What's on my mind

well folks I have been drearily under the weather today. It's been abysmal. I think I've only been awake for a few hours here and there. I wake up, sip some tea or ginger ale and then fall asleep again. I'm feeling slightly coherent for the first time in well, all day.

Would you believe it's taken me most of the day just to get the paragraph above from my head to the computer? Man I'm beat.

In art journaling news: The Ning site is up and it's starting to get really neat. If you are interested in art journaling or journaling in general head over to the group, join and check it out. There are a few free workshops up already. I'm well into working on 2 paid workshops on 2 types of bookbinding as well as making recycled scrap covers for lots of book projects. It's going to be SUPER awesome. There are no other words to describe it but super awesome. Jonathan Manning (AKA @artisticbiker) has set up a really great tutorial on making marbled like paper with spray paint and man is it ever cool. I can't wait to use it as a book cover!  There is now a forum to discuss prompts, stenciling techniques, and a lively discussion about art book vs art journaling.

I'm excited, can you tell?

The other thing I'm excited about are podcasts. (I know how 2007 of me) Ricë Freeman-Zachary has been putting together some of the most wonderful podcasts. She is interviewing some wonderful artists and many of them art journalers! (Squee) She just put one up with Kelly Kilmer and it's divine. You can find it here, but you can also download it off iTunes for free. I just downloaded the entire library of Ricë's podcasts to keep me company during my hellish commute. Additionally if you find her on iTunes you'll find a whole host of other creative types with some good stuff too! (you'll also find an artist I love but whose voice grates on me like nails on a chalk board)

I've not been art journaling as much because I've been fighting off this cold for about 3 days, but I shot a few pics of stuff I had been working on and I made some wrapping paper last night. Every year I make my wrapping paper out of recycled materials. I scrounge kraft paper and newsprint out of boxes at work, flatten it and bring it home. Normally I sit infront of the TV with my sharpies and a few stencils and doodle out a few sheets here and there. We gave up cable this summer and my LCD tv is about to become my monitor (not totally kiding as it's been sitting, unused for close to 3 or 4 months now) I needed some paper fast for my secret santa gift for work. So I banged out a 2 part stencil. First layer-  rays radiating out from the center of a star. Second a big star. I used silver spray paint for the rays. Then I put the star over the center of the rays and hit it with a layer of red, then a spot of silver, then a spatter of red again. I wasn't too perfect about anything as I wanted to let the silver over spray a bit. I call it my bad ass wrapping paper. Perfect for men, women, kids and totally cool, even hipsters drunk on PBR will like it and want to wrap their thrifted gifts with it's awesomeness.

See it here:

 The pic isn't that great, I took it in a dark room, so you'll just have to trust me on it's total awesomeness.

Another thing that I've been experimenting with, something I havne't done in, well ages, since high school is adding photos to my journal. I usually avoid it because I want to avoid the look of, well, a scrap book. Yeah, I said it. I'm no scrapbooker. I don't want people to think that my art journals are scrapbooks with paint. (hangs head) I like scrap books when other people make them, but they aren't MY thing. Does that make sense? Anyway I got this Pogo for a Christmas gift and I'm in love. It's so freaking awesome I'm taking pictures of the dog, the couch, my morning commute (break lights all the way) I'm printing pictures like crazy and I'm loving it. OMG the pogo is the shit. 2x3, business card size, you could attache these thing to anything with the peel and stick stuff on them, ATC, journals, scrap books, The possibilities are endless. So I had to do it.

I did a self portrait when I got to Maine after an interesting and mostly uneventful drive. Then I STUCK it in my travel journal. Yup. It's there. I added a drawing and some gesso and here it is:

And you know what? I love it and it doesn't look like a scrapbook at all to me.

So this part of the post is a reactionary tale don't go further if you aren't in the mood for a good old fashioned rant.

