Craft & Sustainability



I was very happy the other week when I was invited to participate in a workshop seminar on Craft and Sustainability. I had to do a short presentation on my practice and how it related to crafts and sustainability, then we had group discussions all afternoon.



I want to do a series of posts about what I have learnt from these discussions and all the interesting things that UK arts and crafts people are doing out there. Here are my rough, incomplete notes so far:


Craft & Sustainability
Plymouth College of Art
28th May 2009

http://crafts-and-sustainability.plymouthart.ac.uk/


Fairtrade Goldmine – Bolivia


Clare Moloney - River & Cloth – Merton Abbey Mills – 3 stages: Dyeing, Stitching, Printing: http://www.riverandcloth.co.uk/


Jonathan Garratt – Potter – “Craft has lost its way, there is a lack of leadership” – Wood fired garden pots, tableware and ‘garden punctuation’: http://www.jonathangarratt.com/



Clara Vuletich – Textile designer – TED project, Chelsea College of Art – Compiling an archive, library resource for textile designers of ways to reduce impact on the environment: http://www.tedresearch.net/resource_about.htm


Richenda Macgregor - Transition Town – ‘Sustainable Makers’ Founder (founded in 2007) – “What is the role of the maker in this time?” “Everyone can make” – Re-skilling, skills exchange from older generation to the younger and from younger to the older – Mobile hub for re-skilling workshops and outreach: http://totnes.transitionnetwork.org/ http://totnes.transitionnetwork.org/thearts/sustainablemakers


Nick Carrey – Furniture Maker – “so skilled you get separated from life” – people get overawed by skills

"The Craftsman" by Richard Sennett (Penguin Books, 2008)

Submissions & Amazon.co.uk purchases

This submission is from Kate Gallon. Its a wonderfully playful book, and it will be interesting to see how that comes across in the microfilm format.

New books from amazon arrived on my doorstep at the same time as Kates book, now I just need to find time to read them.....

"The Big Archive - art from bureaucracy" by Sven Spieker (MIT Press, 2008) & "What is Research in the Visual Arts? - Obsession, Archive, Encounter" edited by Michael Ann Holly & Marquard Smith (Yale University Press, 2008)

New Work from my New Studio


Monoprints onto Photographs-Experiments

Some Accepted Submissions - Micro-Pages

I have received some great image submissions to Micro-Pages. Here are a few photos of just some of the ones I have accepted. Lots still to do... Will keep you posted.

Kim Pilgrim:

Pilar Cortes:


Annabel Ralphs: