

The dye recipes are fantastic, the projects are inspiring and easy to follow, and the book leaves you feeling like you've just taken a course with Kristine without ever leaving your home. Gorgeous photography, stunning styling, thoughtful writing, inspired how-to projects, and brimming with in-depth information from the author's lifelong work with natural dyes. I actually have a pot of foraged walnuts soaking in my busted-up laundry room as I type--the beginnings of a natural dye project from this book.

Now, I have the very great honor of not just reviewing this book but offering one lucky reader one free copy. Hooray, a giveaway! And, if that wasn't enough, Kristine has also generously offered to send that one lucky winner a free dye kit of her/ his choice. (Choose from the four dye kits on the AVFKW site.) Yes, that's right. You can win a book AND a dye kit just because it could be your lucky natural dye day.

You just have to go over to the AVFKW website and decide which dye kit you'd like to call your own. Then come back to my blog (or my Instagram post, or both) and leave a comment with the dye kit you'd like to win. Maybe say something else about what you'd like to dye or why you think this work is completely and totally awesome and could quite possibly change the world! (Okay, that last part is just my personal pitch for slow fiber work. Eh hem.)

Next Monday I'll announce the winner in the comments section of this post. You can enter here on my blog or on my Instagram feed and I'll choose one winner at random. It's pretty much like your birthday and this blog post rolled up into one. Trust me, you want to win this book and this dye kit too. And if you don't win, or you can't wait to see if you might win, or you just know you need a second copy for a family member or friend, then head over to Kristine's website and purchase a copy for yourself. I bet you'll find something else over there you might want too.

I couldn't be happier for the author, the book, the contribution to the natural dye world, and this very important advocacy for sustainable fiber and slow textiles and more simply some encouragement for foraging for natural dye materials, raising dye plants in your garden, or even just purchasing the dye materials from AVFKW. Hooray for this work seeing its way into publishing and textile arts.

I'm convinced, the better we understand the process of growing, harvesting, spinning, weaving, dyeing, sewing, knitting, and otherwise making textiles the better our chances to do this work in a sustainable, thoughtful, ethical, beautiful, and FUN manner. This book is all that at once. Kristine, this book is a work of genius, my friend, 1000 congratulations.

xoxo,
k

Hope, Listening Close, and Moving Forward

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 19:19:00 +0000

Hope is my motto for November. It's the word I keep tacked in my brain as I slush through boxes and home renovations and stacks of laundry that might just swallow me if we don't get our formerly-split-pea-green-colored laundry room put back together soon. As I mentioned in the last post about moving to the Hudson Valley in October, I'm so very glad it's finally November. It means the boxes have all come inside and the first round of items on our to do lists have actually been achieved. But mostly, it means the shock of our move is subsiding.

People ask me if we're settling in and I have to pause a moment before I respond. Settling in? With two small children and a 200-year-old farmhouse to renovate and winter approaching (without appropriate winter clothing) and our dearest friends and all that's familiar some 3,000 miles away? No. No, we are not yet settling in. I do not imagine it will feel like we are settling in for many months to come. Though the boxes will be unpacked and the barn will be cleaned out and the rooms, one by one, will be repainted and re-patched and repaired. Instead I respond, "Day by day". My expectations have downshifted. Just put one foot in front of the other each day. And that seems to be working today so I'm going with it. I think of that Arthur Ashe quote:

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

But the thing I've identified as the most important in our journey from urban CA to rural NY is not the appropriate clothing for winter, the pacing of our newly painted rooms, the long list of things we will change in our old farmhouse as the years go by, or even the pacing of caring for small children, working, moving across the country and suddenly owning a home. It's not any one of these things that pushed our October into a state of overwhelm and sadness and ache. Instead, it was the culmination of all these things all at once. The pile up.

But October is over. Forever. That's the beautiful thing about the passing of time. And November is about hope. But I think that word is so overused that it's actually lost its meaning. Hope. Love. Dream. Believe. Joy. Trust. They all read like Hallmark greeting cards that I avoid at all costs though, admittedly, I see their necessity or their appeal in the hands and hearts of many. I get it. We want to access those feelings. We want to share that sentiment. We want to connect to those feelings in our selves and in the recipients. Yes, of course we do.

But those words are actually Big Huge Life words. Life changing words. Life affirming words. Life shifting words. And we've tried to boil them down to bite-sized chunks of feeling and meaning and connection. We're busy. We're tired. We need a quick emotional fix. Sure. But Big Huge Life words and feelings and needs and considerations are, of course, much bigger than bite-size and often quite messy. They are much more important than one mouthful and they require more attention and time and consideration. Hope: It's actually the stuff that life is built on. And it can be reductive, if not offensive, when these Big Huge Life shifting words get boiled down into bite-sized chunks. Maybe we need more than a nibble. At least I do.

When I think I can tap into these Big Huge Life feelings for bite-sized amounts of time and see any true redirection I'm always disappointed. Because, of course, I can't shift my life in one bite. I have to sit with all these feelings. I have to mull them over. I have to swim in them. I have to let them flood me from time to time and just sit there with all those feelings and notice. Sometimes I don't have to do anything at all but sit there and breathe deep and acknowledge. And from this place of noticing I can start to realign to the life I want to create instead. For me this often has everything to do with fear. But it also has everything to do with trust. That wonderful Georgia O'Keeffe quote keeps playing through my mind:

I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

Yes! Thank you, Georgia. So, hope. Hope is what I've identified as the most important word for me right now. Hope that this house will eventually feel like my own. Hope that we will actually get all these old rooms patched and painted and ultimately repaired. Hope that we'll find meaning here. Hope that we'll find comfort and relief and a reflection of our selves here. Hope that we'll thrive. Hope that this place and this house and this transition will provide something we needed. Will provide the opportunity for something different. Something bigger. Something we could only imagine and now we're working to make come true. Something more closely aligned to where we see our selves headed. Something relevant and important and, ultimately, something good.

