The Legacy of Handmade Objects
[Music]
i want to take a few moments and talk
about a topic i call the legacy of
handmade objects
in order to get my arms around a topic
that’s huge i want to tell a few stories
which is something i love
and i want to highlight the lives of two
remarkable women
my grandmother maisie and my daughter
mary
maisie kelsey fitzgerald sly was my
paternal grandmother
granny slice we called her granny sly
was born in the mountains of virginia
in 1907 to an abjectly poor family
family’s story is that her parents died
in an institution called the poor house
something like a debtor’s prison
granny sly married young to escape her
childhood only to find herself plunged
into an alcoholic marriage with my
grandfather
who drank up all the money before it
ever made it home
my father tells stories of his dad
drinking vanilla extract out of the
cupboard
and siphoning alcohol off the top of
sterno cans in order to feed his
addiction
granny sly had eight children by the
time i came along
my grandfather had committed suicide one
of her children had died as an infant
the other children were scattered around
the world and there were dozens of us
grandchildren
and i can say that as a child i often
saw granny as kind of a bitter angry old
woman
perhaps as i think back now there might
be some reason for her to have felt that
way at times
but one year for christmas granny
decided to marshal her
her limited resources and create a gift
for each of the families of her children
i don’t remember her ever doing that any
other time
but this particular year drawing on some
knowledge of the past that i can’t trace
she decided to create embroidered
trapunto
framed pieces for each of her seven
surviving children and their families
just briefly trapunto is an embroidery
method where you stitch around the outer
edge
of figures on fabric in order to give it
a 3d effect
i know that granny’s resources were
limited i know that gathering
frame fabric glass fill material and
threads would have been a major expanse
and i also know that creating those
pieces would have taken the better part
of a year
i still have the trapunto piece that
granny sly made for our family
but i have to say it represents a
bittersweet memory
when we got it i think all the families
kind of looked at it
and thought hmm that’s not too pretty
and it’s kind of old-fashioned and some
of us
grandchildren were always a little
scared of granny
i know my parents hung it in the
basement
where it would seldom be seen
but as i’ve thought back through the
years and i’ve considered the life my
grandmother lived and understood some of
the struggles
that she endured that picture represents
a great deal
of perseverance and hope
in the midst of adversity
i’ve never been able to get rid of it it
doesn’t fit in
any of the decor in my home
but at the same time it’s an enduring
piece of who i
am and the legacy that i bring forward
i suspect every one of us has pieces
like this in our family histories
perhaps in our homes
in reclaiming those items and the
stories they tell we are connecting with
who we are as part of the human family
and those legacies are meant to be
carried forward
speaking of legacies my three children
are the beat of my heart
i look for every opportunity to spend
time with them
and to pass along their heritage to them
about 10 years ago my daughter mary and
i took a trip to greece
mary’s an accomplished photographer and
one day as we were rambling around
athens we stepped into a fabric shop
and mary took a photograph of the
proprietor an older man
standing in front of hundreds of bolts
of colorful fabric
when mary graduated from nursing school
i turned that photograph
into a cross-stitch creation
i’ve done something like this for each
of my children when they graduated from
college
now i can honestly say to mary and mary
can say to those who come after her
that for about 18 months working
approximately 24 hours
every week stitching well over 60
thousand stitches
i thought about mary and i thought about
the trip we took
and the images of that time together
no fabric no threads could ever be as
valuable as those memories
think about this that’s 725
760 seconds
of concentrated energy for one singular
purpose
something that i’ve discovered pretty
amazing as i’ve thought about these two
pieces the trapunto horses
and the county cross stitch fabric
my granny sly wanted to be a nurse
i know that because the family’s story
tells us that she worked in a
tuberculosis hospital as a young woman
and later she sat with aged patients
as a nurse’s aide granny never had the
opportunity to pursue her education
but i think the dream was always there
for her
my daughter mary knew she wanted to be a
nurse when she was in preschool
i would take her into her brothers to
the library and she checked out the same
book
every time the story of an emergency
room nurse
we actually bought a copy of that book
and gave it to her when she headed off
to nursing school
as an inspiration mary had the chance to
pursue her dream
and she’s pretty passionate about it you
