Envy

In the business of fashion and home décor marketing, it is commonplace to photograph our wares in beautiful locales and environments, places we all wish we could visit or inhabit, places which are meant to inspire interest and fantasy, places which make our products look the best they possibly can in the hands of talented photographers and stylists

This past week I have been shooting at yet another fantastic home in Chicago, a home which someone with incredible vision built from its roots as a mechanic’s garage, a home which someone else with an over-the-top design sense filled in an Alice-in-Wonderland style.  I was floored, wowed, and filled with envy.

It always amazes me when someone goes all the way with design, taking no prisoners, worrying not at all what others might think or how his vision might translate when it’s time to re-sell the home.  I’ve always been afraid that something I might do to a home will kill its appeal for a future owner and so I am more timid in my choices.  But this homeowner, who is also a designer with vast resources, is not cut from that cloth and so has built a home with exaggerated proportions and filled it with furnishings bordering on the madcap and high and low art.

I’m not proud of my envy on these photoshoots.   I wanted to move into this home immediately, but more than that I found myself really really wanting it, feeling like I should be able to have it, alternately loving and hating the homeowner without ever meeting him, an embarrassing avalanche of feelings all rooted in envy.

And then it was time to put envy in the freezer.   I was able to sit back and just enjoy the days I got to spend in an environment I would never know as my own.  The riches and choices of this homeowner/designer were mine for 48 hours and somehow I knew I was a little richer just for being exposed to this magical place.  Lucky me.

Why Bother to Celebrate American Craft?

This week is American Craft Week, a made-up celebration about craftsmen and craftswomen and their work.  I mention that it is “made up” because several years ago, a group of people decided that it was important to try to get a larger public to notice, appreciate, and hopefully buy work created by American makers.  Although there may have originally been a commercial motive, I find far more important reasons to celebrate American craft.

Today’s society is often looking for ways to increase or stimulate creativity. TED talks focus on this.  The maker of Soylent believes that if we spend less time thinking about food we will spend more time being creative.  Mindfulness, exercise, and education are recommended to stimulate creativity.

Danielle Gori-Montanelli

But I believe that there is another source of creativity, and that it often comes from working with our hands and letting our minds loose.  The act of making requires letting the hands go to work, often letting them act as our minds, taking us to new places as objects form before our fingers and eyes.

David Patchen

Imbued in the pieces we make are our histories as well.  American craft not only reflects the talent and creativity of our culture, but also contains memories of our past in addition to the stories of our present and future.  According to Steve Fenton in Craft in America, “Objects are repositories of cultures; to understand their messages we need only open our eyes to them.”  The young makers of today may act differently from the craft pioneers of the 1970’s, but the work of both respectively reflect their times and cultures.

Meg Little

So why celebrate American Craft Week?  I believe the reason is pretty simple, that craft is a small but important, often overlooked, living and breathing component of our culture.  May the makers and artists, glassblowers and rug-hookers, woodworkers and jewelers, quilters and basketmakers, bookbinders and potters all have their moment in the sun.  Visit a studio.   Make a trip to that gallery you've been meaning to get to. Notice the handmade around you.  Celebrate.

Extraordinary: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz

Last night we attended the massive installation “@Large:  Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz” by dissident Chinese artist and activist, Ai Weiwei.   It takes months of planning to get a ticket and is profoundly worth the wait and effort.

Created for and set in the crumbling and horrifying remains of the prison on Alcatraz Island, the installation is divided into seven parts, each with its own distinct and often visually beautiful perspective on imprisonment, domination, freedom,  isolation, and the bleak endlessness of incarceration.

A recurring technique in many of Ai’s pieces is the use of massive quantities of something, often a hand-created something in honor of his reverence for craft.  An oft-cited fact about one of the pieces in this installation, “Trace”, is the use of 1.4 million Lego pieces.  But the installation is powerful for reasons that are greatly beyond this notable quantity.

Trace is an installation depicting portraits of 176 individuals incarcerated for their beliefs, most of them still held as of June of this year.  Ai refers to them as heroes, though many people on my tour questioned certain individuals such as Edward Snowden being called a hero.  I found the effect of the Lego portraits to be profound.  It is so very easy to read about dissidents, to see them as far off from one’s everyday life, to know of them in a small, faraway way.  The first impression of these dozens of portraits is one of pixilation, difficult to identify.  And then.  Then your eyes begin to see them and take in the enormity of their sheer numbers.  The millions of pieces begin to make sense in relationship to the millions of individuals around the world whose freedom is compromised.

