This piece was originally published at Thought Catalog, here. Thanks, Thought Catalog!
They have healing, kinetic, grass-roots brands, taunting, tough-yet-inclusive female empowerment slogan-sounding names, or luxuriate smugly in the throwback simplicity of their “flea” or “flea market” identities. Craft[1] is serious in Brooklyn. It’s the craft capital of the state, rivaled in the U.S. by only a small number of DIY crazed cities: Berkeley, CA, Austin, TX, Portland, OR, Portsmouth, RI and a few others.
I’m what would be described as craft-y, in the recreational activity sense and no other. I also prefer to buy my clothing (not undergarments or socks), books, music, furniture, appliances, bikes, etc. second hand, certified pre-owned by a person, the street or a thrift shop clerk. I have an Etsy page. I know from experience that having a constructive practice, building something with your hands and brain, participating in commerce, showcasing a skill you enjoy and have worked hard to acquire, are activities with high feel-good returns. But here in NYC, in 2012, I avoid the borough’s fairs, fleas, holiday marts and warehouse artisan co-ops like they are chasing me with a knife. My spray paint, x-acto and hot glue gun collect dust in the closet.
My thoughts on craft are at best cynical and glum and at worst aggressively depressing to myself and to a flourishing consumer trend with favorable standing in the zeitgeist.
In part, my negative feelings about craft are that it's yuppie and elitist, and sells itself as exactly the opposite to the yuppie and elite (through claims of authenticity, uniqueness or connection to a simpler age lost to the modernized majority) and although I truly believe that specialized, creative products are and will be essential to the US economy, at least domestically – and that the merch hawked in these spaces falls under this heading – the DIY mentality doesn't always, or often, produce better or vital goods and services. It's a supportive, self-congratulatory, free-love market with an assumption of demand that surpasses, or soon will, even the most gratuitous niche luxury product desires of the chronically financially surplus-ed.
The cottage economy can be empowering, which is good.
Democratizing business and entrepreneurship provides open access to learning experiences perhaps inaccessible through alternate means. Self-directed, acute thinking of the kind required to design and sell something is one of many solid ways to add dimensions to our understanding and augment confidence and creativity in practical ways.
What if anything real, novel or significant, is learned in college or university business courses that cannot be learned better, quicker through experience? Art in art classes too. Overwhelmingly I think answers to these questions fall between nothing at all very little – but having also avoided these classrooms like the walls themselves thirsted for my blood and brains, I have to admit this conclusion is anecdotal.
Although I’d rate taking adult ed advanced basket-weaving or selling hemp dream-catchers dyed in the colors of the sunset at a waterfront market far above any business management or communications course (except for the networking benefits) and though I can, if properly prepared, find the good in a superbadass rebel flea organized by a consortium of lesbian blogs or the supergranola green deal sponsored by the five leading donors to MoMA’s PS1, there's a big glass – not glass – brick, a heavy, mortared ceiling on my appreciation for the trend as a whole.
It’s not just the synthetic demand, the nonessential, almost reactionary character of the market sector, or the frequently subpar, overpriced product. Sell! Buy! Enjoy your 10$ home-bottled elderberry and lime soda.
It’s not that the community is hip and preachy. This repulses me, but it’s not that either. Communities are good. In the big bad world, they serve individual members well and, with notable exceptions, have negligible impact on the rest of us; if the community is nonviolent and non-supremacist the potential for negative impact drops to zero.
It’s not even the insular misperception that these products are healthier, less wasteful, more environmentally and socially responsible than larger-provider alternatives. Sure, they can be, but this artisanal stuff isn’t subject to the same standards of regulated (socially or bureaucratically) industry; however flawed the system, when Apple buys parts from a Chinese factory that employs child laborers it’s a global story. If the woman who sells repurposed Indian sari apparel uses dyes sourced from warlord-controlled territory in Africa, or simply purchases materials from a vendor that over-packages and ships inefficiently, no one, perhaps even the woman, may ever know.
I run from craft like I’d run from the draft[2] because I think it’s a waste – a sad, scary waste.
Here’s my question, craft lovers and leaders:
If we’re spending our time digging through bins of vintage NYC subway maps set in frames of period postage stamps and trading chunks of our disposable cash to take these things home and hang them on our walls… what are we not doing?
Whoever we are, crafters, if we are the yuppie elite, if we’re art-y people or idea men or women, rich or poor, talented or not, if we defy categorization, it appears we can convince society in large numbers, ourselves among them, of the essentiality of craft and can sell it as better, healthier, hipper, smarter, branding it with an identity that calls different types of people to act, spend their money and time. If we can do this, can we get different types of people to not actively hate one another? To combat intransigence, mollify fears that lead to blindness and violence, to be open – eyes, ears and minds – to have faith in ourselves and our future?
Something less grossly ambitious? If we could get middle
school kids acting even slightly more human, that’d be great – make curiosity
cool and punditry un-cool, provide safe, public space for balanced discussion
of divisive issues – any of that would be great. Personally, I’d really like to
see boys and girls trading cards with scientists on them rather than baseball
players or Pokemon. Start small.
Craft isn’t a pernicious trend[3]
but a reminder of undelivered promise. Not (I don’t think) a first or even a
conscious step in the right direction. When I feel heartless, for not
practicing my love of making things and forsaking a sincere appreciation for
artisanal traditions passed down through generations I remind myself that
humanity is creative and productive by nature and that these practices will
endure, but we can do better, be better, bestow our cultural benediction on a
worthier name.
[1] Craft: boutique production,
DIY driven, artful artisanship, repurposed, green, for sale by owner, hand
drawn, homemade, tie-died, micro-economic, micro-brewed… made by a staff of
under three and marketed as such.
[2] The
craft/draft comparison isn’t incidental to the rhyme. I think there’s something
there. Obviously, the consequences of the former aren’t as severe (wrinkled
noses and mocking of your carbon footprint) as imprisonment and related
concerns are less grave than life death and the geopolitical fallout of armed
conflict but they’re both supposed to be these democratizing things that in
reality have murky short and long term material and immaterial consequences.
[3] I’m sure
we’d miss it were it to be replaced by something repressive, hateful,
exclusionary, etc.
