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This article was originally published on April 18, 2008. We are reviving it as part of the Best of the Storque series. Enjoy!

This installment of our eco-friendly indie series Earth Tones brings us Mandy, aka moxiedoll. An example to all of us, she has undertaken an impressive exercise in restraint! She shows us how to live one's life with intention.

I have never been a very self-disciplined person. This personal flaw often leads me to overindulge in habits simply because I can. Last fall, though, I began to feel like some of my favorite things were beginning to consume me. At the same time it seemed like I was hearing more and more stories about people who had chosen to make life-altering changes either to better themselves or to serve some greater cause, or both. And so I began thinking — what if I decided to give up the things that I most enjoyed? What kind of impact would giving stuff up have on my life?

So I began telling people about my plan for 2008: I would give up something different every month to see what it was like to live without the luxuries I have come to take for granted, and in order to hold myself accountable I would blog (giveitup.wordpress.com) about my experience. My friends and family seemed to have mixed feelings towards the whole endeavor, but everyone was ultimately supportive and seemed eager to see if I could pull it off.

It took me a while to come up with twelve things that I felt could benefit me if I gave them up. But eventually I was able to narrow them into three rough categories: Food/Drink (coffee, alcohol, and chocolate); Technology (TV, the internet at home and my car) and Spending Money (I decided to consider buying only goods made in the USA, buying only used goods, not shopping at all, Etsy, no plastic – using only cash and not going out).

On the "Letting Go of my Lattes" phase:

"All of this is compounded by the fact that I am narcoleptic. Many people asked me how I was going to give up coffee, as if its my only means of staying awake. I take medication to keep me awake during the day, so I knew that I could sacrifice coffee and still function. However I have actually had doctors advise me to drink coffee when I need to and now I understand how much it does help me stay awake. It really does carry me through the slumps at work when I am tired and it isn’t time to take my medication."

Since I began in January I haven’t slipped up yet. But I have made some addendums to my original plan. Now at the end of each month, I determine if I think I can go the entire year without whatever I’ve given up that month. I was motivated to do this after I found myself very quickly resorting back to my bad habits of spending hours every day on Etsy.

On Etsy addiction:

"Now I still have 10 days of Etsy abstinence left, but I can pretty confidently say that this day most accurately illustrates the frightening attachment I’ve developed to this web site. There I was in beautiful, sunny Mexico lounging luxuriously next to the pool and all I could think about was how fun it would be to spend some time on the computer perusing my Etsy favorites with Megan? What is wrong with me?"

Like many others I have also been attempting to live a more eco-friendly life this year. And fortunately for me, I’ve found that giving things up has actually helped me do that. Although I’m only a quarter of the way through the year, with every thing I’ve given up I honestly have become more cognizant of what I’m doing on a daily basis and, more specifically, what I’m consuming. Last month I shopped only for items made in the USA, which was incredibly difficult and frustrating.

On Buying American:

"Occasionally I found a 'Made in Uganda' or 'Made in Argentina' tag, but Chinese citizens appear to be making the majority of what I buy. After reading that 'Made in China' stamp for the 100th time, my shopping spirit was sucked dry and I took the only American made item that I found, a pair of blue tights, and sadly went grocery shopping."

But the Buy American month forced me to think before I buy and to begin looking for longer lasting or biodegradable alternatives to things that are predominantly disposable. By doing so I have prepared myself for upcoming months when I might not be able to buy those disposable items that I might actually need, while also doing my part to help the environment.

And so I’ve chosen some great eco-friendly Etsy finds to assist all of you in your personal attempts to help save our planet.


pot scrubbers by starrz85

 
flatware set by ponyup


Cloth diaper by katnappies


Tee shirt bags by  zJayne

 
Shampoo soap by naiad


Unbleached coffee filters by theScenicRoute


Reusable swiffer cloths by quiltingmama


Reusable snack bags by gnomeclothes

 
Natural laundry detergent by showertreatsoap


Crayon nubs melted down and reconstituted by ivylanedesigns

When she isn't crafting at moxiedoll, Mandy works as a fiction and audiovisual librarian in Oak Park, Illinois (www.genre-x.com) and consumes mass amounts of media and pop culture. All the clutter left over from her other mass consumptions led her to begin using only recyclable goods whenever possible. Follow her "fasting" at giveitup.wordpress.com.