Or why else would we do it? Why would we change our locations, our relationships, our jobs, our homes, our havens, if we cannot see the shift lined with opportunity and meaning and importance? I don't think we would. I think we would just keep things very much the same. But sometimes we need to change our lives. Or our homes. Or our relationships. Or our work. Sometimes I don't just need a minor shift but an actual overhaul. Sometimes I need to take huge risks and have huge hope at the same time.

Because, I'm convinced, of the necessity of hope. Because we hope and we envision because we get down close to the roots of our lives and we see what's most needed there. We breathe slow. We get quiet. We look around with a flashlight and try not to freak out at what we find. We collect data. We gather information. We mine for details. And then we take all this important information and we try to find the direction forward. We try to see what needs to change and what doesn't need to change and we calculate and we consider and then eventually we act. I keep telling myself: Trust deep.

So with each painted room, with each patched hole, with each floor we sand or paint or oil I try to maintain hope. I try to keep my eye on that beacon of promise. I try to let all the fears and sadness and uncertainty flood me as it will. Let it come. Let it go. Let it wash in and out and in and out again. Mine it for data. Listen to the roots and try not to freak out at the findings. And then I try to keep moving onward.

Maybe because it's just my way through it. Maybe it's just the set of survival skills my particular constitution has gathered together over the decades to help me move my life forward. But maybe because it gives me hope. And maybe that's the flag I need to replace the little soft white flag of surrender I had to wave over my home in October. Maybe hope is the flag of November and maybe that's just where I need it to be. Not what I expected, but certainly, there is a life here for us waiting to be uncovered. Maybe it's just under the last room full of old linoleum, waiting patiently for its turn.

xoxo,
k

Culture Shock: Our First Month in the Country

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Mon, 02 Nov 2015 21:32:00 +0000

As many of you know, on October 1st I moved to the Hudson Valley with my family after 10 years of living in Oakland, CA. The decision was fairly practical: We wanted to own our home and ultimately send our boys to a good public school. With the punishing cost of housing in the Bay Area, this didn't seem like an option for us in our beloved Oakland. So we set our sites on the Hudson Valley in 2012 and after three years of looking for a house, we purchased our 1820 farmhouse on July 15, 2015.

We were thrilled. We were relieved. We were filled with optimism about this new life waiting for us some 3,000 miles away in the country. I grew up in rural Upstate NY and went to college in the small city of Ithaca less than an hour from my hometown so rural life wasn't completely foreign to me though it was a few decades behind. When I was 22 and finished college I moved to San Francisco. And I lived there for three years. And then when I was 25 I moved to Brooklyn, NY and I lived there for another three years. And when I was 28 I moved back to Oakland, CA to start graduate school.

Fast-forward 10 years and 1 marriage and 2 children and several wonderful jobs later and it was time for a bigger place and to look further down the road towards schools and proximity to our extended family and overall cost of living and also career opportunity for two working artist parents. The Hudson Valley quickly rose to the top of our list as satisfying many of these criteria at once. Just two hours from Manhattan we could afford a 3-bedroom farmhouse with several outbuildings including an old carriage house (our future art studios) and several smaller structures. And there's a rural art community here that doesn't exist in many other rural spaces as a result of the influence from Manhattan. After a few visits to the region, we were convinced we could make a home here.

But as October 1 crept closer and closer from our July 15 house closing I felt increasingly more anxious. More concerned. More afraid. And I also felt sad. The Bay Area was such a welcoming and befitting community for us. We felt at home there. And leaving it was a big, huge, gigantic decision but one that felt inevitable.

So we packed our house, found somebody to drive our car, and boarded a plane with our two small boys to head to NY. September was nothing short of exhausting. Packing a family of four for a 3,000 mile move felt epic. Of course, many families have done it before us and many families will do it after us but it was still exhausting. Add our infant who doesn't yet sleep through the night and our very part-time childcare and we weren't sure we would make it. But, of course, we did.

But as a first-time homeowner and as the first-time I've ever moved with children, I only paced myself to that very moment when we would board the plane--much like a first-time mother only paces herself to that moment of childbirth somehow forgetting that the moment the child is born she is responsible for 24-hour care. I didn't think about the life that would be waiting for me to nurture it on the other side of that plane ride.

And so I gave September everything I had and then I got on that plane, completely unprepared for the challenges of October, and felt temporarily relieved while we were suspended in flight. When we finally arrived to our "new" 1820 farmhouse I was completely in shock. My husband found the house in January on a business trip and while we looked at 30 odd houses in this area over 3 years I never actually stepped inside this house. My new house. It was completely foreign.

Moving was exhausting but arriving was completely overwhelming. The barn was filled with mildewed cabinets the previous owners left behind. The garage was filled with old musty furniture and strange fish silhouettes on the walls that must have been used as decoration but were now just a faded fish mark on the drywall at the back of the garage.

And the house, though filled with beautiful potential and the "good bones" we saw in photographs, was one room after the other of needed updates. Some updates were bigger than others. Renovating a home with one preschooler and one infant after just moving across the country is quite a feat. Not to mention, it's even more disorienting to live among paint cans and ladders when you also work from home. We could not find respite.

I was sick five times in six weeks and twice required antibiotics. I was running on empty. I felt vacant. Hollow. Overwhelmed. Sad. Raw. Exhausted. And hinging on depressed. I felt like my body was something I was dragging around behind my head. I was so deeply exhausted that my chest was like a hollow cavity that held my heavy head on the top of my neck. Empty. I felt empty. Empty of all the things I knew and loved about my beloved California. I knew it would feel strange to relocate to a new place 3,000 miles away but I didn't know it would be so disorienting or depleting.

In addition to the exhaustion of moving, the exhaustion of an infant, the demands of a preschooler, and the need to keep nudging our careers along, we were also sitting in a house that looked nothing like us. I looked for opportunities to see myself in this new space but I just couldn't find them. I kept thinking that we had landed on a new planet and we were running a marathon. Not even to mention our new and utter dependence on our car was shocking. Though not isolated by rural standards--we have neighbors on three sides and we're only a 10-minute drive from the nearest small town--it was an epic switch from our recent life in America's big, beautiful, and walkable cities.

