The Practice of Making Do Workshop Series
The Practice of Making Do is a debut series of improv quilting workshops that have evolved out of the lessons learned during my artist residency at the San Francisco dump. I emerged from a four month immersive practice of making do with a deeper respect for the stories and intrinsic patterns found in the intimate materials of everyday life, and a renewed appreciation for serendipity, for what is given and shows up when.
In 2016 during a four-month residency at Recology AIR, I had the opportunity to create an exhibition of quilts and sculptures from materials scavenged entirely from the San Francisco dump. My proposal for the residency was to actively engage in and model a practice of making do, to create the works for the exhibition. My starting point looked to the scrap quilts of my grandmothers’ era of the Great Depression and the value they placed on thriftiness, as a strategy for life after system collapse. And wow! Here we are living through system collapse a short four years later.
I witnessed mortality on a cultural scale, as I watched never ending mountainous piles of discarded materials flow through the Public Disposal and Recycle Area, day after day. Lifetimes’ of acquiring, owning, building and creating eventually find their way to the dump. It hit home realizing that all we strive for materially will find its turbulent resting place in the dump some day, including my own creations. My experience of the dump inspired me to think and create in more receptive and sustainable ways.
The practice of making do was a humbling experience, reminding me that creativity flows through me, I am a vessel, translator and collaborator with forces and factors greater than myself. My role as a creator is not to control these forces but to receive and interpret, listen and respond.
When I first made a quilt 30 years ago, I sketched out my log cabin pattern and designed how my colors would shift from light to dark. I went out and bought all the materials I needed to make the quilt and then I made the quilt according to my plan. Once my creation was finished I marveled at what I had made. It didn’t exist before I imagined it and now it is here in the world. I created it from nothing. That kind of active creativity is such a rush! I was in control and powerful enough to realize my creative imagination.
That is one way to create and it has its value. The experience of creating something out of nothing develops our sense of agency—that we have some power in the world to make imagined outcomes real. It’s a blessing I wish for every person to experience. It’s also important to recognize that there is a supreme amount of privilege in this concept of creativity. Not everyone has the economic resources to go out and buy every thing they need to create what they design or imagine.
More importantly this model of creating is not the only way to create. A culture that upholds and primarily participates in this active and privileged way of creating where producers/creators/manufacturers have unlimited access to whatever materials and means necessary to make their visions real, is damaging to the environment and to marginalized communities. It’s an unsustainable illusion. So let me introduce another model for thinking about the way we create…
Improv Quilting Livestream Series Debut
The Practice of Making Do Series of improv quilting workshops, conversations and demos is focused on resourcefulness, repurposing and sustainable relationships, designed to awaken the receptive creator within you. The opening conversation and demo on January 30, The Practice of Making Do, introduces and invites exploration of the key concepts around sustainable, receptive creativity, and strategies for resourcing and stash building repurposed materials for quilting.
Each workshop focuses on a different score and set of design and pattern goals, that will also build your technical and composition skills as an improviser. The mixture of meaningful materials, and the relationships and associations that they carry promise to playfully tap your imagination and memory, break you out of fixed habits, and bring you closer to harnessing your emotional energy to speak your truth through the patterns and quilts that you make.
Throughout the series we will be working with a variety of materials that carry personal and cultural histories, stories and meanings such as men’s shirts, jeans, household linens, t-shirts, pockets of all sorts, and textured clothing such as corduroy, wool, satins and velvets. There is also room for existing quilt cotton stash, because if you’ve already bought it, it’s part of the waste stream, so let’s use it!
AND THERE WILL BE GUESTS!
I am overjoyed to announce an amazing lineup of guest speakers for The Practice of Making Do series! Each workshop will open with a different maker sharing a few words on sustainable practices and the topic of making do as it pertains to their work.
Many of us are rediscovering and piecing the materials of our daily lives into our quilts, sometimes along with our existing stash. I hope you will join this overdue conversation on sustainable quilting practices. Let’s get our creative reuse juices flowing—together!
Here’s the complete schedule! Visit my Livestream Workshop page for registration information.
1/30/21 • 11 am to 3 pm • The Practice of Making Do: Gleaning & Gathering with Sarah Nishiura $64
2/6/21 • 11 am to 4 pm • Anatomy of A Men’s Shirt with Zak Foster • $79
2/27/21 +2/28/21 • 11 am to 3 pm • Corduroy, Velvet, Satin & Checks with Chris English • $129
3/13/21 • 11 am to 4 pm • Pocket Quilt with Chawne Kimber • $79
4/10/21 + 4/11/21 • 11 am to 3 pm • Family Linen Remix in Cabins & Steps with Heidi Parkes & Coulter Fussell • $129
5/1/21 • 11 am to 4 pm • Memory Lane T-Shirt Quilt with Carole Lyles Shaw • $79
5/22/21 +5/23/21 • 11 am to 3 pm • Field of Jeans with Sandra Johnson • $129
Total lecture + workshop value is $688
Includes 5-months of BravePatch membership, value is $100
Total Season Pass value is $788
Available now for the low price of $649 • Savings of $139
Registration will open for individual workshops approximately 2-3 weeks prior to the event dates. Equity sliding scale pricing will be available on individual workshops. Review our NEW equity pricing guidelines.
Free Related Events
Recology AIR Connects: Cultivating Common Ground
Tue, January 12, 2021, 8:30 PM – 9:30 PM Eastern Standard Time
The Recology Artist in Residence Program is pleased to announce the launch of our new panel series, Recology AIR Connects, where we will focus on varying themes throughout the year, connecting artists and ideas. The first panel in the series, “Cultivating Common Ground,” will bring together three former Recology artists with social practices that foster connection, gratitude, and mindfulness.
In conversation with our moderator and Recology AIR alum, Victor Yañez-Lazcano, Bill Basquin, Ramekon O'Arwisters, and Sherri Lynn Wood will share their take on what it means to cultivate common ground through their art practice, as well as what they are currently working on, and how we can all stay connected to both our community and the planet.
Register here for free to receive the zoom link.
Recology AIR Instagram Takeover! Follow @RecologyAIR on Instagram. I will be taking over their IG account the weekend of January 8-10, 2021, prior to the panel and will be sharing more sneak peaks of the Practice of Making Do Workshop Series.