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JRG Dissertation for Defense Final Crafting Objects, Selves, Links: The Embodied Production of Relational Exchange in Performances of Craft in the United States A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Jessie Glover IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Dr. Sonja Kuftinec – Adviser and Dr. Margaret Werry – Co-Adviser May 2011 © Jessie Glover 2011 Acknowledgements I am indebted to many crafters for their welcome, their generosity with their time, for their insights and enthusiasm, but I want to acknowledge a few in particular: Olivera Bratich, Emily Westenhauser, Amy Dalrymple, Sharon Dorsey, Alissa Sorenson, Trish Hoskins, Elisabeth Haldwell, Alex Martin, Kristina Wong, Kaoru Kinoshita, Nancy Mambi, Eiraan Lorsung, Faythe Levine, Callie Janoff, and Chrissie S. The cast of As It Is In Heaven surprised me with their creativity and commitment and really got this whole thing started, and Kym Longhi inadvertently gave me a research mantra in addition to one useful for performance. My advisors, Sonja Kuftinec and Margaret Werry, have been so generous and persistent with their feedback and guidance, evidencing a range and depth of insight that has deeply impacted and impressed me—they have on so many occasions motivated me to keep pushing, expecting more of me. I am incredibly thankful for their commitment to my project. David Valentine and Michal Kobialka each have contributed key discourses and critical frameworks in my education, and I consider myself fortunate to have them on my committee. I am thankful the support (financial and otherwise) provided by the University of Minnesota and the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance, and for the stimulating academic environment enhanced by the other graduate students in my program during the first several years of my graduate study. My mother Kathy Glover has made baskets since I was a child and has contributed to my fascination with the Shakers, Americana, and craft, and both she and i my father Dan Glover have been persistent in encouraging me in my dreams and struggles alike. The Wild Geese—Beth and Nick Dekker, Jacqui and Ryan Hoke, Amanda and Andy Anderson, and Katie Randall—have been confident in me for years and have each creatively inspired me. My mother Kathy, my sister Becky Glover, and my sister-in-law Lyndsay Boettcher have each provided incredibly generous childcare support, making it possible for me to write for long hours in the final year of the dissertation work. Andy Taylor read versions of each chapter and offered thoughtful feedback. Others from Central Vineyard (including Teresa Kobelt, Jeff and Adrienne Cannell, John and Kori McCollum, and Sheila Livingston) have demonstrated great support for me and emboldening enthusiasm for my pursuit. My beautiful son Max Ambrose Boettcher was born in February of 2010 and his arrival made the rhythm of life and writing such a pleasure. I am so grateful for him. Last, I’m endlessly thankful to Karl for his deep patience, constant love, relentless encouragement, and impassioned confidence in me. I am glad that I have gotten to do this with him in my company. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements i Table of Contents iii List of Figures iv Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Craft in Performance, Craft as Performance 25 Chapter 2: Performing Craft Circles 103 Chapter 3: Crafting Entrepreneurship 162 Chapter 4: Taking Craft Action Online 207 Conclusion 237 Notes 244 Works Cited 249 iii List of Figures In.1 – A production still from As It Is In Heaven 3 (Christy) In.2 – Handmade Nation DVD cover 11 (Levine indiecraftdocumentary.com) 1.1 – Liza Lou’s “Kitchen” 35 (sabine7) 1.2 – Kristina Wong in Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 49 (kristinawong.com) 1.3 – Selected November images from The Brown Dress Project 71 (Martin “The Brown Dress Project”) 1.4 – Alex Martin dancing in “The Undressing” 76 (Gruhl) 1.5 – Images from Massive Knit in Washington Square Park 82 (Massive Knit) 1.6 – Lisa Anne Auerbach’s Body Count Mittens 93 (Auerbach) 1.7 – Zabet Stewart’s chart for the “Fuck Cancer” pattern 97 (Stewart “Fuck Cancer”) 3.1 – Elisabeth’s America Online Drop Spindle 170 (property of the author) iv 3.2 – An AmyD skirt 172 (Dalrymple madebyamyd.com) 3.3 – Images from Craftin’ Outlaws 2006 195 (“Craftin’ Outlaws”) 3.4 – Pages from “Meet Your Maker! An Etsy.com Intervention” 204 (MduzyJ) v Introduction With “Crafting Objects, Selves, Links” I take up an ethnographic analysis of craft as a performance practice, an enacted and embodied production that contributes both to individual and collective subjectivity. As befits such a project, I begin by looking at a rehearsal process for a play. In the spring of 2005 I directed As It Is In Heaven, a work by Arlene Hutton that takes as its subject a stretch of time in a Kentucky Shaker community in the 