We only saw one solution: We had to slow way down. Down to snail's pace. One of my biggest challenges in parenting is my inability to do anything else. I've become fairly competent at using naps and limited childcare to accomplish great heaps of work with the time management focus that only parenthood can bring. But renovating a house cannot be accomplished during naps. It takes so much time to remove debris, prep walls, prime walls, paint walls, and shove boxes from one side of the house to the other. Not to mention, it's noisy.

So we started with a huge purge: Remove shag carpets, carpet pads, and the layers of linoleum and newspaper and random fabrics used as insulation. Remove everything from the barn--everything down to the drywall and the concrete floor. And remove almost everything from the garage. And then we decided we needed help. So we found a recent college graduate to help us paint 15 hours a week. And we came to the realization that our moment of rest and settling and complete unpacking was still several months away.

We made a plan: We would live downstairs and paint the upstairs and then we'd move upstairs and paint the downstairs; we'd also refinish the wood floors. We put a curtain up over the window in the full bath and pretended the chocolate tile bathtub didn't depress us every time we stepped inside it. Reluctantly, we put our dishes and our food into the crappy cupboards in the kitchen so we could make food and start some sense of "normalcy" while finishing the upstairs renovations.

We set our beds up in the living room--all of our beds--so that we could get off the cold, drafty floor and say goodbye to our air mattress. We praised the split pea green laundry room every time one of our boys spilled something down their shirts as we could actually do laundry in the meantime. Thank goodness.

And now, four weeks later, we are still living in the chaos. Boxes line every room and furniture waits stacked in the barn. We've organized our suitcases by person so each of us can locate pajamas and knee socks and clean clothes each evening and again each morning. Eventually we'll renovate the bathroom, the kitchen, and the horrible split pea laundry room too. Eventually, we'll renovate the barn and the garage and the outbuildings. Eventually, we'll plant a garden and some fruit trees. For now, we just want white walls and smooth floors and to fill our dressers with our clothes.

But November has finally arrived. Finally! Marking our one month in this house. Marking the end of the month we moved. The end of the hardest part. The end of the very raw beginning. The end of the packing and the moving and the shifting and the arriving and the not-knowing and the shock and disturbance and sadness and grief of leaving a place we loved so intensely for over a decade.

And November marks the beginning of something new. It marks the beginning of settling in. It marks the beginning of seeing our new pace with house projects, searching for childcare, turning one eye back to our careers to secure work in this very new place, and also the first month of our brave 4-year-old and his new preschool somehow already filled with new friends.

Quite frankly, November marks the beginning of hope. Hope that we will not just survive here but that we might actually thrive here with enough weeks or months or even years under our belts. That this house and this land and this exact space on the planet have something to share with us. Something to teach us. Something to offer that we had no idea was coming. Shocking, disorienting, filled with longing and loneliness and ache this place will eventually give way to something beautiful.

Something that looks like the very hard work at the beginning of a very long and beautiful dream. The doing. The sorting. The sifting. The planning. The purging. The building. The very beginning of something that might be the most beautiful hard work we've ever done. Of course, it looks nothing like we expected. But the beginning of a new phase of growth. And ultimately, what might actually be the gateway to the next best thing.

xoxo
k

Sashiko Mending Meets Slow Fashion and Studio Work

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 22:14:00 +0000

I've just updated my website with Sashiko Mending photographs and an entire mending portfolio. This thrills me beyond measure! I'm so excited to finally have this dedicated space to share samples of my mending work and to offer these images to other mending enthusiasts for inspiration. I've been working primarily with worn denim for the Sashiko Mending but I'm also branching out to use these same stitches to recycle denim into new garments and accessories--stay tuned. And taking note of the other garments in my mending pile that need some attention but are not made from denim.

I love this work. I'm shocked that I'm so passionate about mending two years later. If you'd asked the younger, admittedly edgier, admittedly more opinionated version of my creative self what work she'd be doing in another decade I promise you she would not have said, mending. Makes me giggle now.

But she wouldn't have been so excited about making a paper craft book for kids either and I was over-the-moon to publish The Paper Playhouse: Awesome Art Project for Kids Using Paper, Boxes and Books earlier this year. And I love this part. The part that surprises us. The part that pushes us beyond our comfort zone. The part that lets some levity and intuition and imagination into the process so we can stay engaged and activated as we work. As we live. As we move through this experience of living. As we grow.

So more mending work for me is on the horizon. Brainstorming about how to take this work to the next level, to go deeper, to push beyond what I've already learned. I want to keep creating more mending techniques--some more complicated and some even simpler--and I want to experiment with different fabrics, different garments, and then go ahead and try some recycled fabrics for new accessories too.

I love this work. Did I already say that? Forgive my repetition. It suits me. It surprises me. It excites me. It falls into the sustainable fiber arts world that inspires me the most. Using recycled materials and basic techniques to deepen our relationship to fashion and fiber and craft? Yes! Makes me cheer.

And now, I must stop procrastinating and pontificating about mending and start putting my studio into boxes. Many boxes. So many boxes. Oh my, the boxes! We move to NY in just nine days. So soon! You can follow along over on IG to see our transition from a very urban apartment in Oakland, CA to a very rural farmhouse in the Hudson Valley in NY. I won't be back here to blog again until we are moved and living among all the boxes in our 200-year-old farmhouse in NY. Wish me luck!

xoxo,
k

New Rhythms: From a Weekly to a Sometimes Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 20:24:00 +0000

Friends,

My weekly blog is now evolving to become a "sometimes blog". After eight years of posting here every Monday I am allowing for a more flexible schedule in the months ahead. When I started this blog eight years ago I worked in an arts office Tuesday-Friday and spent long days in my studio on Mondays. At the end of a long studio day I would post here each Monday evening as a recording of sorts. This was before marriage, before motherhood, before my current freelance work. For eight years, I let that Monday writing rhythm stay the same.