This article was originally published on March 28, 2008. We are reviving it as part of the Best of the Storque series. Enjoy!

If you're following the Handmade Wedding Series, then you probably appreciate a good love story. LoucheLab and her husband Ned have a particularly handmade story of falling in love (well, it's high tech, too). Blogging, artwork, photography, web cams, artist books and international romance all converged to get these two souls together. Below, you'll find LoucheLab's account and photographs, as well as a special video portrait we produced with them (which does have some spicy mature artwork by the artists, so be forewarned if you are watching this with your child — this is an adult love story, after all!).

Ned and I met by accident. (Which is a pretty big accident, considering that we lived about 7,000 miles from one another.) I was living in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Ned was living in the Meat Packing District in New York while packing up his studio to move to Brooklyn. We had both started blogging 9 months before — after painful break-ups. So Ned was surfing random blogs and got into mine, went to my Flickr page and looked at my art and then wrote me an email.

It was basically my art and his words that brought us together.

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[Music by Barry London]

We spent almost a year apart; then I flew to New York at Christmas to meet him for the first time. Before I came he said, "I want us to make art together while you are here." My art was always very solitary, so I asked, "What do you mean?" and, he said, "I don't know, but we'll figure it out."

And we have: we made graffiti and paintings, and we took a lot of pictures of one another. After I went back to Israel, we kept on talking on webcam all the time; it was on 24 hours a day. He would wait 'til his midnight, which was my 7:00 AM, and we would talk before I would go to work, and I would rush home from the office to see him. It was like living in one apartment with a window into the other room where he was, without being able to touch one another — besides with words and art.

In the course of the months apart, we both created a lot, we expressed our love, the sexual frustration and the emotional roller coaster state with photography and paintings and street art and t-shirt making and computer art and so on. The whole relationship, between his blog and my blog and our Flickr accounts, was very public, and we had people all over the world encouraging us through the difficult times and happy for us, when finally, we made the choice of me moving to New York so we could start a life together offline.

[Me signing our Ktuba (illustrated wedding contract in the Jewish tradition). We wrote the text together and I illustrated it.]

We first decided to get married so I could stay in the United States, but as the preparation started, it became a very small part of it all. Because art was such a big part of our relationship, and because as a part of our relationship we beat all odds and made the rules as we went along, it was really obvious to us that our wedding would also be like that — intimate and important and very art inspired.

 
[This is me working on the Hupa. It's a big blanket like thing that in Jewish tradition serves as a roof the couple need to get married under. I spray painted about a 100 ravens on it, and my hand was sore for about a week after. The stars in the middle are tattoos we got together when I came to visit New York and met Ned for the first time.]

The theme of the wedding was ravens, because of — well, a lot of things, but also because they mate for life after having a relatively long period of just playing the field. (Below, you'll see me getting my wedding tattoo. I illustrated it.)

It was basically a Rabbi who is a friend and about 20 friends and family members in our studio in Williamsburg. A lot of what we made was a spur of a moment idea that took shape. Ned edited a cool music mix and we thought "this would be a nice give-away," which lead to me spray painting 40 CDs with a cool pattern, and us burning copies 'til 5:00 in the morning.

Our Rabbi told us that although we didn't want rings, we needed to exchange something of value. So we decided to get rings after all, and on the train on the way to the store, we tried to figure out what they would symbolize for us — and what being married means to us. We talked about learning and making mistakes and this being a beginning rather then a happy ending: we got both rings engraved with "Human" on the inside.

The idea of writing and illustrating our own Ktuba actually came from Josh the Rabbi, which I was really grateful about. I wouldn't have thought about it myself. Also, he suggested making some art or writing something to express how we feel about weddings and marriage, which is how the wedding book I made came to be.

We didn't have a DJ or a band or 300 people in fancy dresses or flowers or a white dresses: we had only people that we wanted there (including my sister on webcam from Israel). We had to deal with a lot of feelings and fears beforehand, rather than having too many arrangements to take care of. While the wedding was going I realized I forgot one of the decoration projects I wanted to do, but it didn't matter. After the ceremony, Ned's parents took everyone out to Union Picnic for dinner, which was at the time our favorite restaurant. Even still, we hear from people who were there about how significant and intense the whole event was, and how it's one of the most memorable events they can think of.


[Ned getting his wedding tattoo. He designed it.] 

The handmade wedding theme caught on, and we got artwork from three or four artist friends as gifts, and Ned's dad designed and printed a book of the wedding pictures for us which we show off to anyone who wants to know what the wedding was like.

I always hated weddings before. I used to work for a catering service and the way so many wedding are about food or about showing off was really repulsive to me. With the way things went with our wedding, I can say that this was the best wedding ever, which is cool because it was mine!


[Married!]

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This article was originally published on May 13, 2008. We are reviving it as part of the Best of the Storque series. Enjoy!

Gabe Molnar of 1AEON says his designs often come from his dreams. The fantastical imagery includes lions, dragons, skulls and owls ("since before all the owl hype," as Gabe says). Working non-stop in his small kitchen in Brooklyn, this Hungarian-born artist is driven to be the best at whatever he does and to push the boundaries (maybe this comes in part from growing up under Communism?). But his passion and ambition hasn't made Gabe lose sight of his humble beginnings. We were very inspired to meet the maker behind 1AEON and hear his story.

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If you're interested in all things Hungarian, check out this post on traditional and contemporary Hungarian crafts.

This article was originally published on September 26, 2007. We are reviving it as part of the Best of the Storque series. Enjoy!

When it comes to the art world, everyone always seems to be looking for the next big thing. If it isn’t an artist, it’s a concept, a style or a shtick. However, if there is one genre that exists solely to contradict the idea of trendiness, it is the often misunderstood, always intriguing, idea of outsider art.

As far as modes of artwork are concerned, "outsider art” (otherwise known as art brut, visionary, contemporary folk, naïve or intuitive art) has become a phenomenon that forces us to rethink the relationship between mainstream society and who is culturally "accepted" as an artist. Michel Thevoz, curator of the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne, defines outsider art as “works produced by people who, for various reasons, have not been culturally indoctrinated or socially conditioned. They are all kinds of dwellers on the fringes of society. Working outside the fine art ‘system’ (schools, galleries, museums and so on), these people have produced, from the depths of their own personalities and for themselves and no one else, works of outstanding originality in concept, subject and techniques. They are works which owe nothing to tradition or fashion.”

Artists typically grouped under the outsider art umbrella are those who exist outside the confines of conventional society, with little to no contact with “high art”: prison inmates, the mentally ill, religious zealots, and the developmentally challenged. These intricate, often compulsive works are typically characterized by a certain “raw” quality: colorful images, recurring idiosyncratic patterns and a childish naïveté usually not present in the works of a “trained” artist.

These works were first documented in 1922 by Dr. Hans Prinzhorn, who collected thousands of works by psychiatric patients (including the incredible Adolf Wolfli) to publish Bildernerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the Mentally Ill). According to outsider art journal Raw Vision, struggling French artist Jean Dubuffet was so inspired by the these works that he formed the Compagnie de l'Art Brut in 1948, an organization that “strove to seek out and collect works of extreme individuality and inventiveness by creators who were not only untrained artists but often had little concept of an art gallery or even any other forms of art other than their own.”

Outsider art has since come into the public eye via institutions such as the American Folk Art Museum in New York and the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, showcasing the works of many disenfranchised individuals whose work had long been overlooked, often until after their death. (A prime example being brilliant visionary artist Henry Darger, recently profiled in In the Realms of the Unreal, a documentary of his life and work. An example is shown below.)


