SHE'S CRAFTY

[May 1st, 2002] If you stitch, bead or get off on twisting tiny wire into toe rings, you can turn that homespun mojo into money (really!). New York-based craft webzine Getcrafty.com is a brilliant resource for the career-minded Maker of Things. The instructions for knit bikinis and A-line skirts are matched by pounds of sound advice about how to achieve greater independence and empowerment (personal and financial) through ingenuity and thrift (see, craft isn't just about messing with fabric scraps and hot glue).

It's a movement that attempts to mix pragmatic cost-saving strategies and anti-corporate idealism with hands-on skills. Getcrafty segments on "living rich" during periods of unemployment and managing the success of a small-scale design business offer the war stories and dirty secrets self-employed artists used to have to learn the hard way (i.e., the full-blown mental meltdown that occurs when a Japanese perfume company suddenly wants 10,000 of your hand-painted flowerpots).

Maybe it's our pioneer-libertarian lineage, maybe it's the high unemployment, but all over Portland, creative types are banding together to share similar wisdom and get fledgling craft enterprises off the ground. Local nonprofit Trillium Artisans provides training, materials acquisition, product design and marketing support to Southeast Portland artisans with crafters' itch. The artisans, primarily low-income women with families in the Lents neighborhood, make premium crafts--from haute handbags to shabby-chic birdhouses--mostly from reclaimed waste material. Some of the stuff is not so good, but some of it is; such is life with any collective enterprise. Program participants build skills and community, stretch their creative muscles, and bring more income into their households--and would-be waste gets recycled into meaningful handmade goods.

Getcrafty.com also maintains an online store that exposes the big wide world to the one-of-a-kind produce of its craft community: felted pillows ($100), saucy panties made from printed Ts ($24), and hand-painted, asymmetrical tops ($60).

Getcrafty higher-ups/contributors Jean Railla and Tsia Carson describe their motive for creating the site as "enlightened self-interest," but an altruistic craft-can-save-the world vibe has taken over.

Says creative director Carson: "We consume too much. We make too much. I hope the current craft fad isn't simply another way to consume--we want crafters to see themselves as a group of people who have agency and can engage in the world and change it through acts large and tiny."

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Subverting the master-slave arrangement typical of storeowners and crafters by staging group meet-and-greet sales events. Portlander Susan Beal (a.k.a. Susan Stars) is a regular contributor to Getcrafty--she's also made a recent editorial splash in hipster DIY magazine ReadyMade with her advice on making and marketing one-of-a-kind clothes. In addition to the slick website she just completed to better connect with customers, she and jeweler Janey Garnet have organized their second "Riches at Rimsky's" sale, which corrals a diverse gang of women artists to sell their unique goods in the snug nooks of the Southeast coffee-and-cake den.

Beal waxes ecstatic about the power of craft to bring together personal artistry, community values and financial gain. "No one who makes craft is looking for a contract with Target," she says.

Instead, crafters like Stars (she prefers the term "artist") are striving to shuck off the QVC connotations of what is actually a sturdy little business. They're taking the greasy gears of production and sales into their own gluey-and-glittery hands.