Tradition and craft woven into our names

Sew what?: Function follows form: the art of crafts

Art has existed for thousands of years, but our definitions of and uses for art have changed over time. This is the first in a series of pieces that will explore the perception and use of art and crafts throughout history, as well as their place and relevance in the modern world.
Around 1.76 million years ago, early humans created the first hand-axe by striking the edges of stones into flat, pointed shapes. Fast-forward to 40,000 years ago—almost nothing on the evolutionary timeline—and humans wrought five-note flutes from mammoth tusks. Thirty-thousand years ago, bone needles stitched clothing from rough hides and skins. And over the next 15,000 years, humans developed all major forms of art, using pigments, stones, animal parts and clay to paint, draw, sculpt, engrave and make music.Two years ago when I got into Bowdoin, my mother began sewing me a quilt. She chose a pattern (repeating Xs and Os). She selected favorite, familiar scraps from her rag bag—flowers, pinks, greens and oranges. She cut, pieced, pinned, sewed, batted, backed and finally machine-stitched smooth whorls through the layers of fabric.
When I moved into Maine Hall, she told me that if I didn’t want to keep it on my bed—if I thought it was embarrassing that my mother made me a quilt, or if I didn’t like the pattern—I could put it right in storage. I kept the quilt.
My mother’s quilt falls into the legacy of millions of years of human creations. Quilts and quilt patterns are prominent in American history. Generations of frontier women taught their daughters the useful arts of quilt -making, knitting, lace-making, weaving, spinning and dyeing, which all developed alongside human civilization as homo sapiens moved indoors. Long after the needle was invented, the domestic arts were born.
Tools made for pure necessity began a tradition of human creation to memorialize culture and to demonstrate love. From the bone needles that brought life-saving warmth in furs and hides were born the silver needles that stitched African visual traditions into slave quilts; one of those silver needles latched into the sewing machine that my mother keeps by the big window in our home studio.
The earliest examples of pigmented stone, crude flutes, and even simple needles and axe-heads are treasures because they document the origins of humans’ creative expression, the very beginning of humans’ unique desire to expose their souls through a particular medium.
Modern forms of creative expression are innumerable—digital arts, writing, performances, 100 iTunes music genres, and the vestiges of the once-necessary domestic arts.
Today, the domestic arts are likely the least respected, least popular form of creative expression, but perhaps the most used art form for demonstrating love. To make a person an item to wear, to use—a scarf or a dress or a blanket—in an era when Walmart and Amazon bring commodities cheaply to our fingertips, is an ultimate labor of love.
Unlike fine arts, which are not purchasable in the same way a quilt is purchasable, crafts turn creative expression into a form of love, for the self, for someone else, for the very act of sewing, knitting, or weaving. New to our time is the qualifying statement when the quilt is finished—you don’t have to keep it if you don’t want to.
My mother told me I didn’t have to keep the quilt she made me, that I didn’t have to use the quilt, and so I wonder: when did homemade quilts become embarrassing, instead of precious? How did acts of creative expression—from weaving to sculpting—that have been part of human history for legions of time shift from ways of recording stories, of celebrating tradition, of exploring the beauty of the world, to the trope of the starving artist?
In the pieces that follow in this column I hope to explore what we can learn from considering the breadth, depth and width of human expression through creative arts—in history and in modernity. I will also address the significance of making things—for ourselves and for other people—and what that does for self-image, personal growth and the growth of societies.
Humans make things. We make useful things, pretty things and superfluous things. Things for each other, for ourselves, for pets, for the dead. Forty-thousand years from now, when archaeologists uncover our civilizations, what will their findings tell them?
-Penelope Lusk is a member of the Class of 2017