However, the idea of outsider art has changed in recent years. Artists that once lived and worked in the relative obscurity of basements and institutions are being brought to light and encouraged to produce via art programs built to foster their work during their lifetimes, such as the Creative Growth facility and National Institute of Art & Disabilities program based in California, as well as Project Onward and Inklude (who have an Etsy store, Inklude.etsy.com) in Chicago.

As a casual art student, I’ve been interested in the eclectic nature of outsider art for a while. When I first read about Art Enables, an arts-and-enterprise program for adults with developmental and/or mental disabilities based in Washington, DC., I decided that I had to visit and see the work that people were producing in the present. The inspiring facility functions as a studio and gallery space to those who are enthusiastic about working toward becoming professional artists. These individuals, affected by an array of disabilities ranging from autism to Down's syndrome to schizophrenia, are encouraged to work in the studio a few days a week to produce work, which is then marketed and featured on the Art Enables website and in their gallery for purchase.

This set-up allows the artists-in-residence to work in the entrepreneurial spirit while cultivating an income from their work during their lifetime. “Artists with disabilities have the same drive, the same ability to create, and the same desire to sell their artwork and earn an income from it as any other artist would. This program was founded on that model – to provide that marketing element so that people could earn money from their artwork, as opposed to just doing it for a recreational activity,” said Jill Scheibler, marketing associate at Art Enables.

Art Enables’ humble beginnings commenced five years ago. As executive director Joyce Muis-Lowery explains, “The program was originally designed as a vocational training program. The arts would be used as an employment training vehicle and people would be prepared for a move off into mainstream employment. [However], no one wanted to leave. They wanted to continue to create art as a permanent part of their lives. We shifted the focus and ultimately redefined ourselves as offering the opportunity for adults with developmental and/or mental disabilities to work toward becoming professional artists.”

Artists tend be referred to the program by other DC area programs, family members or simply by exhibiting the interest and motivation necessary to pursuing their love of art. As Scheibler states, “All of the artists in our program were already creating and working, and they came to us because they wanted a place to commit to their art and create an income from it.”

To the casual observer, the next question that comes to mind is how the Art Enables artists can be considered truly “outsider” if they’re working within the framework of a facility, producing work to market during their lifetime. Scheibler asserts that “[Art Enables] uses the rough heading of 'outsider,' with the caveat that, because people are working in this sort of setting, it doesn’t really fit the definition of outsider art. Traditionally outsider art is defined as working in private, without coming in contact with traditional art modes.”

Director Muis-Lowery was quick to add that “‘Outsider,’ in our case, is probably a more consistently accurate descriptor of the artists themselves than the art. Everyone in the program is in major ways cut off from the mainstream…Also, [it’s important to add that] we don’t teach. We facilitate. The role of staff is to be sure people have access to and are using the correct materials correctly, to help them when they get stuck, to make suggestions or push them out of their comfort zones, but above all, not to intervene in or encroach on the individual way of expressing themselves in images which they brought into the program…What is a constant source of delight and amazement to me is that not a single one of them ever tries to imitate someone else. They are just so wonderfully driven from the inside to make the art the way they make it.”

So just what is it that makes outsider art so interesting, so mysterious, so intriguing to collectors? For many, it’s the back story to the artwork — the fact that each of the artists exists in a unique world seemingly distant from the experiences of the typical audience. As Scheibler explained, “There’s a fascination with sordid stories and artists that are very compulsive…From the gallerists’ perspective, they want that intrigue, that romantic idea applied to artists like Van Gogh with inner demons and cutting off his ears. I think the public is entranced by that. However, there’s a trade-off there: if someone like Van Vogh had been medicated, his art would’ve been much more mainstream, but the quality of his life would have increased.”

Muis-Lowery added that the appeal of outsider art for the contemporary collector is “the biographical element: that so much of [the artwork] is borne of fundamental social, economic or educational deprivation or psychosis. [And] the fact of a lot of it is being legitimately [produced] from the heart rather than the brain.”

