Fine Points

Update: I got the approval! My sincere thanks to the OCF Board and the Craft Inventory crew for maintaining this opportunity.

 I'm waiting to hear if my OCF logo items were approved. I keep telling myself to be patient and have trust, and have faith in my clear self-expression, but darn if I am not anxious about it. I had a "grandfathered" logo item, which is what you get if you are approved for at least five years. You still have to apply each year, but you are not judged, unless I suppose the quality of your work shows significant decline. I decided to stop making the silk scarves and flags I had been making.

They never did sell very well, and I had to make the price artificially low to get any interest in them. They were gorgeous, no doubt about that, but the many processes to get them to be that way were fraught with ways to ruin them, and they didn't like being taken to the dusty woods and hung in the sun. I never mastered the display or the packaging, and when I broke my foot the same year as I secured a big printing contract in April, I didn't make any new ones. I didn't make any new ones last year either, and I felt that was really a breach of my contract. A logo item is supposed to be something precious. Since mine were dated, it was right there that none said 2013. When I finally admitted that none were going to say 2014, I knew it was over.

I'm generally bad at letting go, but I think I will be able to handle this. I can always bring them back and re-jury them. My major plan of shifting from clothing to silk seems impractical. Sure, silkscreened silk is fairly unusual and luscious and wearable, but silk is expensive, has to be imported from China, and is quite difficult to work with. Pricing them to reflect the work is a huge challenge.

But I still want to get out of the fashion clothing business. It's going to take awhile. Instead of trying to make it with silk, I turned to the items I already make, that do sell. My hats are solid as a product, and I think I will be able to continue with them indefinitely, within my physical limitations. I enjoy them, my customers enjoy them, and although they are a commercial hat that I decorate, I buy great quality hats, use plenty of artistry in the decoration, and am working on some ideas that will involve more handwork.

My tote bags are the same. I search out and buy really good quality bags. I keep the price down a bit too low to make the kind of profit a businessperson is supposed to, but working for two cents an hour has never bothered me. I am the boss, and I take lots of breaks and take bike rides when I want. I put a lot into the decorating, making the art and screens, doing all the printing myself, and trying to make beautiful complex designs that people will love. In the craft of screenprinting, the t-shirt or tote bag is considered a blank canvas, and the item significantly transformed by the work. My bags definitely meet this standard.

I also, just to be clear, pack them up and haul them to the blocks every Saturday, and dry them out when they get wet, give them away when they get ruined, and figure out ways to keep them in top quality until they sell. A person gets a lot for their $10 when they buy one of my bags, and people love the more expensive versions too. (I charge more for the ones I dye, and for the more expensive styles.)

So in preparation for my latest shift, I went to my extensive collection of OCF logos and made one the right size, with the right areas for ink and no ink, essentially re-drawing the logo to suit my purposes. I kept it as accurate as possible. I made two screens, different sizes (I would charge a customer $50 for that.) I ordered a lot of different bag samples, to see what was really out there for me to use. I printed up five, chose four for the jurying, labeled them, filled out the form, paid my $10 fee. So just for the chance to put them before the decision-makers, I invested at least $100 worth of work. Not a problem.

I would imagine all the people who make logo items go through this process. You can't jury an idea, and thank goodness, it isn't about name recognition or how much you pay the Fair or help the Fair. It is a simple voting evaluation process, done by the Board and organized by the Craft Inventory crew.

It has taken a lot of years to get the process right, and it seems pretty fair the way it is currently being done. However, unless the Board member has a working knowledge of a lot of crafts, they might not know just what they are evaluating.

I'm scared because what I submitted looks like a simple, commercial tote bag with a simple print of a very familiar icon. Nothing about it says years of dedication or dollars of investment. I thought a lot about making a multicolor, splashy logo print, but I didn't do it for two reasons. One, that would really be a lot of effort for a speculative end, and it would still likely look like a simple product, because in the age of computers, we have seen that logo in every kind of multicolored glory. The Elders wanted a t-shirt made, but they wanted a multicolor peach with a green leaf, etc., and I just can't print something like what you see on a computer or on a letterhead. People's expectations have passed beyond what can be screenprinted by hand.

I have to print each color of ink with a squeegee that I hold in both hands, and to use the kind of waterbase ink I use, I have to do it rather quickly, and if I am doing more than one color I have to do it even more quickly, and tote bags are hard to print on because they are so textured, and I have found that I really can't be all that ambitious within the craft. At least not on a $10 tote. So to think of doing many dozens of multicolored fancy logos between mid-April and July, not to mention making the investment in the bags, dyeing them, sewing the ones that rip during the dyeing, printing them with my old arms and back, I have limits. I knew if I wowed the Board with a fancy print, I would not be able to deliver the quantity of them needed, at least this year. Not handmade ones anyway.

And the thing that bothers me the most about it all is not whether or not I get approved and get to make the bags, simple or complex, or who is evaluating me and what they know or see, or whether what I make will sell or whether I will make enough of them, or whether or not the bag market will be over-saturated or still be a good one. What really bothers me is that it is indeed possible to make and sell a complex, multicolored bag of great beauty, through the processes of direct print or heat transfers. These, to avoid a lengthy explanation, are not really hand-done processes. Direct print is done by a computer right onto the bag. Looks beautiful. Transfers are printed by machines on paper and then glued to the bag with heat. Plastic ink, plastic print, low durability, not significant handwork. Not handmade products. But customers think they are.

