An Exclusive review for Handmade Nation!
We at Sunflower pride ourselves on being one of the few platforms available locally supporting the handmade community.
And coming across such a fabulous documentary such as Handmade Nation narrating the efforts of a single woman in unifying the different elements in the handmade community, we feel we just have to cover it!
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This documentary is by one of our in-house handmade talents, Yanting.
here is Yanting during one of her Art jamming session at Myartspace.
Sunflower is proud to be in partnership with Myartspace in offering individualized and flexible sessions aimed at helping adults with improving their creative flair and discovering more about themselves through the exploration of art and music elements, some courses of interest would be wine tasting cum art classes.
Yanting is an avid hobby crafter and she specializes in making beautiful cards made from craft paper. In fact, her items are only available in limited quantities for each design, making each piece unique and different.
and the best thing of all, her cards are priced from $1- $4.50!
come grab them whilst stocks lasts!
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" Interested in handicrafts and arts but feel that you cannot make a business out of it? Then you should watch Handmade Nation. This 1 hour documentary made by Faythe Levine to showcase the movement of DIY art, craft and design in USA is an inspiring piece and a work of art itself."
Faythe Levine
Handmade Nation, in which Faythe Levine actually travelled to 15 cities and covered more than 19,000 miles to compile artists, crafters, makers, curators and community members' view on DIY, showcase many varieties of crafts such as glass beading and quiltted wall ornaments. It also showed different ways in which people rebel against capitalism. One very memorable group was Knitta, a group of anonmyous avid knitters who started the "knit graffiti" movement AKA "yarnbombing". To them, using their knitted items to decorate the boring lampposts or trees is their method of beautifying public space.
Knitta !
Many crafters and artists also shared their point of view on handmade items and on why they decided to focus mainly on sharing their crafts with the world. One such crafter actually stated that the mundane day to day working for the sake of earning money was not as fulfilling and satisfying as compared to spending one whole day lovingly making items to share with everyone else, a view which I totally agree. The satisfaction of creation and the joy of knowing that other people showed their appreciation via purchasing of your creation are simply indescribable and it definitely beats the rush you get when you get a pay raise (That’s my point of view anyway)
sharing views with everyone
However, just crafting will not bring the bread to the table. In fact, without other people to support handmade items, it would be sooner or later before the crafters give up on their love. Supportive retail such as buyolympia.com (made up of 2 friends who consolidate the DIY items on their website) and Sunflower help to make the waves of DIY movement bigger and more easily accessible to the general public. Without their support, the individual artists would only resemble the ripples on the water surface. All in all, this is an inspirational and motivational piece which I strongly recommend to all crafters to watch at least once. In fact, pss… you can get the video from buyolympia.com, which also holds products of many crafters featured in the documentary.
You may also be able to find it in your nearest art speciality store!
Watch it today! You will never view handmade items or handcrafters in the same light again! :)
A must-see for all who's interested in knowing more about the handmade community, packed full of interesting insights and un-conventional artists!
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