GLAM Camp

Leah Buechley's LED Clothing

My favorite project of the summer has been my internship at Denver Open Media. I am an outreach intern there. Denver Open Media is the public access station in Denver. They have a participatory model that goes beyond typical public access stations. My particular focus has been on planning this event called GLAM Camp, Girls Learning About Multimedia camp. This project was a perfect fit for me, allowing me to inspire girls, work with multimedia, and meet other inspirational women in Denver. The result of the camp will be a documentary on women and technology that the girls will make and will are on DOM channel 57 August 15, 2008. (I will also upload the documentary on my blog…it has a few more edits before it will be up.)

Today was day two of the camp and I left with warm fuzzies all over. The group of eight girls got to help film the presentations of Leah Buechley and Sharee Dieringer and then interview the women for the documentary. The girls were engaged in all aspects of production, from camera work to coming up with the interview questions. When the girls were listening to the presentations they would get excited and curious. I hope they leave the camp inspired to think of their own dreams.

Leah’s work with technology and textile arts reaches far beyond the typical notions of what technology is and how one can work with it. Her interactive fabric pieces combine lights and sound with textile arts and fashion, pushing both areas outside of their comfort zone. I have never seen anything like what Leah had presented. She is an artists and a programmer. Her creations are playful, interactive and completely innovative. I felt personally inspired to expand my own creativity and experiment with her led lights and sounds in fabric.

What I really loved about Leah was her genuine passion for what she did. She has overcome the gender barrier and re-conceptualized what one can do with technology. Instead of feeling confined to the male dominated programming, she paved her own path. Instead of making robots she wanted to make beautiful fashions. She described her experience of being the only girl in classes or one of a few in a computer programming masters program. She overcame her initial insecurities of feeling less experienced with technology, to carving her own niche in the industry.

Sheree works in Graphic Design, specifically through civic pixel. She focuses on making logos and designs for non-profits. Her work is elegant and varied for each client. Sheree loves her job and really encouraged the girls not to settle for less than their dreams. She had designed everything from logos and book covers to websites. Working with the latest design software, technology has become her medium of expression. One project that was really amazing was a personal project about the layers of self and identity. She was able to fuse her personal life with design. The girls loved learning that they can utilize their creativity and love of technology and turn it into a satisfying job.

GLAM Camp also provides a space for girls to question the ways that mainstream society values women. We did an activity where we looked at pictures of six women known for their academic and athletic accomplishments. While the girls knew some of the womens’ names or a little bit about them they were not as recognizable as the women on our second slide. On the other slide we featured women, like Paris Hilton who are known for looks and wealth. Most of the girls groaned when they saw pictures of these women, sick of their plastic looks and tabloid shenanigans. Then we talked about women role models in our lives. Many of the girls looked up to their mothers. In many ways this activity enforced the broader goal of the camp to help girls actualize their own potential using their intelligence and creativity.

craft it out

There is something so satisfying about making things. Anything really, but we all have our favorite things to make. Textile crafts are my favorites right now. I love working with soft draping fabrics and making something substantial with thread. Stitches pull pieces together creating a new whole, shifting the canvas, becoming the canvas. Color emerges slowly in embroidery. Each stitch so loaded with intention. I am making it sound so serious, but really it is about keeping my hands busy and happy. Perhaps I want people to take my crafting seriously because I do. I find crafting a way to release stress and anxiety transforming them into something productive. “Craft it out” became my unofficial motto after returning to the United Sates after studying abroad. My best friend, who just returned from India was also feeling disillusioned. We were both in need of some craft therapy. We spent many Friday nights weaving rugs out of recycled bags and making collages.

I found my great-great grandmother’s iron on transfer patterns for embroidery. There were dancing vegetables, days of the week and flowers. The patterns were fragile and decaying, but with a lot of effort my mom and I were able to actually get the pattern to transfer on a dish towel. Most iron on transfers are a little bit reusable so I was able to embroider the same pattern that my great-great grandmother had. I felt connect to my long lineage of crafting women. That dish towel with the dancing corn was my first really sucessful embroidery project.

Sweing is a practical skill, but embroidery is a little more frivolous. Embroidery was a pastime for privileged young women, expected to learn how to be quiet and delicate. Women were expected to have perfect stiches on both the front and the back. All work should have been done without knots, since they complicate the back. I struggle with the history of textiles. I really love the notion that I am connected to past generations through the manipulation of fabric, but at the same time I find it problematic that it was a skill also used to pacify women. But then on the other had it was one way women were able to express their creativity. On this vein of thought, it is probably time to bring in Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. This amazing and awe-inspiring art work proves the intricacy, beauty and political power of a needle and thread (and the power of collective action and ceramics).

In general I have a love/ hate relation with domesticity. We so often dismiss the work that women were historically assigned to. I want to take it back. Reclaim the tasks of living. The creation of the necessary should be revered not devalued. I love cooking and crafting and can even find cleaning very satisfying. But on the same note I am irritated by the way that this subsistance labor is gendered. Cleaning and cooking are the tasks of living. Without these activities everything else would seize to exist. In American culture we simultaneously glorify and devalue this type of labor. This isn’t about just taking care of yourself, but taking care of each other regardless of gender. bell hooks has a great chapter in Feminist Theory From Margin to Center called “Rethinking the Nature of Work.” It is a great analysis of housework and its relationship to class and the economy. I highly recommend reading the entire book because it is wonderful.

“Bake us some dreams. Cook up some riots. Fry up some screams. When you are sick of your skirts slice open your seams. So they want domestics? Give us a needle and thread for patching up their egos, and we will sew a revolution instead.” ~Alix Olson