There's been a rash of blog posts and tweets about the group Knitta, Please. (go here and here for some of those posts.) I've been mulling over the posts and thinking about them. When I first saw KP I thought the name was offensively tongue in cheek. I wasn't overtly offended. Perhaps because I'm white, from the sticks and don't knit. I brought it up to my partner (She's Asian and grew up in the western part of Mass) and she rolled her eyes and found it offense and, frankly, ignorant. I then pointed out to her the T&Asia soaps. That garnered another eye roll. I then had her look at the packaging and that got another eye roll, with the exclamation, "Ignorant." I admit I had a chuckle at both these things at first but I also recognized their offensiveness. It's rather blatant and in your face.

But who am I to comment on racism? I'm a white* working (just scraping by) class lesbian in a relationship with a Korean American adoptee. I can tell you about hate, intolerance, fear and discrimination based on my relationship. I have been called names, treated poorly and, yes, ignorantly because in the past I did not pass for straight. I've been called Sir more times than I care to remember. (Seriously do I need to tell you about the "girls" they are hard to miss and my shoulder length hair?) I've been asked many times if the "stories" about Asian women are true and if I have a fetish. Some of these questions are okay, in conversations with my friends I don't mind this line of questioning but if I've just met someone then it's probably not okay. I have a few standby answers for these questions: "What stories?" and "Only for one." I imagine this is the same sad tired old story for anyone in an interracial relationship.

While much of the crafting world does not live in a place where racism and hate are an everyday occurrence we can't stick our heads in the sand and pretend it doesn't happen. It's a daily occurrence. I've seen it happen to my coworkers. The worst offenders are not the working class people either, it's the rich white Americans who don't talk to people with accents, or see people of color on a regular basis. Racism, hate and intolerance aren't dead in America and it's roots are still firmly in the middle and upper class. The good ole' US of A is not in a place yet where terms of hate can be co-opted by the very people who used those terms for hate in the first place. It's just not cool.

*if we break it down I'm not 100% white either, in my family history there is some Micmac, I'm about 1/16th not enough to get into that basket making class I wanted to take. The rest is all European; german, swiss, irish, scottish. Mainly I identify my heritage as German and Swiss.

Comments

[Eveline]

I remember first seeing the name Knitta Please in a Threadbanger video and never giving it a second thought until I read all the comments. How dare Threadbanger support such a group, and didn't they know how racist it sounded, blah blahblah...

Since 3.5 years I am a foreigner. It's strange to be a foreigner. People (and by 'people' I mainly mean my sweetie's family) forget that I am one, and then moan about 'those bloody foreigners' who just come over here and steal jobs, women and get money for nothing. I then cough, to let them know that they are bashing foreigners in front of one. 'Oh noooo...' they then tell me, 'We don't mean you! You're different...' I am not quite sure what that means. Is it because I am white? But then again, so are the Poles they bash. (Sometimes when the Pole-bashing becomes too severe I'll gently remind them that my grandfather was Polish and helped liberate Holland from the Germans..) Is it because I speak the language? I don't know... But it's made me more aware of subtle racism, which I find more disturbing that oud-and-out racism, to be honest... Especially because nobody ever 'means to sound racist', but then tell me that they've turned down an offer by Indian friends to enjoy their holiday home out in Spain 'because she cooks curries all the time and I worry about the smell getting into my clothes'. *sigh*

(I still don't think there's anything wrong with Knitta Please for a knitting group)

[leslie herger]

I learned of it through ThreadBanger, but never really gave it much of a thought, other than to chuckle a bit and think about it being ignorant. I think its entirely different when you bring it up to someone who isnt white. Having seen first hand overt and even subtle racism its not pretty. Knitta, Please, is just ignorant yet funny rolled into one.

I hear the damn foreigners comments here as well. I turn around and remind people that if more Americans would WORK rather than suck welfare there wouldnt be any work for the immigrants and that were all immigrants unless we can trace our ancestry to the Native Americans. Sure kick all the immigrants out, but wed all have to leave too. Id tell you about applicants where I work but Im afraid that my boss wouldnt like it.