1830s when young women began to see visions of angels. The Shakers are known for their exquisitely crafted furniture and everyday objects, for their utopian leanings and their gender-segregated living arrangements, and for their commitment to the notion that their everyday work was an act of worship. The Shakers’ ecstatic, charismatic origins had dimmed by the 1830s, so this moment of vision signaled a disruptive resurgence. The play calls for the nine actresses to remain on stage throughout the play to work on crafts, consistently reminding the audience of the Shakers’ commitment to these everyday tasks while the primary action of the play dwells on this more transparently extraordinary moment. I asked each actress to mime their crafts, extending an exploration of the interaction between the visible and invisible into the performance of craft. Each actress selected a craft appropriate to the play’s historical setting—for example, sewing or quilting or basket-making. The actresses then broke that craft practice down into the smallest possible steps and rehearsed those steps to render them repeatable and discrete. We worked with a movement coach, Kym Longhi, to realize the principles of mime. Each craft had to “live” in the body differently and each task had to have a 1 repeatable “integrity” of form and pacing. Kym noted that the most convincing mimes embraced this seeming paradox: in order to justify an invisible world to an audience, moving one’s hand toward an object requires first moving the hand slightly away from the object. Kym’s mantra was “Back to go forward.”1 I was fascinated by the decision-making processes the actresses engaged in throughout the production process. Each committed to the exacting work of mime but some decided to create neat invisible quilting stitches to demonstrate their character’s commitment to those details, while others stumbled with imaginary knitting needles and tangled loops of pretend yarn into sloppy rows to demonstrate their character’s lack of practice or lack of deep care for the task. In rehearsal and performance, the As It Is In Heaven cast repeated characteristic Shaker actions and cited the Shaker work/worship intentionality but each performer retained the capacity to be intimate or distant to those elements, going back to go forward in the manner of her choosing. This decision-making process was enacted in the relationships the production fostered as well. Some of the actresses leaned into the kind of “bonding” one expects to see in groups who work hard together, while others held themselves apart from the group. I hypothesize that this, for some, had to do with negotiating an ambivalent feeling toward the “bonding” imperative or toward the tightly-quartered community that was our subject in the play. While we were less interested in the Shaker idea of utopia, we brought into being a community, a temporary and experimental structure that made use of the rituals of rehearsal and the gestures of craft to accomplish our task. As the performers worked I realized our endeavor was less about creating characters that were first and foremost 2 distinct from one another. Rather, it was one which asked the performers to navigate the embodied gestures of a craft activity, then their own bodily way of rationalizing that behavior, and then the way the task impacted or jostled against the other people—in this way we endeavored to craft selves rather than build characters. Figure In.1 Production still from As It Is In Heaven (Christy) The production took place in the midst of what many would call a resurgence or a reinvigoration of craft practices in the United States. This resurgence is represented by an emerging and increasingly visible network of small-scale craft organizations, gatherings, and entrepreneurs, and it has also been marked by an expanding interest in the handmade look, feel, and narrative from large-scale retailers. In preparation for As It Is In Heaven I picked up knitting again myself with a more voracious appetite than I had before. In 3 rehearsal I began to consider the potential for examining the relationship between craft and performance, the implications of craft practice and how it constitutes both individuals and groups, and the possibility that the performance of craft is related in some way to the mythology of the “American” self-made subject. As It Is In Heaven is the conceptual starting point for this project. I became to my surprise a participant-observer even during this project and began to consider the possibility of craft culture as a field of inquiry. By investigating a series of physical and virtual sites via literature research, interviews, and participant-observation I have focused my research on the ways that performances of creative craft tasks produce objects at the same time that they open up a focal space for performances of self-hood and relationality.
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