Hasta La Ideas

This post is fourth in a series of posts by Christina Crook.
 

Karen Ruane:

Contemporary Embroidery

For Karen embroidery is both a vocation and obsession. She sets her hands to work every single day. Mixing classic and contemporary techniques, her sophisticated white-on-white designs are in high demand.

“My work is born from tradition and respect. Respect for my female predecessors and a wish to continue the traditions of needlework taught to me as a child.”

In addition to creating, Ruane has exhibited her work all across England, offers online courses in embellishment, buttons and more and runs an Etsy shop. The Internet plays an important role in her instructional work, but she sets aside at least four hours a day simply for making.

For her it comes down to priorities.

Describe your relationship with the Web. I am amazed and totally in awe of the internet. It opens up so many possibilities for communication, interaction and learning and I wonder constantly how we ever managed without it. It’s like when you have kids, you can’t remember what life was like before. That goes for the web with me too.

What advice would you share with others regarding the interplay between the physical work of making and the online demands of the Internet? I try to make the internet work for me yet not take over. I don’t want to be an administrator, I want to be a maker and a teacher. It is a conscious effort daily to set aside the time for both as separate aspects of what I do, embroiderer and online creative. Divide your time, prioritize, is your heart with making or do you prefer the interactive aspects of what you do….?

Do you try and restrict your time online? Why or why not? I try and control rather than restrict my time online. I have to have a certain level of online presence to work with students in my online classes but making is my passion and I set aside at least four hours a day purely for making. The internet time is decided by how much time I have remaining after making is planned.

What do you love about the Internet? I love that the internet gives me an opportunity to reach the world, for free in order to promote my work. I love that it allows me to teach in places like the US, Canada, Australia and Europe without leaving the house…isn’t that amazing? Having access to the internet also allows me to keep up to date with contemporary art, see what is new and developing in terms of my peers.

What do you dislike about the Internet? My main concern about the internet is the misuse of images relating to creative work. I have seen numerous examples of images being used without proper credit given to the maker. I also think that as the internet is such an ‘instant’ media there is an assumption that creativity is ‘instant’ which in some cases can devalue the work of talented, original makers.

This post is the second in a series written by Christina Crook. Christina Crook has been a regular contributor in the pages of UPPERCASE magazine and we’re happy to welcome her to the blog this week with a special guest post series on the case for being creative offline. 

Tugboat Printshop:

Handmade Woodcuts

 
Located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, husband and wife duo Paul Roden and Valerie Lueth translate fantastical imagery onto wood and into print. Valerie’s artwork, in particular, has a narrative slant. Each intricate etching jammed with environs carefully built through the layering of dense linework and pattern. Together they make the Tugboat Printshop creating original works of art on fine, archival papers.

“We make color woodcuts entirely by hand.  All of our original images are drawn by the 2 of us directly onto blocks of wood (often multiple blocks make up a single image), carved with hand-held knifes, and then rolled up with oil based inks. We print the inked blocks onto archival papers on our in-house press. Quality is of huge importance to us. Our prints are traditionally made artworks that can last for generations.”

For the Tugboat Printshop the Internet is an invaluable tool. But they’d really rather meet you in person.

Describe your relationship with the Web. We have an official website (which Valerie built and maintains), that operates as a homebase for Tugboat Printshop online. At tugboatprintshop.com, you can purchase any of our available prints, find upcoming show dates, scroll through photos and read more about our process. We use social media (facebook, flickr, twitter and our blog) to additionally chronicle our process, relay news about upcoming projects and communicate our latest news to our followers.

What advice would you share with others regarding the interplay between the physical work of making and the online demands of the Internet? The internet is surely a nice thing, but it doesn’t do everything and there is a lot of necessary upkeep to maintain a presence. Right now, we keep busy around the clock doing everything ourselves ~ it’s a pretty demanding lifestyle. Thankfully, neither of us minds wearing multiple hats and we both really enjoy the art of inventing ourselves as Tugboat Printshop. From building a display booth to house our prints at fairs to unveiling new woodcuts via newsletter, there is always a growing list of work to be done and, as a result, more to talk about online. We ultimately feel our prints will always look better in person (because they are objects, not digital files) so we try to get out of the studio with our wares regularly. We really enjoy meeting our customers face to face and feel it is important to have a physical presence.

