Extreme Craft

Grand Bahamas

We're in the limbo period between Christmas and New Year's, so that mean's it's time for JUNKANOO!!!!  Some of you are nodding your heads knowingly, and some of you are scratching your heads.  I was in the latter category until I heard a radio story on Junkanoo earlier in the week.  I don't know where Junkanoo's been all my life!  Apparently, there's a depiction of a Junkanoo parade in the James Bond movie Thunderball! 

 

Junkanoo is a festival that occurs in the Bahamas on the morning of Boxing Day (the day after Christmas).  Bands with drums and horns roam the streets in the early morning, making you wish you hadn't reached for that last rum-spiked eggnog.  The parades feature groups of costumed dancers and musicians called "gangs" that are similar to Mardi Gras "krews" in New Orleans. 

 
 
The costumes are one of the most important elements of the celebration, and they have evolved over the years from being made out of rags and bits of cloth to being adorned with sponges native to the Bahamas to the modern costumes, which are made entirely out of CREPE PAPER!  The Junkanoo troupes spend massive amounts of time working on their costumes, which consist of tons of fringed pieces all glued together on cardboard or cloth backing.  That's some serious papercraft!

 

Thanks to Flickr user SirAdderly for providing some of the photos I've swiped here.  If anybody else has Junkanoo photos to share, I'd love to see them.  You've already missed your chance on Boxing Day to see the madness, but supposedly, certain towns in the Bahamas also get their paper costumes out again for a New Years celebration.  Like all things that can be commercialized for tourism, The Bahamas have added a third Junkanoo celebration that occurs in the summer.  Yes, Junkanoo has a dark side.  The Baha Men (of "Who Let the Dogs Out" infamy) are active in the Junkanoo world.  Doh!

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8363028@N08/3549378285

Now is the time to break out your crepe paper and start preparing for next year, my friends.  Maybe I can finally write off that trip to the Bahamas I've been wanting to take on my taxes next year.

LINK

Watching Wallpaper Peel

I've been doing a bunch of things while on hiatus from Extreme Craft.  First and foremost, Claire and I have been working on the Victorian house that we bought back in August.  In the back of my mind, I knew how much time and energy it would take, but I somehow still managed to underestimate it.

In addition to the house, we've been maintaining a blog for Readymade magazine called "Keeping Up With the Johnsons".  In the blog, we give a blow-by blow of finding the house, finding the courage to buy the house, finding the patience to deal with knuckleheaded lenders, the vision we have for our living space, and the sheer elbow grease it has taken to achieve it.

I've been waiting for ages to put up a post on the blog about all of the crazy wallpaper we found when we started tearing through 100-plus years of accumulation.  Just follow the link to Keeping up with the Johnsons, and you can join me in my wallpaper reverie.  Even though there are some fabulous indie wallpaper producers out there, the fact is that they just don't make wallpaper like they used to.  The bottom layers we found were all hand-printed with delicate colors and metallic inks...and extreme craft that's been lost to the ages.

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Oh Say Can You "C"?

The C word is misunderstood.

The C word is a work of art.

The C word is cutting edge.

The C word is passed down from generation to generation.

The C word is desireable

The C word is unique.

I'm fairly bursting with things to share with you that I didn't get to post on Extreme Craft during my unintended hiatus.  At the top of the list is writing about a campaign by craftscotland, an outgrowth of the Scottish Arts Council.

This one minute short is just one of the efforts by craftscotland's new CEO, Emma Walker, to build awareness of craft in Scotland.  The spicy ad campaign, entitled "The C Word" has been rapturously received by the public in the UK, as it has been spread through television airings, as a trailer before movies, and of course, virally.

They do things different in Scotland...at least craftscotland does.  Craftscotland is sneaking their message into as many places as possible, including placing Scottish craft onto movie sets, commercials and other unlikely (but highly visible) venues.  The organization understands that craft has a brilliant history in Scotland, but it also occupies a significant place in contemporary culture.  By calling the campaign "The C Word", craftscotland is commenting on the fact that until recently, many artists and craftspeople cringed when they heard the word.  In the United States, prominent museums and learning institutions dropped the name "craft" from their names, just when a major craft resurgence was brewing.  I would suspect that the term "craft" had similar associations in Scotland.

Just as gay rights activists reclaimed the "Q" word and African-Americans tried reclaiming the "N" word, craftscotland is bringing together generations of makers and a new generation of eco-conscious consumer, rallying them around "the C word".  I certainly didn't need a government organization to empower and legitimize me, but it's interesting to see the suits taking notice. 

I live in an area where handmade is more than a marketing ploy--it's a way of life.  People all over the world are discovering that the C word is above all....sexy.  

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Students Are Finally Using Trojans!

I've been working on a paper about the use of craft as a "Trojan horse", and I ran across this great, literal use of the Trojan horse by students at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia.  Back in March, art students at Tyler constructed four large cardboard horses, then sneakily delivered them to the other art schools in town.  I was disappointed that the Tyler students didn't put on stripe-y shirts and berets and hide in the horse, but they DID leave a manifesto of sorts, declaring "war" on the other schools:

Oh snap!  When I was an art student, the most worked up we ever got was when the gas station down the street raised their prices on malt liquor. 

Responses from the other art schools were varied.  Here's a pretty lame video response from students at Moore College of the arts...although I can totally appreciate their catty nitpicking of the Tyler students' design prowess.  

University of the Arts actually RETALIATED against Tyler, although I understand it took them a week to deliver the cut off horse head back to Tyler.  If they had shown some real initiative, I think they could have snuck the head into the bed of Tyler's Dean while they were sleeping.

I'm all for art students making things interesting.  The other schools seemed to be talking big last Spring, but I'm unsure if anyone ever followed through.  If anybody has updates, please email me!

Link via Dudecraft