This past Saturday afternoon was a gloriously sunny day for a schlep to Brooklyn’s McCarren Park for a day of craft seeing in honor of the 2009 East Coast leg of the Chicago-based Renegade Craft Fair. Thankfully my husband came along, helping make the 50-minute subway sojourn from Manhattan’s Upper West Side considerably less of a yawner. Besides, we got a chance to read the Travel and Real Estate sections of the New York Times together. Ahh, domestic bliss!
With our noses buried in the paper, neither of us realized that the L train to Williamsburg’s Bedford Avenue was taking us much further away from the utopic suburbia of the West 80s than we had imagined. I was wearing. . .gasp. . .a blue striped Ralph Lauren polo. With Prada sunglasses. In Williamsburg! While the artfully disheveled hipsters may have not been judging me or us, the seemingly only married couple, I’ll go right ahead and stereotype. We looked like priiiiicks!! The gulf between us and them was plain old enormous, making me secretly wish that I had not gotten us so far out of our league. . .and that we could dive back into the subway and go 10,000 leagues under the sea.
Amidst the commotion of urban youth criss-crossing Bedford from one low key brunch joint to the corner bodega for a fresh pack of cigs, my husband and I noticed a large number heading North in the direction of the Renegade Craft Fair. We joined in. For the four or so blocks that we walked in step with the indie crowd, I spent the time rehashing my visions of the craft fairs of my youth. These were not the hokey, might I say, hicky crocheting festivals to domestic idleness that I remember. Rather, this shindig meant serious business, and that capitalism was well at work here. These crafters (I find it interesting that the website for the Fair refers to the participants as “artists” or “artisans,” not crafters) were well trained in the visual and applied arts, lending generous doses of the latest trends in graphic design to their finished products.
“Pictorial Oddities”
It didn’t take long for me to spot the prevailing trend, but whether I could explain it was a different story. Why all the fuss over owls, birds, octopus, and dogs? It seemed like every booth from the felt handbag to the silkscreen tee had a slightly different storyline for these creatures, yet they came similarly packaged: cutesy, simplified and often humorous — although, some verged on the morbid — versions of land and sea life, rendered in the boldness of primary color. Indeed, as one booth declared on its signage, these were “pictorial oddities.”
Still at a loss for explanation, I googled the words, “crafting owl octopus” and was surprised to come upon an article from December 2008 titled, “Octopus Replaces Owl as Twee Mascot” (Time Out New York, December 16, 2008). Ok, so I’ve picked up on something, despite being absolutely clueless to this “twee” word and its attendant world. With further investigation, twee has a definition with deep cultural (-ly loaded) roots, originally tied to indie pop music of the late 80s in the UK. Twee lyrics were fey and innocent, sung to the jangling of guitars and with a grand deference to sixties pop. In its simplicity, though, twee symbolizes a passive revolt from the here-and-now, a soft, cuddly reversion into the aesthetics of childhood that today is all the rage. When this pair of upwardly mobile yuppies stepped off the L Train, we had unwittingly entered an aesthetic revolution. Suddenly, my misgivings about embarking upon a life of craft seemed unfounded. Craft is again a movement taking on steam, confronting culture’s misconceptions about its merit by drawing us into its gingerbread fantasy and then stuffing us in the oven to bake. That’s when it’s at its best: serving up a powerful commentary on you and itself.
Octopus
Owl
Morbidly cute? Interesting commentary on taxidermy.
Twee lifestyle
Just a sampling of the different takes on the age-old sampler
As the purpose of my online musings on all things craft does not remotely concern itself with “reporting back” on great shops, trends or restaurants I visit, I would not include the links below. But, as I have embarrassingly mentioned before, I have a shred of confidence that anyone would care how I would use craft to build myself into a whole woman. Maybe this will never see a human’s eyes? So, these links are for ME. Hey, that felt quite good to say, even if only in private.
I recently got married. I have time to cook wonderful meals. I am a woman. I think an apron is secretly awesome, but fear what it means for and about me at this stage in my life. I am a daughter of a feminist. I like a few these aprons, especially the crafter’s premise:
I have a deep knowledge of art history. I have a graduate degree in all things pertaining to fine art and the art market. Frames are fraught with tension because they are meant to elevate art without being noticed. There’s a no-competition rule they are supposed to follow in the contemporary fine art world, which I think is a fascinating topic. I empathize with the frame’s role. The crafter (God, does he want to be called a crafter? Who really does? After all, he did attend the Craft Fair, so why not?) who repurposed these new frames into their lacquered look made them solely to showcase his work. I asked for just the frames.
For more on the derivation of twee, click here.
Art Fair on the Square 2009 flyer by Nick Wroblewski
