Written by Svea Larson, Center for Design & Material Culture Assistant Programs Manager & PhD candidate in Scandanvian/Folklore Studies at UW–Madison.
When I was seventeen, my family took a trip to Sweden. Out of all the things that I remember from the trip, perhaps my experiences with traditional crafting demonstrations at cultural heritage museums like Skansen and Nordiska stand out to me the most. From hand processing linen to glass blowing, knitting, weaving, and spinning, the people who demonstrated their embodied skill with materials I had never even thought of before fascinated me and somehow enlivened my imagination. This made the museum and the historical worlds they were creating seem so much more alive, more tangible.
This fall, the Material Intelligence exhibit includes a makerspace in the back of the gallery, the “Work in Progress (WIP) Lab”. Here the materials displayed throughout the CDMC – glass, felt, linen, and everyday objects turned to a political purpose – are available for visitors to use and to engage with more physically. Evidence across disciplines makes clear that people learn with their hands and eyes as well as their brains. That the processes of holding, molding, making, moving help us form connections to the world around us, but also to each other.
Making things in the gallery can be both peaceful and lively. Sometimes, exhibiting artist Ann Coddington is in, quietly sitting and twining on her “Work In Progress” piece and generously sharing about her practice with curious visitors. She teaches those of us who stick around how to make netting and twined objects, like the work she has on view in the gallery. At other times, especially during the WIP Lab activations, which feature demonstrations and workshops centering on a specific technique, the WIP Lab is bursting with people stopping in to make their own posters, buttons, crochet coasters, or felted figurines.
These larger gatherings have been one of the most energizing parts of this semester in the CDMC. The purpose of the WIP Lab is not to make a particular thing or to learn a specific technique; but rather, make things together. I have been continuously impressed by the ability of participants to not only learn from the instructor, but to reach across the table to someone struggling with a technique or material and share their knowledge. Not everyone is interested in or good at the same thing. Struggling and succeeding together becomes collectively important. Once, during a crochet focused activation, one participant found the process difficult and frustrating, but rather than leaving, she found felting. This different technique with a similar material was more satisfying for her.
Having a making space has allowed for unexpected collaborations and events. Textiles and Fashion Design students have been able to pitch instructing a project, allowing their friends and roommates to experience a bit of what they do in their classes. Other groups, like the Madison Lace Makers and the Raging Grannies, have held workshops in the space. The prospect of making things has brought in people to the galleries who may not have come in otherwise. Others return to work in the space, even when it is not activated, to make use of the library of materials.
There are many ways to know the world, and to know each other. Taking the time to learn something, to work with materials, to struggle through something and help each other work out the process, creating something tangible in a shared space offers opportunities for conversation and collaboration.
Bio: Svea Larson is a PhD candidate conducting research on Swedish-American folklore and history. Her work focuses on transnational bodies and the material objects with which they interact to explore entangled intellectual and material histories of home and homemaking, the material and sensorial construction of “Swedishness,” and its codification and construction in Swedish and American contexts throughout the twentieth century. She is particularly interested in how objects can help us understand how international or transnational identities are formed and articulated in everyday life.