[while this commentary is written about poetry and fiber art, there are some fantastically pertinant points to current thread]


The Dangers of Influence, The Glories of Strangeness

Commentary from Fiber Arts magazine, JAN/FEB 2004 issue
by Empress Cindy

According to the pundits, poetry I the United States is either dead or dying. They’ve been wailing with vigor since Commentary published Joseph Epstein’s screed "Who Killed Poetry" in it’s August 1988 issue.

As usual, the pundotti proclaim from prejudice instead of reality. Editors are receiving more submissions than ever, poetry slams win more converts every month, and poetry workshops have been popping up like dandelions after a summer rain.

But—also as usual—they do make one strong point: the increasingly academic environment, for both aspiring poets and established ones, is having an effect. Since most poets can’t earn much money writing poetry, they teach. And when they teach, students fallow a fairly standard format, which means that the poems that survive them will have a lot of similarities. And since established poets spend so much time in academia, their poetry often starts sounding alike too.

I think fiber work is in the same bind, though so far the pundits have ignored both the work and the bind. And although its artists aren’t nearly as welcomed by academia as poets, many do make the rounds of conferences and workshops.

Although poetry and fiber workshops are dissimilar, they share a common danger: influence. If you go to a poetry workshop with Marge Piercy, you may find yourself writing poetry like hers, and if you go to a quilt workshop with Nancy Crow, you may find yourself making quilts like hers.

At first glance, this doesn’t look like a problem—after all, what’s so bad about serving an apprenticeship? Nothing, I would say, as long as you move beyond it and into your own work.

Unfortunately, this sounds easier than it is. The saying goes that imitators barrow and artists steal, meaning artists take everything they’ve learned and make it their own (while imitators display what they’ve borrowed)

But how do you do that? How do you so thoroughly digest Nancy Crow’s free-form style that it becomes an organic part of your work instead of a section here or there with her name on it?

From my limited experience with fiber and my 30 years of writing prose, my only answer is to make things, lots and lots of things, weird things and ugly things, pretty things and boring things, little things and boring things. And then to the courage to throw out all the imitations and start over again. And to keep going through this process until you’ve worked the influences out of your system and have only the antibodies left.

But that isn’t enough, because fiber also mirrors poetry in the way its establishment bestows acknowledgement. It’s almost impossible to get a first book of poetry published without winning a competition judged by a proper poet or two, and it’s also almost impossible to shoe fiber work without winning approval from a proper juror or three.

That’s why I feel we’re not seeing any strange and edgy work. People may be making wildly original pieces, but they’re not going to et those pieces past many judges, assuming they even bother to try. So we need to find a way to encourage the mavericks among us, those hardy and persistent artist who insist on making their own work in their own way. We need to develop venues—shows, galleries, magazines, and books—that showcase unpasturized work. And we need to stop during and judging everything in sight and make some shows wide open, choosing work by lottery, first-come-first-served, or any other random method.

Finally, we need to stop looking for “the best” and go back to just looking, suspending our expectations long enough to give each piece our full and unprejudiced attention. Original work is the lifeblood of any art, and if we don’t stop sifting fiber work through sieves of propriety and approval, it will again become decorative craft and nothing more.