can talk about
many things with my daughter but when
you get on the subject of health care
for the poor and homeless
you better wait out you better watch out
she’s going to tell you what needs to
happen
and so i think in a kind of a marvelous
way life has a way of circling back
around
perhaps mary is fulfilling a dream
that maisie never had the chance to
pursue
handmade objects are often forgotten
and pat bypassed in our modern culture
many times people spend hours months
working on creations
and yet with the rush of modern culture
the devaluation of work
by women and manual laborers
many times those pieces become cast off
items
if someone takes the time to put their
essence into a handmade object
it’s worth cherishing my own connection
to handmade objects comes as a result of
my 50-year passion
for fiber arts and there’s a book
if you’re at all interested i hope
you’ll look up it’s called
threads of life the history of the world
through the eye of a needle by
a scottish artist named claire hunter
when claire hunter writes about the
value of
fabric and textiles she says this
the textiles we keep demand to be lifted
stroke handle
they literally connect us to our past
cloth softens with handling
it absorbs the human touch and the
smells that surrounded it
when it was being made sweat
spices perfume would smoke
bury your nose in a textile and you can
literally
bring up the sights and sounds
of people long ago and far away
and if it is a family heirloom
you can be transported to a forgotten
blend
of family fragrance isn’t that a
wonderful phrase
a forgotten blend of family
fragrance i think everybody has a spark
of creativity don’t tell me you don’t
one of the things that we find is that
creativity is manifest in different
people in so many different ways metal
work woodwork
painting sculpture fiber arts
cooking
it’s important to think about
what aspect of handmade work appeals to
you
and to think about the value of taking
the time
of digging in and understanding and
learn the medium being used
and thinking about how we can ourselves
create
a legacy creating handmade objects can
ignite the flames of creativity in each
of us
and i’m also convinced that creating
handmade objects and working with our
hands
cultivates a rich internal spirit
i have one stitching friend who always
says that stitching
centers her gives her a kind of
tranquility
now i will admit you have to find the
kind of handmade work
that gives you that tranquility and
doesn’t create
tension and conflict and that will be
different for each person
but creating and working with our hands
is a way
of finding a meditative process
we know that after world war one in new
zealand
wounded veterans were taught embroidery
in order to calm their ptsd
symptoms
in world war ii women were held
prisoners of war
in china and we found the remnants of
their embroidery that helped them to
express
their fears and create a memory of their
suffering
creating handmade objects is a way that
we can
connect ourselves to the human
experience
and in a lot of ways be transported
from the day-to-day as we become a part
of that great cosmic sweep of life
that surrounds us in the world
when all is said and done whether the
work be expert or amateur
pretty or ugly hard or soft or
impermanent
handmade objects are really the story of
who we are
as part of this human experience
that we’re a part of it helps
connect us to the story
that has come before us and that will
pass along after
creating handmade objects
is a way to complete the journey that we
walk
together so there’s a couple things i
want you to think about doing
when you leave here today number one go
and see if you can identify
some of those legacy items that are part
of your household
or that you may have grown up with i
suspect that a lot of them are hidden
away maybe folded up and put in a
dresser somewhere or hung in the
basement like granny slice piece was
take them out lift them up put them in a
position of prominence and learn the
stories that go with them
because that’s what’s really important
and tell those stories to anybody who
will listen
children nieces nephews somebody walking
down the sidewalk
and then the second part of the quest i
truly believe is equally as important
find
the handmade work that ties you into the
universe
that gives you a sense that you are
creating something that never
existed before and that nobody else can
do in quite the same way
that you can pass along as part of the
legacy of the future
i want to end with another story this is
about
my other grandmother mabel
who was my soul mate
the story of this really bright
white and green scarf this was the first
piece of fiber arc i created at the age
of 12
50 years ago now my grandmother mabel
was about
four foot ten inches tall and she only
ever wore
soft pastel colors
but i have a memory of her with this
scarf
around her face wearing it
as if it were made of gold and a gift
from the king of england
why because her grandson made it
create your story through the legacy of
handmade objects
[Applause]
[Music]
you