But now my studio time is more like 30-45 minutes several times a day, seven days a week, often interrupted by little boys, deadlines, emails, and the comings and goings of a busy family. My weekly schedule has changed so much. With the addition of our littlest babe in March and with the big move from CA to NY on the horizon, I'm now letting this blog evolve too. I'm hoping this will allow for longer posts with more intentional writing. And yet maybe it will allow for shorter posts with more announcements. I can't be sure. I just know it's time to let this space evolve with so much changing in our lives. To let it grow alongside me.

After eight years of posting here it feels embedded in my studio work. The beginnings of my book are in this blog. The beginnings of published articles in arts management and mending and sustainable thinking are in this blog. The beginnings of my website, my Etsy shop, and how this has migrated to my current Instagram and Pinterest accounts all started here. Many of my blog relationships have grown into friendships, kindreds, creative and supportive community. For this I am so very grateful. I never knew the power this space would have to influence my work and my life. (Thank you, thank you, thank you.)

But while my rhythms have changed I do still want to keep this space as a space to write. A space to share. Just a different sharing from the daily short form of photos and captions on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. Instagram has stolen my heart and it's my new favorite space to connect on a daily basis. But this blog has its special tug at my heartstrings too. Somewhere in the beginnings of my creative life I found my footing as a poet and a textile artist and while my work has evolved in so many ways I still keep my attachment to the written word. So this space stays a writing space. Just a "sometimes" writing space for now.

I'll be back soon. Likely with news of upcoming workshops and last California events before our big move in October. And then, of course, with photos of a farmhouse in the Hudson Valley that is patiently waiting to be my new home. New rhythms, new adventures, new horizons.

xoxo,
k

Huge News: We're Moving to a Farmhouse in the Hudson Valley!

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 16:30:00 +0000

Friends,

I'm thrilled to finally share this news with the world! We bought a farmhouse in the Hudson Valley and we're relocating to NY this October. The house is 200 years old, built in 1820, and it's complete with so many of the details I've always loved about old farmhouses: Hardwood floors, tin ceilings, wood stoves, a wraparound porch, and a palpable sense of history from the families that came before us.

There's also a separate carriage house/ barn that will be our future art studios. And the future of a small experimental artist residency program where we'll invite artists to join us to create new work. There's one acre of land that will be our future vegetable gardens, dye gardens, and small orchard of fruit trees.

We've dreamed of owning a home for nearly a decade; we've dreamed of running an artist residency program or co-working space for artists for nearly a decade too; and it will be wonderful to be within a few hours of our beloved families scattered throughout Upstate NY. We've dreamed of this for so damn long. But like all dreams it comes at a price. And the price is comfort. And the price is risk. And the price is releasing what's familiar.

We're taking the leap from a community we hold very close to our chests and trusting that our work and our friendships and our support system will blossom in this new location. That we'll forge new friendships. That we'll build new work relationships. That we'll create and seek and grow new opportunities relevant to this new time and space. That we'll flourish. That we'll be welcomed. That we'll create a new home.

But it's incredibly difficult to leave the Bay Area after 10 years in Oakland. Oakland feels like our home. And before that we were in Brooklyn for three years and before that in San Francisco for three years too. But Oakland is a very special place that has meant so much to me this past decade. When we moved back 10 years ago I started the MFA Poetry program at Mills College and started taking my textile work and book arts work and creative writing more seriously.

Since then we've been married, had two beautiful boys, published my first book, held amazing jobs in the arts, and managed to make a living as freelance artists and designers. I cross my fingers every damn day that we can continue to make this work. Of course, we'll also travel back to CA for work occasionally too--there are already some workshops and collaborations in the works. Stay tuned for details.

So this shift forces a new beginning. And that force gave us the courage to reach outside of our comfort zone. And after casually looking at real estate in the Hudson Valley for three summers we finally found OUR NEW HOME this spring. Well, my husband found it and I scoured photos and videos and talked to other friends in the area until I crossed my fingers and held my breath and said, "Let's buy it". But the truth is I've never actually been inside of it. I've never stood on that parcel of land. I've never been at that exact longitude and latitude on our dear planet. I trust I'll love it just the same.

We'll go in October. We'll fix up the farmhouse, renovate the carriage house into art studios, and navigate a rural community that I've visited various times but that I've never visited for longer than a few weeks at once. I grew up in Upstate NY but it's been a decade since I've experienced winter. Or high summer. And it's been two decades since I had to get into my car to drive to the store to pick up a gallon of milk or a dozen eggs. It's been two decades since I've lived within a couple hours of our families and I can't wait to share my boys with my mother, siblings, niece, nephew, and in-laws.

I never imagined I'd live my life in one location. I never imagined I'd stay in one home or in one city or even in one state for the bulk of my years. So leaving CA feels less like a surprise and more like a bittersweet change that always felt inevitable. Like the end of something so beautiful and so dear and so deep that I can't really wrap my head around its impact until I'm looking in hindsight. But something that I knew, at some point, would change.

I love this CA community more than I can express. The friendships, the colleagues, the collaborators, the arts community that has taken me deeply into its folds and dusted off my falls, celebrated my successes, fed my family when we had newborn babies, and exchanged fears and dreams over coffees, whiskeys, and wines. I grew up as an artist in this community, came into adulthood here, found myself in a world of creatives and crafters and thinkers that bore deep into my heart.

But it also feels like I'm teetering on this epic new beginning. A home. That we own. That has three bedrooms and a barn for our studios. That has a yard for a dye garden. That has great public schools for our sons. And I just have to keep moving towards this vision that I can't quite put my hand on because it doesn't exist yet. It's only existed in my imagination until right now.

