Under the Glue Gun
(Page 2 of 2)
Mar.-Apr. 2008
by Jamie Passaro, from Oregon Humanities
It’s a trajectory so common among Generation X crafters that it could be scripted: Girl Scouts, punk rock, feminism, college, 9-to-5 job, followed by a rediscovery of crafts and an interest in all things domestic. For a lot of women, reconnecting with these skills feels like a rebellion against the Betty Friedan school of feminism, which regarded domestic work as stifling and meaningless. And while Stewart’s brand of domesticity may not seem rebellious, she was, in fact, one of the original postwar domestic entrepreneurs.
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“Martha Stewart is our mom’s generation of DIY,” says Faythe Levine, a 30-year-old Milwaukee, Wisconsin, filmmaker who has interviewed dozens of crafters for Handmade Nation: A Documentary About the Rise of DIY Art, Craft, and Design. Levine, who grew up in the 1990s punk scene in Seattle, also owns a boutique and gallery, coordinates a craft fair, and plays musical saw in a band called Wooden Robot.
While Levine, with tattoos up both arms and tons of hipster cred, doesn’t look like Stewart, what she whips up with a glue gun sure looks like Stewart’s creations. Her signature craft was once a hand-cut and machine-sewn felt owl with a card in its back pocket. Yet Levine says she isn’t interested in Stewart because Martha’s too corporate, too far removed from the day-to-day work of making things. While Stewart amasses her media empire product lines, Levine lives at the other end of the spectrum: She has no insurance and works part time in a bar to make ends meet.
Perhaps the association with Stewart or the stereotype that links domestic craft with housewives is what has prompted a lot of today’s crafters to make items that are imperfect or a little shocking to Grandma: a knitted vibrator cozy or a baby hat embroidered with a skull and crossbones.
But subtract the irony, and the crocheted sushi, knitted sweater vests, and latch-hooked pornography of DIY crafts don’t look that different from the items displayed in county fair textiles exhibits. They use the same techniques and derive from the same impulse: to make things with one’s own hands.
Excerpted from Oregon Humanities (Fall-Winter 2007). Subscriptions: free (3 issues/yr.) from 812 SW Washington, Suite 225, Portland, Oregon 97205; www.oregonhum.org/publications.php.
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