Misstropolis

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Do It Yourself

by Susan Graage

Email to a friendPrint this article

While the term “do it yourself” might evoke images of a trip to Home Depot to purchase grout for the tub, the new DIY movement is a call to creative arms and an ethos that goes beyond the rejection of using paid professionals. DIY originated in alternative post-punk culture and espouses collective spirit and collaborative production, blending aesthetics, function and sustainable design to achieve highly original results.

Take the best of Martha’s techniques and up the ante to crochet a bikini or weave a rug from shopping bags. Transform an already existing consumer object and elevate the banal – an IKEA bookshelf or an old t-shirt to a higher aesthetic plane. Create candles and other home goods, blend soaps and cosmetics from natural ingredients or explore both endangered craft techniques such as Gocco or brand new forms involving the use QR codes, the next generation of bar codes.

The whiff of recession not only encourages husbanding of resources but begs some introspection of our runaway consumer culture. Handmade is the way to go. The Gap-ification of society, combined with the suspect labor practices used in the manufacture of so much clothing for big retailers, leaves conscientious and original fashionistas with dwindling options. Going upscale is not a viable solution if one aspires to originality because, as noted by Dana Thomas, author of De-Luxe: How Luxury has Lost its Lustre, the pervasiveness of luxury goods has demeaned their value. The coveting of black nylon Prada backpacks in the early ‘90s doesn’t seem all that sinful when young women today COLLECT designer purses.

Eco-consciousness and interest in sustainable design, along with the realization that the earth simply cannot absorb our stuff at the current rate of production and consumption, are at the heart of indie DIY crafters’ focus on re-use and re-manufacture. ReadyMade magazine, whose manifesto encourages us to consider everyday objects as precious gems, is a great resource for re-engineering existing products and simply using common supplies and objects on hand in new ways. Any Peeps still kicking around from Easter?  ReadyMade has some ideas for you. Craft magazine and its offshoot Make offer an astounding number of fun and doable projects – making a Harajuku shirt, a thumb piano or an LED hula hoop.

Perhaps the growth of crafting and DIY is driven in part by increased creative impulses, and an innate need to use our hands, and in part as a reaction to the exponential growth in our screen time and virtual experiences. Video games like the Wii serve to abbreviate real experiences, using just the index finger to virtually experience what the whole body and hand previously have done. In his book, The Hand, Stanford neurologist Frank Wilson points out that the evolution of humans is very much based on an interdependence of hand and brain function, and wonders what we may be sacrificing by so dramatically limiting one of these functions.

Whether you feel inspired to create and launch a career as a crafter entrepreneur, or just want to acquire something original and sound for the planet, the website Etsy is a great place to start.  A virtual marketplace for independent crafters and their patrons, Etsy was founded in 2006 by painter photographer and carpenter Robert Kalin.  Etsy boasts a customer base of 850,000 registered users, 150,000 of whom are crafters who pay a commission to Etsy on their sales. Crafters create profiles and can participate in forums, take live workshops and online courses or find collaborators. The Etsy phenomenon abounds in social networking opportunities and has even spawned another website, called We Love Etsy, about users of Etsy.

It is clear from the zeal of Etsy aficionados and DIY-ers that creating is an immensely satisfying way of being. Misstropolis will continue to explore the urge to express ourselves – physically, spiritually and creatively. We would love to hear from you if you have discovered your creative passion or have a yen to talk something up – it’s never too late.