Sew what?: Woven baskets remind us of a forgotten Downeast culture

We spent the sun-dappled day collecting trash from the banks of the lake, where water-weeds lounged against mud and rock. With gloved hands bearing Hefty bags we uncovered bottles, plastic bags and a small mattress from the tawny tumble of loam, leaves and pine needles on the peninsula.
Spirits were high as the group of Bowdoin first years, my Pre-O leaders and myself tramped back to our van. After our morning of community service, we were spending our afternoon with Molly, a renowned basket-weaver at the Indian Township reservation of the Passamaquoddy tribe of Downeast Maine.
Molly welcomed us to her back porch overlooking the smooth water and fed us generously. We talked with her and several of her grandchildren about their lives on the reservation. As the sun dipped into the lake, Molly brought out bundles of dried sweet-grass and began to teach us about her craft.
The Passamaquoddy tribe has lived in Downeast Maine for over 12,000 years. Along with the Maliseet, Penobscot, and Micmac tribes, the Passamaquoddy form the Wabanaki people of Maine. The Wabanaki are the “Dawn Land People”—the first nations of the East.
The tribe currently has 3,369 members and two reservations, Indian Township and Pleasant Point. I travelled to the Pleasant Point reservation for my Pre-O trip and then led a new group of first-years to Indian Township last August. In March, I will be returning to Pleasant Point for an Alternative Spring Break trip. If I had gone on a different Pre-O, I doubt I would know that the reservations exist.
The reservations are about a four-hour drive from Brunswick. The tribe holds over 200,000 acres scattered throughout Maine resulting from years of legal battles after the tribe initiated the Maine Indian Land Claims Act in the late 1960s. The land settlement was a fraction of the tribe’s original claims and their legal status within the state remains fraught.
The tribe has been using sweetgrass, which is sacred to the Passamaquoddy and Micmac tribes, to weave baskets for countless generations. Baskets are also woven from strips of ash wood.Sweetgrass grows in the wetlands of the reservation lakes. Dried, it has the color of straw but is malleable and oily. It smells like freshly cut grass and spices. The sweet perfume, mixed with barbecue and pine, intoxicated the air around us.
If the smell fades, a dip in water revitalizes the grass. Molly, who is the president of the Maine Indian Basket Alliance, braids and twists the sweetgrass into patterned, floral creations.Fancy basket making developed in relatively recent history. Traditionally, basket-weaving women worked for their families, crafting baskets for everyday use. As industrialism and capitalism developed in the newly formed United States, Native families struggled to maintain their traditional economy and lifestyle. The fancy basket industry grew when Native artists began selling their crafts to tourists as art, not for everyday use. Molly, who is one of the few professional basket-weavers left in the community, told us how she works on her baskets for weeks or months at a time; her family has a distinctive flower that marks their work.
In Molly’s capable hands, the sweetgrass twisted into smooth ropes. Granddaughter mimicked grandmother, braiding and chattering about her own baskets—she wanted to start making fancy baskets soon. As Molly worked, she told us about her history, the history of her craft, the history of her land—how a white man had tried to steal her property, where she and many of her extended family members live and where she also rents cabins to visitors. Her family fought back.
Molly taught our group how to make the sweetgrass braids that build baskets. We tied the ends of our braids together—small, sweet wreaths. Ours were jagged at the edges, the braided strands crooked, unlike Molly’s that were smooth and round.
We left Molly’s house bearing our first attempts at her craft, scampering as mosquitoes flooded the dusk. Molly showed us her studio-shop on the way out: dozens of beautiful baskets, the braids of sweetgrass bearing centuries of changing culture, tenacity and pride.
We began our day doing community service on the lakeshore, relishing the sunshine and the company. My co-leader and I wanted our first-years to have a good time, to learn something, to see the exquisite Downeast woods and waters and, to experience the communities of Maine’s Native population. Our project, a few hours dedicated to revitalizing the lakeshore, was as much service to our own aims as to the community’s.
Molly’s hands working the sweetgrass told a story that we were still struggling to learn, a history much less relatable to our lives as Bowdoin students.
I keep my little sweetgrass wreath on my windowsill by my desk. Periodically, I dunk it in water, so my room is faintly scented, a delicious—if crudely made—reminder of Indian Township.

Sew what?

Tradition and craft woven into our names

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Penelope Lusk

Contributor

February 5, 2015

My parents named me Penelope in homage to Homer’s classic epic “The Odyssey.” Penelope is the wife of Odysseus, lauded for her cleverness and loyalty. While Odysseus went off to war for a decade and spent another few years getting into trouble with beautiful goddesses and many-headed monsters, Penelope remained at home in Ithaca, constantly pursued by uncouth men.
Famously faithful, Penelope told her suitors that she would only choose a new husband when she finished weaving a great shroud. Every night she would unravel her day’s work.

The meaning of her name embodies her craft: in Ancient Greek, “pene” means weft (the thread that is drawn through a loom to create cloth) and “ops” means face or eye. Combined, the syllables imply her cunningness and skill at the loom. In modern etymology “Penelope” is translated more directly to “weaver.”

Identifying people by their crafts or trades is common practice, particularly in English surnames: there are Bakers, Smiths and Fishers—all male trades and names passed down through paternal lineage. Similarly, Penelope carries her own craft in her name—the craft that represents her cleverness, skill and loyalty.

Names are our ultimate and original identifiers, and women have historically given theirs up to assimilate into their husband’s family. By wearing her craft as her name, Penelope is identified by her own work, not her husband’s, contradicting the Ancient Greek view of women as objects. That Penelope should be named after not only her craft but also her cleverness is emblematic of her strength as a woman.

Painter or sculptor, knitter, quilter, baker or writer—the things people create can act as powerful identifiers.

These days, most people are not named after their crafts. Not very many Smiths actually spend their days at the fires of the forge.

Though I am a Penelope, I have never woven anything fancier than rainbow potholders from those (very fun) loom kits for kids. But I do make other things—mostly peculiar yarn creations, invented baked goods and birthday cards.

Knitting overlong scarves does not define my identity in the same way that other creative outputs do. Writing English papers and short stories or planning activities to do with my mentee at Brunswick high school—these things appear on my résumés, building an image of me for the world. Outside of the crafting marketplace, knitting is not a desired skill. Neither is weaving potholders.

But they bring me a very particular fulfillment. The process of crafting—knitting, sewing, weaving, dyeing—requires purpose and concentration from start to finish. Everything I craft is my idea, my vision. There is a nirvana in counting stitches, matching fabrics and pondering colors that carries through to the satisfaction of finishing something—unlike the agony of writing a paper which leads to the final manic burst of happiness and relief when it is handed in.

So I carry my crafts, not in my name but in my mind and my hands. I knit through house meetings, paint for my friends and patch my jeans when I fall on my knees. The peaceful process of crafting, the pleasure at finishing something—even if I don’t particularly like it—culminates in the sense of self that comes with knowing that I may not be marketable, but I can still create and express myself through those creations. That’s a way of being that I want to hold on to.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that the alternative etymology of Penelope relates to the Greek word “penelops,” which means “duck.” I like ducks, from afar, and it’s good to remember that even the most gifted of people can still be birdbrains. But when people ask me what “Penelope” means—I usually stick to “weaver.”

Penelope Lusk is a member of the Class of 2017

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