The Red String of Fate brought me a Japanese movie this morning.

This morning I couldn't sleep. I have a very long to-do list and anxiety over that, a lot of things need to be tied up, and moved forward. But, getting up at 5:45 is in and of itself distracting. Waiting for the coffee to brew, I found something online in that way, that way that one does and thinks, this is exactly why I am up so early doing something so weird as watching a Japanese film on my iPad while even the dog has gone back to bed.

I was thinking, initially, I'd post this as a link on Facebook, for my students in the Textile group, but too many things came to mind. I kept thinking of other people who I wished would see this and talk to me about it. Ironically, one of the things that woke me up is that I'd forgotten what I'm to do for dinner tonight, which is to take a pair of students out for sushi to celebrate their move to Portland to go to graduate school. And, Saturday a small band of knitters will be meeting to celebrate World Wide Knit in Public Day.  It seemed like a good fit; post a link to an international film to get people ready for WWKIP, and so much the more fitting that it is a Japanese film. Maybe more people would be inspired to join the knit-in.

However, whatever pragmatic reasons I had for starting to watch "Wool, 100%" they went by the wayside as I got caught up in elements of the story, some of which are told only through images (twins, but one is in Western dress, eating Western breakfast, the other, Eastern dress, eating traditional Japanese breakfast.)

Then, the universal cry of, "Damn, now I have to knit again!"

This really reminded me of my students, all the people I've taught to knit over the years, all the people who've taken up knitting and then put it down, all my unfinished sweaters, all my un-started projects. (Well, my basement looks a tiny bit like the sisters' house, that's all I'm saying.)


I usually have a rule they can't start over. Keep going, that's the law.

The film-maker, Mai Tomangi, is primarily known as an animator, which explains the heavenly drawings, the amazing animated sequence of Knit Again's and the exceptional ways in which the plot moves through multiple time-frames. But, that big fat red wool yarn really holds it's own as a character all in and of itself, that red string of fate.

The red string of fate is probably familiar to anime (Sailor Moon) and Eastern mythology buffs. Basically, if you're to meet someone, it's due to that red string of fate, tied to either your ankle or perhaps your pinky finger...it's an old concept that appears as a handy explanation for why sometimes mysterious meetings happen, why someone would appear or reappear in your life unexpectedly.




I often feel certain students are connected to me by red threads of fate, although, this doesn't apply if you feel the red string connects you to your lovers, of course! But rather, to switch to the Western side of metaphysical thought, more like the original Irish concept of a soul friend (Anam chara), which is more like a friend or mentor waiting to happen. The corruption of this is that your soulmate is your "one true love" but that's a more recent romanticization (in Western culture, anyway) from a Noah's ark crazed world of pairing everyone off for mating purposes. (Used to be, you could value a friend more highly - think of how loyal the Knights of the Round Table were to one another! But now we live in a time when marriage is the goal, and the be-all end-all of human relationships, so god forbid your soul-mates are not those you sleep with.)

Nevertheless, I'm often struck by the happenstance in education, wherein, the student finds the professor at the exact moment the professor needs to have that kind of student. It happened to me as a student, a few times, and it's happened to me as a professor. I've witnessed it between other students and their professors, and it has some ripple-effect, as often one person caring for/about the fate of another can have a ripple-effect.

Red threads. Starting over. Beautiful Japanese films from 2006 that come to you early one morning in 2014, just when you needed one. Here's the link again. http://www.veoh.com/iphone/#_Watch/v661302899SpatzC

Handmade Nation revisited!

One of my first blog posts was about a visit we got from Faythe Levine, one of the film makers responsible for the documentary Handmade Nation. I got a copy of the book, which she signed, at the opening of the show she'd curated, Craftivism, for the Lawton Gallery on our campus. The film had not yet been released, so I spent over a year watching premier announcements pass me by, reviews get posted in other places, and so forth, without actually seeing the film. I talked about it a lot though. And I looked through the book (at the pictures, anyway.) Yesterday I finally saw the film, on a bootleg DVD given to me by artist Christopher Cannon. (My guess is Chris applied the DIY philosophy with making copies of movies - he's a printmaker, after all and thinks in terms of 'editions.' I do plan on getting the library to buy a real copy for our permanent collection!) Okay, so anyway I was procrastinating on writing some new quizzes for 2D and found the copy in my book bag, so I plugged it in and watched it. Then I got out my book and read the essays, finally. And now I really want to talk about it like never before.