Where I grew up there are a few industries that are seasonal and if you are good at it you can make really good money, but its hard damn labor. The first is raking or picking blueberries, it lasts only one month but the money is good. Its hard work in the hot sun. My father owns blueberry fields and all growing up I helped with the harvest. I made really good money. My father now hires machines to harvest the land becuase he cant find people willing to do the harvest. Locals wont do it. The other industry that is seasonal and very good money is making Christmas wreaths. Again it lasts about a month or 2 and is hard damn work. But a lot of the local wont do it. So who gets the jobs? Migrant workers.

The issue here is how the system is set up. For people to get help they have to be so destitute that they cant work at all lest they loose the government help. Its a rock and a hard place.

[Paula]

Wow, what a post! So many things to think about. For this "white girl" who happens to be with a Jamaican, I know all about ignorance. Growing up in a big city (Toronto) I was exposed to, and grew up with all races, so it's no biggy for me. Then I got transferred to the suburbs. What a different world this is, it's opened my eyes wide to how wrong I was about society progressing... it hasn't progressed, they've just moved to the suburbs.
Anyway, now I'm ranting which wasn't my intent. I can't wait for the man to get home to have this discussion. Just last night I was showing him the JCrafty video, which we both thought was hilarious ("they be rubberstamping my fingers" lmao, you must search for it. I first saw it on Kelly Kilmer's blog), but after this post, now I'm having second thoughts. Sorry if I'm just fueling the fire!
Have a great night, and thanks for being real.

[leslie herger]

@paula
I grew up in the sticks but I was surrounded by people who felt being racist was wrong, most notably my parents. I remember once an elderly woman used the N word infront of me and I didnt know what it meant and later i asked my Mom and she explained it to me and told me I was never to use the word because it was about hate and ignorance. The was before the whole takin it back thing. This was when there were no gray areas around the word- it was just hateful and mean and ignorant. And racism was rampant around me growing up, toward black people and worst of all to the Native Americans in the area. I grew up not far from the Passamaquoddy reservation and with a large number of Micmacs nearby, the hate toward them was insane. I never understood it nor will I.

Ive always looked at that sort of thing as ignorant. The hard part about it is the ingrained ignorance that goes along with it all. You cant educate hate out of people. No matter what  you do, ingrained hate is a stain on society.

I like the jCrafty video too. Im not sure what to think about it, this whole thing has my head in knots thinking about it. Of course that could also be the Dayquil Ive taken for my cold.... Then I think that over the years rap has moved into an arena for all people to make it. Look at Eminem and other white rappers (sorry dont have other peopel I can point to off the top of my head, rap is a no go zone for me.)

Am I saying Knitta, Please is wrong? no I just think its ignorant. For me I never want to be labeled as ignorant, if someone else wants to be then its fine for them.

[Barb]

Wow! First off, I am loving the Art Journaling ning site...what a glorious place you have made for us! I am hoping that life calms down a bit (sooner than later) so I can take part more over there. Thank you so much for such a grand "place" for art journalists to congregate and learn from each other.

As for Knitta, Please...I had missed the controversy until you pointed it out to me here. I am not a knitter so I guess that's how I avoided the hoopla up until now. But now that I do know, I find it offensive...even though I am a white chick from the sticks of Alabama. Being from the South often means to people that I, too, am racist, sexist, and an all-out bible-thumping fool. Trust me, I am none of the above...but still, people assume. I see racism every.single.day down here...and I have a biracial daughter so I see more of it than most "white folks" around these parts.

I think I get a little torn about the whole subject, to be honest. I believe Knitta, Please WAS done very tongue-in-cheek but I don't believe that fact makes it okay. I don't think it's cool for anyone to use derogatory terms, even those of whatever group it's directed toward. These terms ARE hateful and ignorant; they are mean and meant to put down others...so how can the use of a play on words directly related to one such cliche` be "cute?" I just don't see it.

Just glad I'm not in the line of fire on this one, for sure.

Peace & Love,
~Barb~