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Just as we began to leave “Trace”, we decided to take a few photographs with our phones and discovered that viewed through a phone’s camera, the portraits became instantly clear, the blurriness of pixilation gone, as if to reflect on how information about today’s dissidents is instantly and clearly communicated thanks to technology.  It changed the entire experience, added a deeper level of meaning.

“Blossom” takes place in the prison hospital, often a place of residence for the mentally ill, a place of desolation.  Here, Ai has filled the old discolored sinks, toilets and bathtubs with tiny precious white porcelain flowers, filled to overflowing and which at first glance could be Styrofoam peanuts.  Who knows how many blossoms there are, who knows how many cries took place in this place of horror and in others around the world?  What a contrast between these horrible porcelain fixtures and these tiny pieces of art, a contrast of purpose, a reminder that those imprisoned for their thoughts never see or receive flowers of any sort.

It is often noted that art has the power to reveal and re-color reality.  In the case of @Large, Ai does even more than that.  He explores, examines, exposes and ultimately fills us with the enormity of the commitment of individuals for their beliefs.  Extraordinary.

Scaredy Cat

I flew in a small plane yesterday, a very very small plane, so small that it had its own parachute.  Having been invited to be the only passenger in this plane, I hesitated at first and then jumped at the chance, thinking a lot about my decision before I made it.

The reality is that I never would have done this ten years ago, or even six years ago.  I would have been too scared and would have been ruled by my fear, thinking, "I don't do that kind of thing".  Flying in a 2-seater was never on my bucket list. In fact, I don't have a bucket list.  I just don't think that way.

I do, however, think a lot about choice and saying yes to life rather than being riddled with fear and doubt.  When my husband first proposed scuba diving 3 years ago, I remember feeling the immediate fear factor attempting to take over and then realized I could be in control.  I realized that fear had kept me from so many opportunities throughout life and that perhaps there was an alternative.  The same thing happened with this flight.

What a glorious thing this flight was, flying over Iowa farmland at a height of around 3,000 feet.  It was so much more intimate than my usual and frequent commercial flights of 35,000 feet, with flocks of birds below me and magnificent scenery all around forming patterns of green and brown and blue.

 I am neither dumb nor reckless.  My pilot was a friend who is one of the most careful and intentional people I know and trust.  He cared for me, cared for us, piloted us with experience and precision, and respected my fears.

I loved it and didn't love it.  The bumpy air was not so kind to my stomach but the experience was fantastic.  Knowing that I could do it was a priceless experience, and ridding the title of scaredy cat from my personal resume felt just right.

I Don't Know How You Do It

I travel a lot.  A lot.  For more than 6 years I have had the privilege of running a business that I love, a business with a slight problem – its location.  I live in San Francisco and the business is in Madison, Wisconsin.  So, for 6 years and counting I have been “commuting” – dividing my time among home and Madison and business trips to cities around the United States.  People say to me all the time, “I don’t know how you do it” and there are two pretty simple answers.

First of all, I am pretty damn lucky.  While it was the investors who hired me who agreed to this arrangement, it is my team members who bear the brunt of the difficulty.  They are incredibly patient with me, with having a CEO whose lifestyle gets in the way of their needs sometimes. They work around my schedule and I work around theirs and we have developed mutual trust, something which is critical given the amount of time we spend apart.  So how do I do it?  In this case, I am lucky to be doing this, to be, in a way, having my cake and eating it, too.

But in addition, the answer is that we all do what we have to do.  Yes, I have a hard commute.  I am away so much, logging days and weeks away from my friends and my new husband, getting jetlagged and delayed, feeling like trips home are just that, trips rather than homebase.  But it is what I do for a business I care passionately about and have nurtured to success. 

 My daughter works 7-day weeks, with 12-hour days.  Why?  Because that’s what she has to do to make it in her career.

My son works a less-than-satisfying day job as he relentlessly pursues being an actor and growing his own business.  He auditions and practices and does it all over again.  Why?  Because he is committed to pursuing his dream.

My sister goes from her grueling profession to even more grueling nights and weekends as a graduate student.  Why?  Because she has a vision of where she is trying to get to and it is a hard road.

And my young friend who is a new mother gets up night after sleep-deprived night to attend her baby.  Why?  Because she has to.

We ALL have things we have to do which are hard to do and others can’t imagine.   And we do them because we are human, because we get to choose some of what comes our way in life and because we have to cope with what we are dealt.  Trying to imagine stepping into someone else’s shoes may seem difficult, but my guess is that most of us are doing something which someone else can’t imagine.   You don’t know how I do it?  I bet you do, actually.