Ultimately, outsider art has become increasingly trendy in recent years, for a variety of reasons: the inexpensive nature of the pieces, the excitement and rarity of finding a treasure trove of self-taught work, and the “relatable” quality of the work. Art Enables artists Charles Meissner’s aerial views in watercolor and Paul Lewis’s odes to pop culture icons such as “The Munsters” are big sellers.

As Muis-Lowery put it, “Gallerists are in hot pursuit of new outsider artists because the first ‘discovered’ generation is dead or dying and their well is drying up. I personally think that one is unlikely to find a lot of ‘old school’ outsider artists today in developed countries for the simple reason that we no longer isolate people the way we used to. We have stopped hiding them in the woodshed or the asylums or leaving them to fend for themselves on the farm while everyone else goes off to the fields to work. In that sense we’ve come a long way.”

As of yet, few of the approximately thirty artists that work at Art Enables are self-sufficient. However, many are well on their way, as all of the artists make at least one sale each month, with some making sales of up to $1000 in a single month. There is even talk of certain artists being picked up by galleries. As Muis-Lowery put it, “Everyone makes money, but it isn’t a lot of money — although for about half of them, it’s their only earned income. The point is that they’re making money from their abilities and not by putting in time someplace, or by doing work that is created for people with disabilities of whom little is expected. We expect a lot. This is not a hobby. This is their job and they are wonderfully focused on doing it well.”

 
Outsider Art Resources
More photos from Alison’s trip to Art Enables
To meet the artists from Art Enables through video and see their work
What is “outsider art”?
What is "visionary art"?

Organizations
Art Enables
NIAD
Project Onward
VSArts
Inklude
Inklude’s Etsy shop
Gateway Arts
Gugging Center
Creative Growth

Museums
American Folk Art Museum
Folk Art Society of America
American Visionary Art Museum

Prominent Outsider Artists of Note
Adolf Wolfli
Howard Finster
Henry Darger
Bill Traylor
Martin Ramirez
William Hawkins

Academic Journals and Written Resources
Raw Vision
“Folk Art Notebook” article
Outsider Art Links
John Maizels, founder of outsider art journal Raw Vision, on raw/outsider art
“On Outsider Art and the Margins of the Mainstream”

Visit The Storque's This Handmade Life section for more inspiring stories, and check out the rest of our Best of the Storque content!

A month ago PamelaAngus found an early piece of hers hidden in the drawer. Now Tabitha from ThePairabirds is delving into the past to show us her beginnings. The Chicago-based illustrator came a long road from manga-styled figures to pop-art, and she is still evolving. 

When did you start drawing and painting?
I started drawing regularly when I was eleven. I became interested in comic book art. I didn't begin painting until 2001, when I started college.

How do you evaluate the change between your first drawings/paintings?
My early drawings were inspired by Japanese manga work. I was really entranced with the use of line-weight and light and dark contrast. My style began to take on its own when I started art college. In school, I had the chance to experiment with different media, study different cultures, and learn and share with my classmates. This blending of cultures encouraged me to blend the beautiful linework of Japanese manga with nostalgic American pop culture.

In which area do you think you evolved a lot?
I think my use of linework has evolved. I used to add so many details to a piece that it became over-worked. I am drawn to clean and uncluttered design (which is ironic since I am a pack-rat), particularly in interior design. This look is finding its way into my pieces more and more.

What kind of evolution do you see for yourself in the future? What are your plans (if any)?
I think my art is beginning to focus on the juxtaposition of human and nature. I think the most beautiful relationship is the one between humans and their environment. I am intrigued by people and how they relate to their environment, specifically their homes. So it is interesting for me to see how art and furniture is arranged in the sacred place of "Home."

Can you live on selling your drawings?
At the moment, yes. I'm single and child-free. It means going without an iPhone, a lot of social events, and having to live with family. But, those are some of the sacrifices I have to make right now that will hopefully change over time.

See other Oeuvre Evolutions on the Storque. Vadjutka highlights many more artists' evolutions on her blog, Craftsthenandnow.blogspot.com.  How has your craft changed over the years?  Post in the comments below!