But I just have to keep moving towards it trusting that I have everything I need to make this work. That I have enough. That I'll always have enough. And that this just might be the beginning of the most beautiful adventure yet. This just might be what it feels like to reach into the ether and catch the tail of a dream before it's completely out of reach. Like it just might be the feeling of reaching out to catch that tail and letting it steer me to my future.

Beloved CA, you will be in my heart forever and ever. Hudson Valley, we'll be there soon. Upstate NY, we're coming home... all grown up but starry-eyed as ever.

xoxo,

Super Crazy Happy Book News

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 03:32:00 +0000

Friends!

I'm so excited to announce that my book, The Paper Playhouse, has been printed in German! What a very exciting surprise. And a very great honor. To see my work printed in another language. And shockingly the German edition is doing wonderfully--what a crazy beautiful thing. I'm also insanely grateful that my book is in its second printing. That families are making my projects and posting images online. And that all this book news is swirling around my busy studio this summer. Forgive the cliche, but it's a total dream come true!

I've dreamed of writing a book since I was just a kid. A pensive teenager squirreled away in my bedroom writing poems and sketching in my journals. Or a younger child tucked into the shadows of our big beautiful backyard noting the birds and butterflies and flowers that bloomed around me. And then came a more complicated world of college and twenty-something living in cosmopolitan cities and studying poetry and book arts in graduate school. And a good complication too. A critical inquiry. A good exercise to take our instincts and question them in formal critique.

But... if you asked me I'd never guess that my first book would be paper crafts for children. But it's been such an honor to see this work out in the world. I'm learning to embrace the term "fiber artist" after resisting much categorization in my work. For years I simply said, "I make things" and then after several conferences and workshops I agreed to a triad "I'm an artist, writer, and crafter". All of these things are true. And yet the beauty of identity is that it's fluid. It's complicated. It's overlapping and intersecting and that's where it gets interesting. Thank goodness, yes.

But German! I'm honored. If you've already purchased my book I simply want to hug you. Not even joking. I want to hug you. Each one of you! And if you haven't yet purchased my book but you've been wanting to you can still purchase it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Quarry Books, in my Etsy shop, or order it through your favorite local bookstore. Or if you speak German you can order it in German too! Now, of course, I want to write more books. A second craft book. A book of poems and essays. A children's book. And so it goes. But today, I'm just grateful. Super crazy happy grateful.

Danke!

xoxo,
k

Meeting Natalie Chanin, Quilts, and Creative Community

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 23:18:00 +0000

Last week I had the great pleasure of meeting the ever-inspiring designer, textile artist, and slow fashion pioneer, Natalie Chanin. I've long admired Natalie's work with Alabama Chanin, I adore her thoughts on sustainable fashion, and I proudly own many of her sewing craft books and have made a few of her projects. Her work is distinctive--hand stitched cotton jersey garments boldly embellished with applique, stencils, and various symbols often inspired by nature or by her native Alabama.

But I first became interested in Natalie's work because of her story--she was working as a designer in NYC and uprooted back to her native Alabama to launch a fashion business that depended on traditional crafting skills from her local community. She pays her stitchers a fair wage to make her designs, she's created a community based on traditional hand skills, and she's made beautiful clothing that isn't based on the fast fashion trends. All of this makes me cheer. And inspires me to continue on my own slow fashion journey.

I knew all of this before I bought her books, read her blog, or made any of her patterns. But in the past few years since launching my Make Thrift Mend project I've become more and more interested in artists and designers leading the slow fashion movement. Not just making beautiful clothing or pushing the edges of design (or more so pushing their designs outside of the fashion cycles and into something more sustainable and more interesting) but actually doubling as artists and advocates; assuming the role of activist for the sustainable fashion movement while continuing to create beautiful objects and garments.

So last week I joined the gathering at my friend Kristine Vejar's beautiful Oakland shop, A Verb for Keeping Warm, and tucked into the crowded room to meet Natalie, applaud her work, and listen to her and Kristine discuss their inspiration for symbols, stencils, prints, and other imagery in their designs. Natalie spoke of the inspiration she finds in nature but also in the deep sense of wilderness and wildness she experiences in her native Alabama. She also spoke about the long history of her work, joking that she didn't invent her techniques but instead insists her work started with the Mayans.

I also spent a second evening with Natalie when I gathered with a few artist friends at Heath Ceramics in San Francisco to hear her speak with Catharine Bailey of Heath Ceramics; to view her quilts on exhibition in Alabama on Alabama; and to take a short tote-making workshop. It was wonderful to hear these iconic and ever-inspiring women talk about their visions, mission statements, and how they approach collaboration in managing their businesses. It was humbling and inspiring to hear these two legendary women in the design world sit down in intimate and casual conversation. What a gift.

But seeing the quilts on exhibition in the Boiler Room at Heath Ceramics took on a special meaning for me. Five vintage quilts were re-imagined by Natalie and her team--dyed, appliqued, stenciled, and embroidered with Gertude Stein quotes for exhibition. Some of you might remember my first large-scale textile installation, The Dresses/ Objects Project. I letterpress printed Stein quotes to fabric and collaborated with artists to turn the fabric prints into dresses then the dresses into a large-scale installation. So seeing Stein's quotes integrated into Natalie's quilts felt particularly inspiring and resonate. To see this sharing of muses amidst the sharing of so many ideals with slow fashion, handcraft, and textiles.

It was amazing to spend a couple nights listening to Natalie speak, seeing her work, taking her brief workshop, and gathering with like-minded creatives. One day, I hope to take a weekend workshop at the Alabama Chanin headquarters. For now, I'm thrilled to have met her in person. If you have the chance to study with Natalie, do it! You won't be disappointed, I promise. And these gorgeous quilts have me thinking about upcycling some of the older quilts I've kept hidden in my stashes.

xoxo,

k.

Public Art, Slow Textiles, and Social Experiments

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 04:40:00 +0000

Range Studio on Market Street with weaver, Meghan Shimek.

