Where's it going?

Over the past couple years, I've focused primarily on two things in my "studio practice": hand-knitting and manipulation of commercially woven double-weave textiles. I've wondered myself where this is going. Today I think I found out. I signed up to take a bunch of courses on...wait for it...DOUBLE KNITTING. Maybe now I can stop fixing looms in my basement and stay up here, where it's warm, and there are knitting needles and humans and a telephone and a television and a nice happy big dog? Anyway, that's my plan.

Last night, on Pinterest, I read the number 2 best practice for a blogger was consistent posting. Well, we know I fail miserably at that, but over the past week or so a lot has been pushing me closer and closer to blogging again. We can thank the internet, but also the fact that school started (as it tends to do!) and that's always kind of a kickstart into thinking bigger thoughts than, "What's for dinner?" (Chicken Tikka Masala, nosy Parkers.)

We've had horrid weather up here in Northeast Wisconsin. It's kept me indoors and online. A few weeks ago a brave lonesome soul reached out to find artists in his temporary home up here and thusly, we got to have Robere Mertens come teach a couple days in Textiles. More about his work in a bit, actually, he is probably his own blog post so maybe tomorrow, but to stay on theme, let us just point out that he reminded me of someone. Okay, a lot of people. People I miss. People from the Pacific Northwest who make art and music. Like, say, the genius person who started the Facebook group, Retro Bellingham. Now, if you were in Bellingham, WA between 1982 and 1997, you were in a magical land. I was there twice. I had what I call my do-over time, where I did all the things I didn't do the first time and got a lot out of it. Bellingham then was dying. It was nowhere. The richest people in town were fishermen who went up to Alaska and risked their lives all summer, then came back and spent money at the only two fancy restaurants, and all the other people were gritty townies and college kids enjoying unbelievable squalor and freedom on the streets pouring downhill from either side of the campus.

There wasn't much in town then except lovely old empty storefronts, a really high quality vintage clothing store, and a lot of bars. With bars, there were also good places to get breakfast till late in the day, of course. To get downtown from campus, one walked down one of three main streets, Indian, High, or Garden, and then onto State Street (past the bars - Bucks/3B/Doublewide, Up and Up, The Beaver Inn) to Holly, then down into town. Along Indian, High and Garden streets there were old houses chopped into little apartments or rented to great hoards of college kids who had parties in their basements. Some who wished to live with fewer people would rent at the Alamo on Indian, or the really brave and avant-garde may have gotten a room in the Daylight building on State, and had the bathroom down the hall. Some houses became famous as places where they would have parties with bands playing in the basement. Lots of times, people would come up for shows and "crash someplace" on a sofa of a stranger, or kindly college kid trying his or her hand at booking shows.

The bands, and there were many, just popped up like mushrooms. Everyone was in, or knew someone in, or slept with someone in, a band. Some people were in a lot of bands, some people did a gig or two snapping their fingers or playing bass if the regular guy had a test or something the next day. The bands drove the need for artwork.

Artwork for a band poster was made back then with a marker, some rub-on transfer letters, collage, and a copier. Not a color copier. Just a copier. Someone went to the library and fed nickles into a machine to make the copies, or they gave them over to a copyist at Kinkos and waited for them to be done. They were all made in the same three sizes, and the same 7 colors of paper (AstroBrites) but, they all looked different from one another. The information on the posters was clear, and unobstructed, because, you wanted people to come to the show, you know? The person who had the best handwriting was the poster-maker. There was no social media, just word of mouth, answering machines, and the posters. So all the creativity went into the work - the band's name, the way they looked, the songs, the song titles, the way they sounded different than other bands, the posters themselves, the artwork for the cassette tapes they recorded, the booking line-up. People actually went pole to pole with a staple-gun and posted those posters on foot, or on their bike. Hardly anyone drove, unless you drove a huge old car with the band's gear in the trunk.

The band culture drove what we'd call now an "economy." It required all the workers to be deadline oriented, organized, clever, resourceful, economical, and yet...it was done "for fun." People worked very hard "for fun." Very few became famous. No one begruged those who did (that I know) but also, no one looks down on those who didn't make it big. So. That's where I came from. That's where I was. I need to remember the fun in work again, and work that hard at having fun. I don't regret much about that time spent within that economy of culture, and I want to live without much more regret about this time either.

Today I drew a hamster with a felt marker on a scrap of paper and it was good.