And those products are being sold at OCF and elsewhere, and being passed off as handmade products. Technology came and offered a way, and people took it. Several very popular artists I could name, but won't, use the transfers and the direct prints to make garments, and yes, to make tote bags. This might shock you, but you have bought these things at Saturday Market and at the OCF, and they were wonderful, and you loved them. I loved them. The totes with the birds and the beautiful peaches on them were lovely. They sold like hotcakes. The hoodies with the patches on the back, the commemorative shirts, the many many dozens and hundreds of event items that were in such high demand, were not handmade.

Yes, they were designed by wonderful and talented artists whom we like or even love, and they made a lot of people feel good on both sides of the transaction. The designs started out as art. They still appear to be art. They just aren't really craft, and the people who order them and take them out of the boxes aren't really craftspeople.

So there is one part of this dilemma. All of the Board members judging my crafts have seen these commercially made and decorated products offered by the Fair and they proudly use them and display them, and their expectation of what a tote bag can look like and the price it can demand are adjusted to fit that reality. My offering pales in comparison. I can't compete. And I shouldn't have to.

I get that the Fair, like any event, would not be sensible if it did not offer event merchandise to the willing public. Having this be in the Fair's budgetary control through the commemorative products is sensible and practical. Craftspeople have a hard time making enough things to satisfy that kind of demand, and we might just fail to do so, not bring enough shirts or bags or water bottles or whatever the public needed and was willing to buy. When the volume of official OCF items started to become apparent, I, as someone trying to sell t-shirts, felt pretty defensive. I didn't want to be petty, but my immediate thought was that I was paying a lot to be competed with in this way. I grew to believe that there was room for it, that there were enough people willing to buy things that it was kind of a fine detail that some of them weren't hand-crafted.

I've grown less willing to excuse it. If my logo bags are approved, I will at least feel that I have a fighting chance of survival selling them, since people really do enjoy buying from a real craftsperson. They enjoy feeling the connection, and being a part of that vital relationship, so I have that edge the official stuff will never have. It becomes murky when the commemoratives are the designs of a really popular artist, but I think that ship has sailed far and wide in the last few years. Those things sell. The Fair makes money. Everyone thinks they are buying a handmade item with that popular artist's work on it. Everyone is happy about it but curmudgeons like me, and of course we are partly just jealous. Because we can't compete. And we don't want to.

One thing I love about Saturday Market is that we do not compete. We all get the same 8x8, and we all pay the same $10 plus 10%. We make or break it through the ways we are individuals, and it is very direct. It is what is called a *level playing field.*

Saturday Market does sell tote bags, at cost, as a courtesy to customers, but they are printed by a member. (Yes, it is me.) OCF has made the effort in the last two years to have the staff shirts printed by members, and I applaud them loudly for that. It is a huge change and probably a lot more trouble and expense, but it makes me feel so much more valued and trusting. I don't know where the commemoratives are produced and there may indeed be some hand-crafted items among them, but having them be handcrafted is one shift I would like to see. Offering commercially made items to the public with one hand and trying to promote and restrict selling everything else to craftspeople is a tricky balancing act and it doesn't feel good. It's even hard to see things like the wonderful printed rayon peaches strung out from Odyssey. Those look handmade, but I don't think any Fair artist who works in printed and handpainted rayon made them. I love them, but I hate them too.

This offering of commercial goods has contributed to the erosion we've all noticed in what is being sold. It has made the atmosphere more welcoming of commercially made items, has made some craftspeople resentful and defiant, and I think we can do better. It might mean the Fair makes less money. It's not a small question to consider. It's in line with the small factory issue currently being addressed by Craft Inventory and Craft Committee. They seem okay, until you think about how they change the marketplace for the real hand-crafting artisan.

I'm certainly not going to be impolite if my items are not approved. Jurying is hard and I hate it and am so very grateful to have the grandmothered status that I do. I'm well aware that my goods wouldn't get into any of the high-end craft Fairs I used to do. The Fair keeps me alive and I do love it and I recognize how difficult it is to have coherent and consistent policies and practices. I don't expect perfection. I do want to keep going in the right direction.

I've said before that being this age (I'm about to turn 64 and the Fair and Market are both 45) brings a refinement stage. Those things that bother us become intolerable, or we learn to get more coherent excuses, or we change our behaviors to line up with our convictions. I want to keep making and selling at OCF, and keep myself alive and committed. I want to be honored and valued for what I do, and kept alive.

I want the same for my organizations. I'm willing to work for it. If I don't succeed in getting what I want (the logo approval) I'll be gracious. If I do, I'll do my best to walk the line of practical, sustainable, and beautiful effort. I'll probably make that multicolored peach in some do-able fashion. I'm very grateful to be here right now, a part of so many amazing efforts by so many exceptional people. I don't want to have any ugly confrontations or even any ugly thoughts.

I just want us all to keep going in what I see as the right direction. It sounds simpler than it is. It's a long walk, and this is a long post. I have to go. It's time for Jeopardy. Thank you for all you do. Thank you for listening.