When I started my fast-fashion fast, Make Thrift Mend, almost exactly two years ago I knew I was embarking on an experimental journey. I knew that I wanted my shopping habits to change, that I wanted to deepen my relationship to sustainable fashion, and that I wanted to better my garment making skills but I didn't know exactly what the journey would entail. I knew I wanted to frame my fast as an art project, to push my work out of the studio and exhibition world and into the sphere of what's known as social practice. I knew I wanted to combine my passion for sustainability with my creative work and that I wanted to focus on making, mending, and buying secondhand.

Range Studio with printmaker, Jen Hewett.

Print samples by guest artist, Jen Hewett.

I didn't know that I would fall in love with visible mending and that I'd spend endless hours researching mending, stitching, darning, Sashiko, Boro, and opportunities for repair. I didn't know that natural dyeing was within my reach as a continued studio practice. I didn't know that I'd find some sense of healing between my usually juxtaposed rural upbringing and the urban spaces I've called home for nearly 20 years now.

I didn't know this fission existed so deeply or that this healing would begin with urban foraging. That as I led my family on urban adventures to collect eucalyptus leaves, fennel fronds, and sour grass flowers I would be reminded of the time spent in the wilderness when I was young. That I'd feel reconnected to my departed father. Or that I'd finally see the connection between my studies in sustainability and my textile work. I didn't realize this work would take on such depth. I didn't imagine I'd focus on teaching mending workshops or amass a collection of reading and websites focused on what I now know to call Slow Fashion.


Range Studio featured artist, natural dyer Sasha Duerr, working with sunflower seed dyes.

Sasha Duerr working with natural dyes and seasonal flowers.

So when my husband asked me if I'd take a week's residency in our tiny art studio, Studio 1, when it was commissioned by the Mayor's Office of San Francisco I knew I wanted to focus on Slow Fashion. Again, I didn't know what that would look like. I didn't know what shape it would take. Having an infant in my life again meant my studio work would inevitably slow down for an undefined period of time until we found our new rhythm and until I had enough support to accomplish more than the bare minimum in my work. All this meant there would be no major projects this year. Instead this year would be about supporting the work I had in motion before my beautiful baby Jude was born.

But this week long residency provided a new opportunity. It provided the opportunity for a condensed collaboration. To foster new relationships with textile artists I adore and to deepen relationships with textile artists I already know personally but never get to see quite often enough.

And it also allowed this very contained amount of time for me to throw open my studio doors and let the world peek inside. I knew this was an opportunity for experimentation. I knew this was an opportunity to revisit my initial goals in creating the Make Thrift Mend project. And I knew this was an opportunity to push slow craft and slow textiles and slow fashion into the very fast paced downtown scene.

Featured artist, Meghan Shimek, weaving on her custom built loom.

I don't have any grand conclusions on what the weeks' residency meant. Not yet anyway. But I do know it felt important. I know it felt vulnerable. I know it felt radical in someway to sit in my secondhand linen garb somewhat hidden by the indigo dresses and mended jeans swinging in the doorway of our tiny studio as my fellow artists offered inspiring and incredibly generous demonstrations to the downtown crowd. It felt disruptive. It felt meaningful. It felt like I was offering a public slice of a very private journey. And that felt right.

But what I didn't expect was the overwhelming positivity I received every single day. What I didn't expect was to feel like people needed what I had to offer. What I didn't expect was to have some folks visit two, three, or four times over the week and to become familiar with my work or with the work of my colleagues. I didn't expect it to be so much fun. And I didn't expect it to feel so positive.

I guess I expected folks to be indifferent or even adverse and maybe they were but if so they didn't share it with us at all. What they shared with us was curiosity, gratitude, engagement, and a desire to infuse more art into their work. Some folks even told us we were a bright spot in their week. I was honored albeit a bit surprised. But ultimately I was grateful.

Indigo shibori dye by artist, Kristine Vejar, owner of Verb.

Range Studio on Market Street, working with indigo dyer, Kristine Vejar.

And now this has me thinking how my project might eventually lift off the Internet and out of my studio and classrooms and continue to engage with both the intentional and the incidental passerby. How it might again push at the edges of public art and social practice. It makes me remember that outreach and engagement and collaboration are central to my work. That making and creating are only part of my process but building community is also part of my experience as an organizer and as an artist.

For now this will continue to take the shape of workshops, writings, and casual convenings but it has me wondering about future opportunities in public space. About the role of the activist and artist to engage with the public and to share our thinking and resources on a larger scale. To consider ways of moving the work outside of my studio and into the community through partnerships, public art, or what I've started calling "social textiles".

Range Studio with Marie Hoff, member of Fibershed.

Sample of locally sourced fibers provided by Fibershed

It also jump started my mending work once again. The small pile of mending that had been pushed deeper and deeper under my studio table has resurfaced and taken center stage once again. And this is very exciting because it allows me to experiment with new stitches, new layers, new lines, new textures, and to allow the work to fail and succeed and fail until it shapeshifts into a new technique.

And this is how I know I'm working. This is how I know I'm actively engaged in the creative process once again. That I'm right where I need to be. The feeling of inspiration combined with a tinge of complication or not-knowing or even a practical design issue that needs resolution. It's that tension that holds the most power for me as a maker.

This journey in Slow Fashion is just that... my journey. And I'm honored to share it with you and with the kind strangers on Market Street too. For now, the journey simply continues. Holding fast to my intentions but also allowing enough space for the future to still be full of potential and failure and success and the glorious unknown. Ultimately it's the surprises and serendipity and discovery in this project that keeps me moving forward. Perhaps, it's the experiment that keeps the work alive.

xoxo,
k

Slow Craft and Slow Processing

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Mon, 20 Jul 2015 23:59:00 +0000

Friends,

I am still swirling with all the excitement from being an artist-in-resident in our tiny art studio, Range Studio, last week. My brain is still making sense of my experiment to infuse slow craft into the heart of the downtown San Francisco bustle. And to consider what this means to share slow fashion in the midst of the busy streets. To slow textiles down and to let them collide against public art. I'm still processing photos, completing invoices, catching-up on email, and convincing my infant that it's a good thing to return to more regular naps in his tiny bassinet.

