Michael sent me this quote from Rosemary Hill, art historian:
I sat outside embroidering at Jasmine, a nearby Vietnamese deli.
A young man at the next table asked me what I was doing, and I showed him the quote I'd written down. We ended up talking off and on for the whole time he ate his pho––he's a painter, newly moved to town.
To make objects by hand in an industrial society, to work slowly and uneconomically against the grain, is to offer, however inadvertently, a critique of that society.Yesterday I chose from my Steeple People Thrift Store stash a linen runner that someone had barely started to work on long ago, and I began to stitch the words.
--From “Explorations of a Third Space,” Times Literary Supplement, April 23, 1999. Quoted in Morris Berman, The Twilight of American Culture (2000).
I sat outside embroidering at Jasmine, a nearby Vietnamese deli.
A young man at the next table asked me what I was doing, and I showed him the quote I'd written down. We ended up talking off and on for the whole time he ate his pho––he's a painter, newly moved to town.
A couple people walking past stopped and commented too.
I'm finding that sewing in public solves the problem of eye contact with friendly strangers: You always have your sewing to look at, if it's awkward, there's a gap in the conversation, or you don't want to engage. Very handy.
Nifty! I wonder if this might be the first time the word critique has been embroidered.
ReplyDeleteinteresting comment on handmade.
ReplyDeleteI used to take a small strip of piecing ...made making a quilt far less daunting and quicker by getting it done by ten minutes here and there
Sketching in public works much the same. People often look over my shoulder and sometimes engage in conversation. Sometimes, especially when I am traveling, I offer to let kids draw in my sketchbook or on other paper I have along.
ReplyDeleteGZ: Right! Those ten minutes add up!
ReplyDeleteBINK: I love that you let kids draw in your sketchbook!