The passing of the torch…

I am deeply saddened by the passing of Anne Field, another of the weaving greats of our time, another shuttle is silenced, and her loss will be felt throughout the weaving world.  By now all of the handweavers who follow my blog have probably heard that Anne, who has authored a number of wonderful weaving books, passed away after a long illness.  Anne was from New Zealand, and we were keynote speakers together at The Ontario Provincial Conference in spring of 2011.  As a matter of fact, I wrote a blog post about my experiences at the conference and particularly about the grace and gentleness of Anne Field, in spite of the fact that two months before the conference a devastating earthquake destroyed her entire studio.  You can read that post here. (It is towards the end.)

I’ve been thinking about Anne all week, as each weaving great leaves the rest of us behind to pass on to a new generation what it means to make something with their hands.

Today I did my annual trek over to a nearby school district, where I spent the day giving a fiber presentation to all of the second grade classes.  I talk about my role as an artist, a weaver, a teacher and a writer.  I spend time on each of those roles, and I love to begin with a conversation about what tools one needs as an artist.  I get the typical answers, paper, pencils and paint brushes, and of course paints, and water for the water colors, and someone invariably throws in that an eraser is necessary.  This morning though, I had lovely dark haired girl who sat over on the side look up from her position on the floor and say, “To be an artist, one needs ideas.”

Remember, these are second graders.  They were all trying to say things they thought would get approval, they knew they weren’t coming up with what I was looking for, and I expect that.  As a matter of course, I ask if words can be used as tools in art.  They aren’t sure how to answer that. How about movement, like dance?  What about sound, like music?  And then of course I begin to add in craft materials like clay and iron.  By now, everyone is just saying yes to anything I throw out there, because they now understand that the medium isn’t important.  It’s the ideas.  I could have hugged that little second grader for her amazing answer, because, that’s really all we need.  We just need ideas.  The rest comes.

Later on in the presentation, I talk a bit about the history of some of the fibers, I show silk worm cocoons, and the dead chrysalis inside, and I show a flax plant and some linen and of course wool.  I also show a cotton boll and talk about the invention of the cotton gin, and how Eli Whitney with his invention started the whole industrial revolution.  They are all too young to have studied the industrial revolution, but one studious looking little boy raised his hand and said quite matter of factly, that he had been reading all about the industrial revolution and his book said something different.  I was afraid to start a discussion about what his book actually said, since you don’t start a one on one discussion with 40 second graders sitting on the floor in front of you, you’ll loose them to chaos in a heart beat.  That a second grader in this day and age was actually reading sort of shocked me, especially since it was a non fiction historical book.

Much later on, when we took a break, the same studious second grader came up to me and said, in his most intellectual voice, “In Minecraft, we dye our wool with minerals, do you dye your wool with minerals?”  I was completely floored.  I’m guessing that more than half my readers don’t even know what Minecraft is.  I’ve watched my kids, it is a pretty intense and amazing video game, sort of like building cities from nothing, and I was stunned that second graders play this game regularly.

I get that this newest generation just entering the school system has a completely different world at their feet than we had.  The tools for learning have all changed.  Computers can do almost anything.  When one of the little girls asked me at the end if I liked to make clothes in my spare time, I turned it into a conversation about what they liked to do in their spare time.  There were a lot who answered sports.  This is that kind of town.  But mostly, I got answers of TV, or computer games.  No one, absolutely no child said they liked to read in their spare time.  Even the studious boy who plays Minecraft.

I watched these kids, and their intense curiosity about how the drop spindle worked (especially  since it was made from two CD’s.  I watched how they got under and explored the spinning wheel, I had to do it in really slow motion so they could understand how it functioned.  And I had a small four shaft Structo there and they loved that!  They started to see the twill structure in their jeans.  We talked about knits vs. wovens, and I showed them my knitted socks.  They made felted vessels for their teachers.

It was important to my generation to retain some of the knowledge of how to do many of the things that machines now do, how to still create something by hand, even though I can buy yarn, or cloth, or lace, or finished clothing, or knitted socks.  There is some wonderful sense of control when we labor over  a process and see the fruits of what we have done.

This next generation must not lose the ability to think, even though computers do all their thinking for them.  No wonder the education system is failing, kids are too influenced by things that are bigger grander and more far reaching than anything they find in a typical second grade classroom.  And yet, we talked about how important it is to not lose the skill of working with the mind or working with the hands.  They seemed to really get this and I was so encouraged that maybe the generation that comes along to replace us, won’t do things the way we did them, but won’t toss out what we’ve done either.  They will find their own ways, they will dye their wool with minerals, and they will approach art first with ideas.

I think the world will be OK after all…