Suffice to say I am slowing down my own studio process this week as I consider slow craft. As I play catch up. As I consider how to let all this excitement flood my studio without washing me out with the tides. I'm not interested in some artificial idea of balance anymore. I'm not certain it actually exists. Especially for busy parents and artists and indie business owners and busy humans anywhere. I'm more interested in working with my whole heart, parenting with my whole self, and letting the inspiration flood my whole studio anytime it might. But I'm also learning that sometimes slow craft is really about slowing down not just my stitches but my timelines.

So. To that end. I'll be back here next week with thoughts and images about my past week as an artist-in-residence. Thank you to everyone who participated, came to visit in-person, and also cheered me on from afar. You can see a bunch of photos on my Instagram feed. See you soon!

xoxo,
k.

Tiny Art Studio: Social Textile Experiments

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 04:03:00 +0000

Today I launched my week long artist residency in our tiny art studio on Market Street! I'll be working from the plaza at Market and 1st Streets until Friday afternoon. Each day I have another textile artist joining me for lunchtime demonstrations from 12noon-2pm and today was our very first day.

The wonderful Kristine Vejar owner of A Verb for Keeping Warm joined me with her beautiful indigo dyeing and she demonstrated some gorgeous shibori dye techniques straight from the sidewalk. I mended. She dyed. We shared our work with the public. We met some lovely folks. And tomorrow I'll do it all over again with one of my favorite weavers, Meghan Shimek. Wednesday with my dear friend and printmaker, Jen Hewett. And Thursday with beloved natural dyer, Sasha Duerr. Then Friday it's just me focusing on mending.

I wanted to share a few images from today's first experiment in fusing public art with slow textiles, art as action, social practice, and slow craft crashing straight into social sculpture. It was a lovely day indeed. More photos next week but I just had to share a few images from today's first day in the studio. Range Studio is in its fifth week on Market Street as commissioned by the SF Mayor's Office and it's thrilling. Hope to see you at the studio this week. Please say hello if I'm busy mending and making--I'd love meet you.

xoxo,
k

My Tiny Textile Studio on Market Street

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Tue, 07 Jul 2015 00:21:00 +0000

Natural dye by featured artist, Kristine Vejar.

Dear friends,

Next week I'll be the artist-in-residence in our tiny portable art studio, Studio 1. This studio is the first structure in our experimental residency program, Range Studio, and it's currently been commissioned by the San Francisco Mayor's Office and the SF Arts Commission to reside on Market Street in San Francisco for six weeks. Next week, July 13-17, is my week to reside in the studio and make work from the very public space of the sidewalk of downtown San Francisco. I'll be at Mechanics Plaza at Market Street and 1st Street in our tiny portable studio. And I'm so excited I could squeal!

Natural dye by featured artist, Kristine Vejar.

When I agreed to be in residence for one week of programming I knew I wanted to take this time to focus on my Make Thrift Mend project. I love the idea of mending and concentrating on slow fashion in the midst of the chaos and hurry of downtown San Francisco just blocks from the major fast fashion retailers, iconic shopping centers, multiplex shopping malls, and sandwiched between the working fleets, shoppers, and tourists that make up Market Street. A meditation in slow craft amidst the hustle bustle.

But I also saw this as a great opportunity for collaboration. As a chance to blend the lines between artist and curator and to infuse this social experiment with other beloved textile artists. So I decided to invite other textile artists and slow fashion workers to join me in this work of social practice. Much like the Make Thrift Mend project, I was less interested in creating a finished product and more interested in focusing on the process, the intention, the handwork, the community, the techniques, and the juxtaposition of this slow textile work in the heart of fast fashion and fast-paced downtown SF.

Weaving by featured artist, Meghan Shimek.

So I've invited a handful of my favorite Bay Area textile and fiber artists to join me. I wish I could have invited dozens of artists to join me but we only have five days. So each day, Monday-Friday, we'll work from Studio 1 as we offer public demonstrations, display samples of work, and create textile work right on the sidewalk. Each day will have a featured demonstration during lunchtime from 12noon- 2pm showcasing a different artist and her work.

Block print and garment by featured artist, Jen Hewett.

I consider this upcoming week part of my Make Thrift Mend project and more so part of the mendfulness that has become so central to this work. It's a meditation of slow crafting amidst the bustle. This time is meant to offer up the very private practice of creating work in one's studio to the public. An intimate view of these artists and their sophisticated techniques, approaches, and process of making art.

These demonstrations will be less spectacle and more slow craft. There will not be any formal presentations, formal workshops, or tidy finished projects but instead there will be dynamic work-in-progress shared with the public. This is a very vulnerable and powerful act and I applaud the artists for joining me. Here's the schedule of lunchtime demonstrations:

Monday, July 13 from 12noon-2pm: Kristine Vejar
Tuesday, July 14 from 12noon-2pm: Meghan Shimek
Wednesday, July 15 from 12noon-2pm: Jen Hewett
Thursday, July 16 from 12noon-2pm: Sasha Duerr
Friday, July 17 from 12noon-2pm: Yours Truly

And Sonya Philip is an honorary artist this week, sadly she's out-of-town.

Natural dye by featured artist, Sasha Duerr.

Each of these artists have inspired me in my fast fashion fast and in my quest to deepen my knowledge of slow fashion techniques, textile arts, and mindfulness in approaching the making and repairing of my wardrobe. These women are multifaceted in their creative work, all of them straddling disciplines between one or more textile art including weaving, printmaking, natural dyeing, designing, sewing, stitching, and balancing worlds between teaching, exhibiting, and managing their own studio practice or independent business too.