First of all, I will indeed be showing this in my Women in the Visual Arts course and in the Women, Art and Image course I just created (to be taught when? We aren't sure.) I know that my colleague Jennifer Mokren showed it in her Freshman seminar course on craft, and I'm pretty sure Sarah Detweiler has shown it in her Modern American Culture course, but the feminist aspects need to be teased out in context of a Women's Studies course. Even if I only show Whitney Lee vacuuming, this will bring all that dusty art history into some sharp focus! Well, as sharp a focus as a shag rug can offer, anyway. I think it's also important to show the entrepreneurial spirit of these women, and men. (I love the guys from BuyOlympia.com who say, artists should be making, and we will sell on their behalf - cashing in on the impulse so many have to make things, without making anything themselves, but still using their own unique skill-set to support something they thought was cool.) But the story time and again is of a crafty girl, working in a cubicle, who needed some outlet for those old creative impulses, and now makes unique things by hand for a living. The alternate story is of the girl, frustrated and bored by the boundaries placed upon her by art school, who strikes out and commits crimes of cuteness and winds up wildly successful by making mittens, not art. Who doesn't want to be that girl? It's so alternatively intellectual.

The other great thing that comes up time and again, making the film also worth showing to my Textiles students, is that the things these women and men are doing are actually kind of easy to learn but difficult to master - Jenny Hart talking about how she thought embroidery would be tedious and awful and now she feels it's better than drugs, for instance. Or Nikki McClure reflecting on her first cut-paper piece and how crude it seems now, given all she's learned by doing so many since then. I can say to my students that practice makes perfect, but it's such an easy thing to dismiss. Better to show examples, especially examples of people who's work one can admire in the contemporary context.

I think Handmade Nation will become sort of a period piece, and probably soon. We don't know what's on the horizon. Even before the credits roll at the end of the film, it self-consciously asks the question, "How many bunnies and deer and birds and owls and mushrooms can the world support?" Fear of co-optation is also expressed (see any Urban Outfitters store to find cheap mass-produced home goods sporting bunnies, deer, birds, owls, and mushrooms as well as cross-stitch, latch-hook, and applique.) I'm reminded of my old drapes-shop manager (Sheli, an original punk rock veteran) telling her teenage daughter, "They're stealing your cool and selling it back to you!" Since I'm old, I also recall Madonna and Cyndi Lauper wearing vintage "merry widows" and crinolines, and that being very original, but then about a year later, being able to pick up similar brand new versions at the Everett Mall back in the '80's. Now they sell Halloween costumes with all the 80's girl standard bits, $24.99. I wonder if they'll have Indie Craft Girl costume eventually?

Finally, I have to say that for me personally, this film made me lament being born in 1964. Twenty years earlier, I could have been the ultimate Girl Scout who grew up, found feminism and embroidered for Judy Chicago's Dinner Party. Twenty years later, I could have been one of this generation of shameless stitchers. As it was, I was actually in the right place at the wrong time. I have a clear memory of covertly knitting while sitting in my rental in Ballard, the Norwegian neighborhood in Seattle, in 1986. I was working on a sweater that was beige with dusty rose and country blue flowers - very Laura Ashley. I knew lots of musicians, artists, budding software developers, and the like - all destined to become successful once the "scene" hit Seattle. I wouldn't have been caught dead knitting in front of any of them, nor did I ever have the will to finish that sweater. I sewed a few of my own clothes because my roommate Roberta made all her own, and we had a sewing machine set up in our dining room, but after I no longer lived with Roberta, my sewing machine only came out once in a while and never in front of anyone. It makes me sad now to think of it. I thought I was behind the times, and totally uncool, and a loser for having no money and no creative ambition. Here, it turns out I may have been ahead of the trend - but you know, it's tough to sell pastels to punks until they're really really ready for them.

The power of rejection...

It's been a while since I posted. I got a little distracted when school started, as usual. To update, my knitted swimsuits as comment on global warming didn't get into the show in Minneapolis. But I'm okay with it, because I knew even as I was sending it off that I needed to regroup and develop my presentation methods. These are really conceptual works of art, though they use history and craft as the media for the message. Yesterday in critique one of my intro students had a highly conceptual project and we spent a bit of time talking out how her presentation could inform the viewers. Even by the time she put her name on them, she'd begun to develop a label to provide a few clues for the viewer as to context, content, and material relationships. Pretty sophisticated, given that her theme was "Winter."

So, here are some images, and you can tell me what you think you're looking at. I am pretty sure I've missed the mark as far as communicating a darn thing with these, though, my craftsmanship is strong, I did my homework, and with some gentle nudges, I think the meaning will be clear. As I develop the project, hopefully you'll see how this unfolds. John thinks I need to render them as drawings, I'm considering maps, almanac information, and other didactic devices. We'll see. In the meantime, I have to finish that music stand they'll be auctioning off at the Green Bay Civic Symphony performance in November. An artist's work is never done...