Do you try and restrict your time online? Why or why not? Yes! We try to have something in mind we hope to accomplish every time we’re in front of the computer. This doesn’t always work (we do occasionally lose some hours), but having a goal keeps us on track most of the time.

What do you love about the Internet? It’s inspiring to see all of the great stuff that people are doing and posting about online. But when we think about all people making & doing and NOT posting about it every second, that’s pretty mind boggling too.

How do you sell and/or promote your work on and off-line? Which do you prefer? We don’t really have a defined strategy for promoting our work online. We try to communicate the labor and intricacy of our work with words and pictures but that can be a real challenge. Our prints always look better in person, so we prefer to sell our work in person.

Up Next: Embrodery and Education

Christina Crook has been a regular contributor in the pages of UPPERCASE magazine and we’re happy to welcome her to the blog this week with a special guest post series on the case for being creative offline. Christina recently unplugged from the internet for 31 days, typing a daily letter rather than posting to her blog, surfing the net or turning to the computer for distraction, entertainment and affirmation.

Please join us every morning this week as Christina introduces us to other creatives and their off-line habits.

Christina’s documentation of her off-line experiment, Letters from a Luddite: What I Learned in 31 Days Off-line, is available through Blurb. 

Space to Create:

The Case for the Off-line Creative

by Christina Crook

In January, after half a year’s consideration, I stepped off-line for an entire month. The time was filled with a flurry of inspiration. Books were read. Projects were completed. The cobwebs were swept from the inner recesses of my busy head. I chronicled the project with a letter a day, sharing the thoughts, ‘aha’s, and frustrations of my off-line existence.

We are little gods on the Internet, often presenting only the best of ourselves online. That’s what makes the Work-In-Progress-Society such a unusual and refreshing affair. Here makers from across the world celebrate their unfinishedness and champion one another on to completeness.

We all need space, physically and mentally, to create. A desk. A corner. For the lucky ones: bright, airy studios where we can set our hands to work. Increasingly though, our space is mediated, and often cluttered, by the online space of the Internet.

I thought would be interesting to consider the on- and off-line habits of a few members of the UPPERCASE Work-in-Progress Society, uncovering our counterparts’ web habits in order to discover how we each can carve out the space we need to create.

Up Next: Textiles and Trampolines

Sarah writes:

“Now that you have defined some areas of interest, you need to schedule them into your daily calendar. If it helps, get a calendar that speaks to your creativity or mark an existing calendar in a way that it excites you when you look at it. You will be more likely to take the time if you are excited when you see it and it will give you something to look forward to each day.

Specifying the exact time is up to you. I actually started my own creative practice on Wednesdays with a project by Keri Smith called 100 Ideas. I began by picking one idea a day and allowed 10 minutes of time to create. When 10 minutes was up, I would leave it and move on to other activities. I then moved to my camera and began a creative journey that is as much a part of me today as it was when I began 3 years ago.

My own creative journey has now developed into a course called 100 Wednesdays, that I most recently taught to University of Georgia Fashion and Interiors Students as part of a creative course they were taking.

Some additional resources to see other creatives using daily practice in their own journeys are Marisa Anne of Creative Thursday and The Artists Way by Julia Cameron.”

Up next: Wrapping it up

When did you last take a moment for yourself & your creativity?

Sarah has found that as a creative entrepreneur she asks herself this at least weekly.

“Whether you work for yourself, for someone else or are just trying to find time to explore your creative side it is such a gratifying and fulfilling experience to allow creativity into your life. But how do you find that time when your busy life takes hold?

Like anything else, it has to become part of your daily or weekly routine. I have read many books, followed many blogs and asked many other artists this same question about finding the time and everyone has mentioned this idea of ritual. If you have a consistent exercise program, religious practice or the like you will find that it is much like those practices and can become an integral part of them as well.

Ritual is, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, “a series of actions or type of behaviour regularly and invariably followed by someone”

Sounds easy enough, right? Not so easy if you cannot define a time in your day to create. However, with a little guidance, you can start NOW on a small creative journey of your own.”

Up Next: What do you like to do?