Diferencias de creatividad

This afternoon, joy of joys, Ben came into town, with a videographer and scientist in tow, no less. Ben, if I haven’t explained, is Lupe’s husband, and the other half of the head of this organization. The first, and I mean very first, thing he did, was not even to introduce me to the people he brought with him, no, it was to ask where my new designs were. I went into my room to get them (my room! My space! Private! For me!) where he followed me, and I sarcastically said (more than once) “thank you! This is MY room!” as in “hey! My space! Wait outside!” and I’m fairly sure he got it, but he’s not the type of person to let something like my boundaries bother him. I made him follow me back outside, and showed them to him, which he critiqued negatively in front of everyone. Within the first 5 minutes of arriving. I haven’t had time to prepare my defenses! Not fair!

HIS CRITIQUE… was that the material looked cheap and hippie-ish. Now… here is my conundrum. His wife picked out the fabric. I also happen to like it, and Claudia has given me her praise many times for the design, as well as I have been wearing them around town to see what people say (and also because I like them) and I have received a lot of good attention for them. What they are, and what I made them to be, is something rather cheap that we can make a lot of quickly and sell quickly. They utilize the typical fabrics of the area, making them super appealing to tourists as well as anyone in the states who is part of that new trend of tribal themed accessories, which according to my sister is very popular. The weavings here are so incredibly full that anything that’s done with them has to be done with a really minimalist hand or else they end up looking like a preschooler’s coloring book. Here I am dealing with the same exact thing all over again as when Lupe came. He’s got this idea in his head, he knows is so easy to do, but the idea is vague and lacking the technical details to bring it into physical reality (which is what I am here for) and so he has no idea what it takes to do it. He just wants me to do it. Sure sure, fine fine, but how do I tell someone with no experience with the nature of making textiles and with the nature of making jewelry, that it is physically impossible? I think it would have to come down to what happened with Lupe. Here you go, all your materials.. Pick up those scissors and show me exactly what you want me to do with them.. and then he sees that when he cuts this one little thread, the whole thing disintegrates, and when he adds one more color of embroidery, it looks like throw up, and square is always “square.” There is nothing weavings lend themselves to better than quadrilaterals, and there is nothing less flattering on the human body than one. This is also what I’m here for. What do you want? I can do that. What do you want? Not going to work. Let me show you another way. So this is where we are now.

Specifically, what Ben wants is “sophisticated, complicated, expensive.” The idea stems directly from an isreali designer that they carry at the store who makes extremely large, complicated, and admittedly gorgeous jewelry out of all ribbons. It’s breathtaking, and absolutely impossible. Ben is thinking something like this, in the price range upwards of $300. Here’s my take on that: You want a pair of earrings made out of fabric worth 300? I can do that for you. You want me to design that, then teach how to make it, and expect my students who are all rural housewives working out of their home to sustain the level of quality necessary, even after I leave the country.. and you want me to do it before I go home in something like 2 months. Absolutamente, positivamente, sin dudo, no es posible. Here’s my next problem with the idea.. Gas is something like $4 a gallon and food is getting more expensive and gold and silver are incredibly high, and you think people are going to keep spending 300 bucks on earrings? Made out of fabric?? One of the very BEST things about using fabric for jewelry is that it is incredibly cheap. When the economy tanks, middle class people (your market) don’t buy jewelry. They save their money, or use it on gas and food. If they encounter a pair of $10 earrings, they’ll splurge for that.. You’re an economist, you should be able to predict that. That’s how I am! I made these earrings to be cheap, and I told him that, and then I told him briefly about the market I was after, and he shook my hand. That may or may not mean that he gets me. It was too brief an encounter to get the full side of any of it. I was also a little too miffed by him constantly coming in and out of my room. I’m an adult, please treat my personal space with respect. I keep Vladimir out, Luie and Claudia are kind enough to leave me be, please learn from them. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d cleaned in the last 3 weeks. But of course I had half the house’s tea cups on my dresser. Augh!

Then after that he went through Sylvia’s workshop, where he at the same time expressed his dislike for the indigenous fabrics and praised many of the items made out of them. What Ben has is ideas. He has an idea that the indigenous weavings don’t sell (they haven’t in a long time, I don’t blame him) so he philosophically wants to discourage from using them. I think, as a novice designer, that what you want to do is work with the strengths.. I mean come on! Duh! These women’s craft, culture, lives are weaving. These patterns, these colors, they may not be what’s been there since the beginning of the Mayan calendar, but it’s what they do now! So.. instead of trying to take them out of what they know and into something that they don’t fit into, take what they have and elaborate on it. Something that has a ton of color and pattern gets a very simple form and vice versa. All that art foundations crap. As I told my dad in my last email, you just can’t take a volkswagon bug and try to make it look like a Porsche. The best thing you can do is accept it’s goofiness. Giving it a sleek paint job and a bunch of chrome is only going to make it look uncomfortable. What’s also incredibly working in our favor is that fashion is turning around and bringing hippie style into popularity. Bright colors, bold patterns, contrasting everything. The opposite of the last ten years of monochromatic style. GO WITH IT.

Anyway, though, as I had started to say. He disliked the idea but liked the end product, which goes to show that good design is good design no matter what, and if I can make things that sell, he’s going to like it out of principle if not out of philosophy. The good thing is that I knew this from the beginning. The bad thing is that I knew this from the beginning. My first idea when they asked me to do this was to use fabric. I’m not kidding. They asked me to design jewelry, I knew cost would be a factor, and I suggested fabric. Ben Blevins told me that he didn’t like the idea. Now with the metals market they come to me like it’s something brand new. I don’t know. I expect it’s just how the world works. I can’t imagine all my bosses to have the design logic of my art professors. I’m doing what I gotta do. And I’m getting some damn good experience while. So I’m going with it. Hopefully in the next few days I can write more posts about how I misunderstood some things and that I’m not on an island with Sylvia against the tide of Blevinses. Let’s see how it goes.