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Craft as therapy
Aug. 22nd, 2017 08:29 amOver the past several months I've been making a lot of craft things; felt things, button things (sassypants buttons made from my grandma's vintage 1960s magazines), quilt things, embroidery things, etc.
Because making things is therapy. It's also an impulse that has a wild and unwieldy inertia. I've always Made Things to keep myself occupied.
Books of poetry (that I wrote).
Binders of short stories (also self-written).
I painted a mural on the walls of the GTC (Gifted, Talented, Creative) room in my high school library when I'd get bored in algebra and I had already finished all my homework during the work time.
I made dozens of paper butterflies to hand-laminate and hang in my room as a kid.
There are books with pressed flowers hidden among their pages.
At one point I had a wall covered in pictures of people, their likenesses framed by cutting up old greeting cards.
I cannot tell you how many things I carved out of ivory soap bars.
I cut and peeled dozens of new-growth branches for smooth, tangy-sweet smelling twig sculptures.
I used to take spare electrical wire, in all its bright-striped colors, and carefully wrap jewelry.
In meetings I'll make whole scenes-worth of play-doh.
I have notebooks--from way back and currently--full of elaborate doodles and compulsive bits of poetry.
I spent hours scanning pictures in a big family photo project.
I had a blog with hundreds and hundreds of creative tableaus.
Writing, creating, making, growing.
It's impulsive, but I also follow through to exhaustion. I'll stay up until 3 a.m. because I feel the need to Make A Thing. There is no deadline, but I want to Create. It's peaceful in the dark quiet of the night, doing a Thing with your hands. Making a Thing.
I took kolrosing (decorative wood carving) and paper cutting classes at the ASI, and now I have two more things. I have two packages of loose felt and felting supplies for yet another thing. A friend joked about doing a seed art party for next year's state fair...I'm not going to lie, it holds appeal. It's my kind of obsessive meticulousness.
Many of the project results I give away. Because, despite the amount of work--all the hours upon late hours--that go into them, the delight of a finished product is fleeting. It's more fun to assemble 500 buttons through cutting out magazines and laying out the pieces and carefully matching picture with phrase and gluing it all together than it is to actually HAVE the products. I could sell them, but there becomes an element of hassle in being timely, shipping, etc. The joy is not in the denouement. It's in the controlled and consistent arduousness of the journey. In all the ways one finds of stretching; "Can I do X? I wonder if Y will work. I've made this at x scale, what if I tried for z scale. What if I made this more intricate. How intricate can I go? How far can I push this?"
I haven't decided whether it's willpower or lack thereof. There's a stubbornness to it, but also an impulsiveness. A lack of control wherein one must follow their drive to Do. But then...the follow-through. I decided to start running about 13 years ago--when we first moved into our house--and I've done it every single week (with some travel/having-a-baby exceptions) since. When I set to do a thing, I will do a thing.
Right now it's the magazines. I have felt things and ideas (and more ideas), but I need to get the magazines out of my house. No one wanted to throw them away--they are "cool"--but what do you do with magazines from the 1960s once you've looked at them? You don't keep them around making everything smell old. You cut them into bits.
When I've worked through my stack I'm sure I'll switch to some other therapy.
Maybe it's best I never learn to knit/crochet.
Because making things is therapy. It's also an impulse that has a wild and unwieldy inertia. I've always Made Things to keep myself occupied.
Books of poetry (that I wrote).
Binders of short stories (also self-written).
I painted a mural on the walls of the GTC (Gifted, Talented, Creative) room in my high school library when I'd get bored in algebra and I had already finished all my homework during the work time.
I made dozens of paper butterflies to hand-laminate and hang in my room as a kid.
There are books with pressed flowers hidden among their pages.
At one point I had a wall covered in pictures of people, their likenesses framed by cutting up old greeting cards.
I cannot tell you how many things I carved out of ivory soap bars.
I cut and peeled dozens of new-growth branches for smooth, tangy-sweet smelling twig sculptures.
I used to take spare electrical wire, in all its bright-striped colors, and carefully wrap jewelry.
In meetings I'll make whole scenes-worth of play-doh.
I have notebooks--from way back and currently--full of elaborate doodles and compulsive bits of poetry.
I spent hours scanning pictures in a big family photo project.
I had a blog with hundreds and hundreds of creative tableaus.
Writing, creating, making, growing.
It's impulsive, but I also follow through to exhaustion. I'll stay up until 3 a.m. because I feel the need to Make A Thing. There is no deadline, but I want to Create. It's peaceful in the dark quiet of the night, doing a Thing with your hands. Making a Thing.
I took kolrosing (decorative wood carving) and paper cutting classes at the ASI, and now I have two more things. I have two packages of loose felt and felting supplies for yet another thing. A friend joked about doing a seed art party for next year's state fair...I'm not going to lie, it holds appeal. It's my kind of obsessive meticulousness.
Many of the project results I give away. Because, despite the amount of work--all the hours upon late hours--that go into them, the delight of a finished product is fleeting. It's more fun to assemble 500 buttons through cutting out magazines and laying out the pieces and carefully matching picture with phrase and gluing it all together than it is to actually HAVE the products. I could sell them, but there becomes an element of hassle in being timely, shipping, etc. The joy is not in the denouement. It's in the controlled and consistent arduousness of the journey. In all the ways one finds of stretching; "Can I do X? I wonder if Y will work. I've made this at x scale, what if I tried for z scale. What if I made this more intricate. How intricate can I go? How far can I push this?"
I haven't decided whether it's willpower or lack thereof. There's a stubbornness to it, but also an impulsiveness. A lack of control wherein one must follow their drive to Do. But then...the follow-through. I decided to start running about 13 years ago--when we first moved into our house--and I've done it every single week (with some travel/having-a-baby exceptions) since. When I set to do a thing, I will do a thing.
Right now it's the magazines. I have felt things and ideas (and more ideas), but I need to get the magazines out of my house. No one wanted to throw them away--they are "cool"--but what do you do with magazines from the 1960s once you've looked at them? You don't keep them around making everything smell old. You cut them into bits.
When I've worked through my stack I'm sure I'll switch to some other therapy.
Maybe it's best I never learn to knit/crochet.
