I graduated from art school in 1977, was married in 1978 and started exhibiting at Craft Fairs in 1979. My career started a long time ago. One of the advantages of doing national juried craft markets like the Morristown show was local newspapers featured me regularly, and I accumulated an entire scrapbook of aging news clippings. I haven’t looked at them in many years.
My mother was a tailor and educator and collected a series of binders full of news clippings, leaflets, pamphlets, magazine articles and all kinds of reference materials all of which were passed to me and reside on one of my bookshelves in the studio. I never get around to reading them…
I have tons, no exaggeration, of textile journals, magazines, and such, including the entire collection of Threads Magazine, along with two DVD’s of the entire collection. I never have a chance to read any of the back issues.
I have a few years worth of Belle Armoire Magazine, and Interweave Press’s Piecework, and years worth of Vogue Patterns Magazine and Sewing Today. I never get a chance to look at them. The Piecework magazines have a few lovely knitting patterns, and some great historical information on lacemaking, but otherwise, they just take up space. I don’t know why I still have years worth of Belle Armoire Magazines on the shelf. The Vogue Patterns Magazines and the old Sewing Today issues are pretty much outdated, most of the patterns aren’t available anymore, but there are some important articles that I’d like to save. I never have a chance to read any of them.
I have a daughter who is home from college, desperately seeking a job and it is a bit late in the season to find something temporary. Since I am still paying all her expenses for one more year in college, she is going into her senior year, I figured, as long as she is here, I’m putting her to work. I’m pretty spoiled since she is such an amazing worker, and is so incredibly organized, and loves those kind of tasks…
Soooooo, I have hired an archivist. Yep, that’s right. I have my lovely college senior stationed at a work table in my studio, with stacks of binders and magazines, and news clippings and she is scanning and archiving everything I throw at her. The goal is to move out a lot of paper this summer.
My husband picked up a 1 terabyte Passport Ultra, about the size of a deck of cards, and we should just about fill it.
First Brianna scanned and printed all appropriate articles from back issues of Piecework and archived them while also rearranging my knitting files. All projects are compiled by type.
Then she spent yesterday sorting through and scanning all of my news clippings and exhibit brochures and postcards from the 1980’s, creating an 81 slide PowerPoint presentation with those.
Today she started on my mother’s vast 10 volume collection of sewing related clippings and leaflets. Those will be converted to PDF’s and digitally filed so I’ll be able to reference by category. This will become really helpful when I’m writing a sewing related article. I’ve already found things I didn’t know I had that can be useful to lectures I already give.
If she stays with it, this will take the better part of the summer. I can already hear the faint sighs of relief from my overstuffed and broken shelving as pounds of paper materials are removed. I’ll be bringing the back issues of Piecework Magazine and Belle Armoire to the knitting and weaving guild meetings, otherwise, they are getting tossed recycled.
Meanwhile I’m focusing on the next trip, coming soon, to Eugene Textile Center in Oregon where I’ll be teaching a five day garment construction intensive. There are still a couple of spots available if anyone is just itching to jumpstart those garment construction skills. The class starts June 11, and runs for five days. I’m cutting and printing and packing and shipping and the studio is buzzing. I just shipped a box to Threads Magazine for photography for my upcoming article in the fall.
And if anyone is available Saturday night, the opening for Peters Valley faculty exhibit is from 5-7pm. I have a garment in the show.
Stay Tuned…
Wholey Malolly! Go Brianna!! is all I can say 🙂 But I totally understand the : “I never have a chance to read any of them”. I have piles also………….
Oh yes….I am also sorting and eliminating this Summer…tho I have a sneaky feeling I will still be at it by New Year. Wish I had a Brianna to help.
See you Saturday night at Peters Valley!
As the CDs for periodicals come out I purchase them and recycle my magazines. It is not as nicely indexed as Brianna’s work will be but it certainly takes up less space on my shelves! Thanks for a wonderful read!
WOW Can we hire Brianna? That’s a lot of work! You are very lucky to have a talented daughter. Tell her Hi if you can get her away from the computer.