These women are amazing! And I'm honored to share temporary studio space with them next week. Come by any day during lunchtime to say hello, ask questions, meet the artists, or just drop into a tiny textile studio for a visit. See you on the street of San Francisco.

xoxo,
k

A Few Firsts: Podcast, Workshops, and a Residency

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 04:31:00 +0000

Friends,

I'm over-the-moon honored to be a featured artist on Meighan O'Toole's podcast series, What's Your Story?. It's a wonderful podcast focused on various creatives in an intimate interview with the creator, Meighan, to share their inspiration, background, motivation, and anything else that finds its way into the conversation. She's interviewed some of my favorite artists and friends like Courtney Cerruti, Jen Hewett, Lisa Solomon, Sonya Philip, Lisa Congdon and so many more. You can listen to my interview right here. It's my very first podcast interview but thankfully Meighan was a great host.

We discuss my current mending work, inspiration for my fashion fast, and some of the complications of my Make Thrift Mend project before talking about my first book, The Paper Playhouse, and the collaborative artist residency project Range Studio I co-direct with my husband. It was a pleasure to talk with Meighan about my work and I'm honored to have this opportunity share my process in such an intimate conversation. Thank you, Meighan!

Also, I want to share a few highlights about July and August because it's already the end of June. I'll be the featured artist-in-resident in our Studio 1 tiny portable house on Market Street at 1st Street the week of July 13-17. I'm so excited about this residency! I'll have several textile artists joining me for lunch time demonstrations and discussions between 12noon and 2pm every day that week. Details on the Range Studio website. This is the first time I've been an artist-in-residence in our tiny studio. Next week I'll post the scheduling details of my week on Market Street--save the dates.

Lastly, I'm offering my first natural dye workshop in person! I've fallen head-over-heels with natural dyes since launching my Make Thrift Mend project and I included some natural dye basics in my online class, Slow Fashion Style. Now I'm partnering with my favorite host at Handcraft Studio School to offer my first in-person natural dye workshop on Sunday, August 23 from 2-5pm. I'm so excited to teach this workshop it's like it's my 8-year-old birthday party all over again.

This will be an introductory level workshop complete with various natural dyes, numerous sample fabrics, yarns and papers for testing, and instructional information on harvesting, preparing, soaking, and working with natural dyes. I'm thrilled! I'm also offering another Sashiko Mending workshop with Handcraft Studio on Sunday, August 16--be sure to sign-up for this workshop soon as it typically sells out quickly.

Phew. So many firsts. Excited about all this opportunity swirling around my summer. Thank you, friends.

xoxo,
k.

Visible Mending and the Metaphor of Repair

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 00:15:00 +0000

I keep thinking about the symbolic meaning of repairing our clothing through mending. I keep returning to the dictionary and thesaurus and thinking of the various synonyms for the word "mend".

: to make (something broken or damaged) usable again : to repair (something broken or damaged)

: to heal or cure (a broken bone, a sad feeling, etc.)

Mostly, I think about the symbolic repair of fast fashion, the sustainable repair to our garments and the planet, and the activist's repair to a system that needs fixing. It's amazing to think that something that was once so typical in our grandparent's homes has almost entirely been erased by modernization. I've been researching darning eggs and darning needles. Amazing to think that these were common household items not so long ago. Now, we hardly know what to do with them let alone how to find them.

I recently mended my favorite house slippers. A deep hole in the side of the slipper meant my little toe was cold every time I wore them. So I finally sat down with a scrap of denim and some thread and made a Boro inspired repair. Within half an hour my beloved slippers kept all ten toes cozy again. And it's just that simple. In no time at all our favorite garments are restored and their longevity preserved. An old favorite pair of jeans are next on my mending pile--filled with various gashes and tears that will need several fixes.

Visible mending lets us embrace the natural wear and tear of our garments through an aesthetic that is less perfect and more personal. We step off the fashion treadmill and look at our garments for their inherent strengths and weakness. We embrace the decay and also the ability to patch, darn, mend, and stitch our way into a more sustainable future. I recently revisited my Mendfulness article in Taproot magazine and this concept is much longer than an article for me. It's the workshops I'm teaching, my Make Thrift Mend fast, but I'm also considering it in a larger creative context.

For now, I just keep mending and repairing and mending again. And noticing how this act relates to so many aspects of our lives--big and small and tender and tenacious and simple and spectacular too. Mendfulness.

xoxo,

Our Tiny Art Studio: Studio 1 Summer Residencies

noreply@blogger.com (Katrina) — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 17:43:00 +0000

I'm very excited to announce that our tiny portable art studio, Studio 1, will be very busy this summer at various locations along Market Street, one of San Francisco's main downtown corridors. Studio 1 will be presented through a commission for my husband, David Szlasa, in partnership with the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Mayor's Office of Civic Innovation, and the Living Innovation Zone. We are so exited!

Studio 1 will be stationed on Market Street for six weeks featuring six resident artists. Each of the six artists have been scheduled for a specific week including one week for yours truly. I'm thrilled to be the resident artist the week of July 13-17 and will be hosting one additional textile artist each day as part of my Make Thrift Mend project. The other resident artists include: Andrea Bergen, Sheldon Smith, Sara Shelton Mann, Jesse Hewitt, Jose Navarrete and a special performance by Shinichi Iova-Koga/ inkBoat. Read the details about the six-week schedule here.

Studio 1 is the first portable art studio that's part of a larger art project, collaboration, and experimental artist residency program known as Range Studio created by my husband, fellow artist/ designer/ and performer, David Szlasa and me in August 2014. For nearly a decade we've dreamed of managing an artist-owned residency center and last summer we decided to turn his beautiful tiny studio into our experimental art program on wheels. You can read about the studio here.

The Market Street programming launches today! Yes, today. And it continues for six consecutive weeks through Saturday, July 25. I'll write more about my plans for the week I'm in residence but save the date for lunchtimes the week of July 13-17 as I'll be inviting AMAZING textile artists to join me for demonstrations/ discussions/ and public interventions from 12noon- 2pm that entire week.

Did I mention I'm excited?

xoxo,
k