Book Report, Part 2: "Why We Make Things and Why It Matters"

Last week I shared my enthusiasm for Peter Korn's book Why We Make Things and Why It Matters:  The Education of a Craftsman.  I quoted him on the creative impulse and the joys of making things with our hands.   There is so much wisdom and insight in Korn's book that I want to spend some time this week considering what he has to say about the challenges of the creative life.

Peter is acutely perceptive and brutally honest on the subject of his struggle to make a living solely by crafting furniture: 

[T]he desire to work alone and apart is self-defeating.  There simply isn't enough time in a week to put in sufficient billable hours at the bench and still do all the other work that a successful business requires--maintenance, purchasing, bookkeeping, marketing, customer relations, and so forth.  Furthermore, working in isolation doesn't foster the substantial engagement with community it takes to cultivate a local market for custom-made furniture. . . .

Success was also limited by intrinsic properties of the material with which I was working, which was my own self  [emphasis added].  I was, among other things, not well suited to marketing my work, perhaps because it felt too much like self-promotion, perhaps because it entailed so much rejection. 

Many of us who are solo makers struggle with this.  We are told we need to spend at least 50% of our working hours on marketing and business tasks in order to be financially successful.  When your medium is an inherently slow one, like woodworking or weaving, this can seem an impossible goal.  You won't have enough work to market in the first place if you don't spend more than 50% of your working time actually making things!  And while we may feel confident (most of the time) about our artistic skills, many of us are untrained and out of our depth on the business side.

Peter Korn has an interesting take on the old dilemma of how much to "sell out" one's personal artistic vision in order to make work that responds to popular tastes.  He says this tension is a "healthy phenomenon" that imposes "the discipline of relevance" on the artist.  Korn says while the market is not perfect, and doubtless great artistic work is ignored every day, "commerce is our most effective mass-distribution system for the material expression of ideas."

When I first began to offer handwovens for sale, I quickly learned that simply following my own whims as a weaver, my own color preferences, pursuing my own bliss at the loom, would not necessarily result in work with a place in the market.  I have to keep firmly in mind what other people can wear, can use, and are willing to pay for.  I weave with a lot of neutral colors because they are versatile and "go with everything."  I actually enjoy finding the sweet spot where my own creative inspiration intersects with what my clients want to buy and wear.  It is good to work within limits. 

In the final analysis, making craft is deeply soul-satisfying in ways that few other human activities are.  Rather than being merely consumers in the world, we are producers, creators, meaning-makers.  Peter Korn writes: 

It is a given that, individually and collectively, we think our world into being.  The question is:  How do we choose to go about it?  Do we passively assemble our narratives from a cultural smorgasbord?  Or do we test the recipes of others in our own kitchens?  Do we take responsibility for some small portion of the world as we create it?  My experience is that steering a proactive course--making the effort to think for myself--has been the wellspring of a good life.  . .  .

Making art or craft and sharing it with others is one way of resolving the existential dilemma we all face--how am I to be human in this world?  Or, as poet May Sarton puts it,

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Newest tapestry in progress--my initials mpe are the only imagery woven so far.

 

Book Report: "Why We Make Things and Why It Matters"

 At the start of the summer I shared with you the stack of reading I hoped to do.  I actually have managed to finish most of the books, but the one that has made the biggest impression on me is Peter Korn's Why We Make Things and Why It Matters:  The Education of a Craftsman.  Korn is a woodworker who hoped to make a living from designing and constructing one-off pieces of finely crafted furniture.  After a time, he found that he would have to supplement his income with teaching, as many artists and artisans do.  He discovered he loved teaching and loved working in a school community, and eventually he founded the non-profit Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, Maine, where he is Executive Director.

Why am I running on about a woodworker, you may ask, in a blog called "talking textiles"?  Well, making a living in craft offers the same rewards--and raises the same issues--no matter what your medium.  I think the best path here is to let Peter's words speak for themselves.   Here are a few of the passages that really spoke to me:

[W]e practice contemporary craft as a process of self-transformation . . . .  The simple truth is that people who engage in creative practice go into the studio first and foremost because they expect to emerge from the other end of the creative gauntlet as different people. 

Peter writes of how he hoped to cultivate integrity in himself, to create heirloom pieces and thus a connection with future generations, and to develop competence and excellence in a given discipline.  For myself, one reason I fell in love with making textiles--while working as an English teacher at the time--was I wanted a way to say a joyful YES more often in my life, rather than simply wielding the red pen as a critic.  I wanted to see if I could develop the skills to make a beautiful, functional object.  Here's Peter Korn again:

[D]esign is a skill like any other.  As with sharpening a chisel or handling a drawknife, anyone can improve through education, practice, and reflection.  To be sure, some individuals are more innately gifted at design than others. . . But there is no reason why the rest of us should not also enjoy the trials and rewards of creative engagement with reasonable success and genuine pleasure, and perhaps an occasional flash of serendipitous brilliance.

All I can say about this is, Amen, brother!  Everyone can enjoy making visual art, given enough encouragement, guidance, and the chance to practice.  As with any other learned skill, the more you do it, the better you get.  Most of us will never see our work hang in a major museum--that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the exciting challenges and immense satisfaction of crafting the best work we can.  Peter again:

I discovered within myself the capacity to transform a wisp of thought into an enduring, beautiful object.  I see this same empowering revelation take place in my students today as they perform the miracle of creation.  This, I would suggest, is precisely what makes creative practice such a generous source of fulfillment, beyond the pleasure of engaging heart, head and hand in unison.  It exercises one's innate capacity to re-form the given world in ways that matter.

I recall vividly the joy I felt when it slowly dawned on me that making textile art draws on everything I have and know--from my liberal arts education to my spirituality to the basic sewing skills I learned as a kid in 4-H.  When we work with our hands to make something that exists in the physical world, we are participating in the larger mystery of creation.  Powerful stuff!  And if that work connects somehow with someone else, well, it doesn't get any better than that. 

If you are an artist or craftsperson who regularly makes things, you know what Peter Korn is talking about.  If you're not--why not try your hand? 

 A Light Shines, bead embroidery by Molly Elkind