Thriving arts and crafts in [very] rural places

Yesterday my wife and I drove two hours north to the very small town of Clearwater, Nebraska. One of the seven or so yarn stores in the state happens to be in this community of 300+. We had a great discussion with MareLee, the proprietor of the business, about creativity, community and the unHurried prairie life.

Prairie Threads (website down at the time of this writing) opened about two years ago. When she told the town council she planned to open a fiber arts store they thought she was crazy but supported her anyway. Clearwater, like so many other tiny towns, is on the verge of dying.

Hannah & Maisie & threads

Her good friends back in Washington State, where she had recently moved from, thought she was nuts as well, certifiable. Why would someone move from a lush, populated, coastal state to the landlocked Great Plains, to the edge of a grass covered desert, to a sleepy little town?

All of those Washington friends have since visited her in the Nebraska Sandhills, and none of them are questioning her sanity any longer. Upon visiting, her friends realized how productive she was artistically after getting away from the frenetic city-dweller mentality. They realized you can sit and have a real conversation without the pressure of somewhere to go, someone to see, something to do. They saw how she is now a real part of the community she lives in — crazy or not — in a way she never experienced living in the big city.

We talked about Kathleen Norris’ book Dakota and how living on the prairie encourages a slower pace of life, a contemplative life that encourages creativity. We all agreed that, as artists, we become crabby if we don’t have the time to work out an idea that is simmering in our head, and that focused time — something that can look an awful lot like doing nothing to a casual observer — is a necessity in creative work.

I drew a lot of parallels to the Scissortail art center idea during the conversation. MareLee pointed out that the yarn store venture was a lot of work and required years of persistence preceding success. Teaching is a key aspect of her business (she has 40 years of experience to draw from across all fiber arts: knitting, spinning, dyeing, weaving, etc). She was able to purchase a home and place of business for a song (her son, living and working in Washington D.C., pointed out that what she paid was barely a down payment on a place in the city).

If you’re ever in north-central Nebraska, make it a point to stop into this prairie gem. While you’re up there, have a meal at Green Gables in Orchard, Nebraska, a barn converted into a restaurant.

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Another affirmation of the Great Plains

Cody Jean Carson Brown's Migration

One of the things that makes central Nebraska really unique is the Spring migration of the Sandhill Cranes. All sorts of events go on during the month of March in response to the roughly 500,000 cranes descending on the Platte River Valley. Earlier this week my wife and I enjoyed the opening reception of Stuhr Museum’s annual Wings Over the Platte exhibit.

It’s quite a good show, worth seeing if you’re in the area. I was glad to see acquaintance Doug Johnson getting Best of Show. His recent work is going in a creative and wonderfully unexpected direction, which is sometimes lacking in Midwestern art shows. Another fascinating piece was the mixed media (but mostly ceramic) wall sculpture by Cody Jean Carson Brown pictured to the right.

However, the most interesting thing at the exhibit was not visual. It was the bio/artist statement from featured artist Jason Jilg.

Born and raised in Broken Bow, [Nebraska], Jason could not leave the Great Plains fast enough. The world pulled with all its exotic lands and cultures, so Jason joined the Navy and traveled the world to see these locations . . .

. . . If I were given the choice of traveling Europe or some location in the American Plains, I’d probably pick the Plains . . . This part of America that is “in between.” In between the American West, American South and the very different American Midwest in terms of not only geography, but also time, place and memory.

This is interesting to me, if you haven’t figured it out yet, as yet another validation of the plains, the prairie: Lampooned by so much of America, loved by so many that have taken the time to observe it.

Jason’s photography is some of the better photography I’ve seen in recent memory. The exhibit wasn’t perfect; it lacked a focal point as a whole and some of the prints were pushed a little too far — a la Ansel Adams. But it’s obvious Jilg possesses the necessary skills to excel at the craft. He’s careful about choosing and composing his subject matter and uses the frame very well. His sense of scale shooting on the prairie as a subject is also very acute. I’m looking forward to seeing more of his images in the near future.

Does poverty encourage creativity?

Lately I’ve been wondering if poverty encourages creativity. Two things prompted this ponderment. One was Andrew Petersen’s first post in his recent series about money, titled Not the root of all evil. The other is simply the lean financial times I find myself in the midst of as we enter Autumn; the contract work I’ve had painting houses this year has dried up for the time being.

My mind is working differently than when I had that work painting. I see things now, objects and opportunities, differently. Possibilities multiply. I take the time to consider more numerous options than if our household was [somewhat more] flush with cash, able to collect in a cart from the Home Depot whatever sundries are needed for a project. Things I’ve collected, some with a specific purpose and some not, look new and become useful in a myriad of ways (I’m not really all that much of a pack rat, but I can’t let some things go.). For instance, the broken dishwasher in the backyard will now become, after being disassembled, part of my downdraft table. Anyone have a squirrel cage laying around they care to donate to that project?

Thus the question in my head is, “Does poverty encourage creativity?” Seems to me it does. I’d like to hear what others think or have experienced in this regard. Does our wealth, individually and nationally, sometimes get in the way of (and also some of the time foster) our imaginations, our ability to be at our creative best?

Paradoxically, I also find myself busier now that a month ago when I still had that [mostly] regular job. I’d love to be working on my own house right now — painting and putting to good use all the building materials I’ve salvaged over the past few months — but haven’t the time in light of trying to find other ways to generate income. As I count in my head, I’m working in no less than five directions toward that end at the moment.

One of those directions is as a freelance graphic designer. I pick up this kind of work now and then anyway, so I’m offering my talents as such if you or yours need a logo, brochure, banner etc designed and printed up. You can see a portfolio of my work under the above tab titled Design Portfolio. Email me at TheAestheticElevator(at)gmail(dot)com if you need such services.

The switch to renewables requires a redesign of American life

On the way down to Nashville for the Hutchmoot we stopped for lunch at a friend’s home near Kansas City. While there I began looking at a magazine called World, as I recall. I glanced at an article in the publication pointing at holes in the recent plans for renewable energy.

The long and short of what my skimming told me — I didn’t have time to finish the article — Renewable energy such as wind and solar won’t work for the cars we drive. No kidding! The article also, if I recall correctly, pointed out that these energy sources won’t even provide enough electricity, even if they are developed to the n^th degree, to meet our current electricity needs.

I’ve made the point on the blog before, as I recall, that we need to revamp the culture and our environmental design in order to get to where most or all of our energy needs come from renewable sources. We can’t work from the assumption that we can maintain the cultural status quo while at the same time switching over to renewable sources of energy. Instead, we must become creative in all aspects of our lives. Developing more efficient lifestyles seems like common sense to me — regardless of where our energy is coming from (Per my cursory skim the magazine article suggested nuclear, but I’d still rather see other avenues developed further along with more intentionally efficient living.).

Cameraphone capture of part of a wind turbine, going down I-80 on our way home from Nashville.

On our way down to the Hutchmoot last week, my wife and I were introduced to Rodney and Sidney Wright. Rodney wrote The Hawkweed Passive Solar House Book. He showed us around their house — inserting at least one pun into every sentence — pointing to all of the attention paid to making the home more energy efficient. The energy bill for the home was less than $50 a month for the 1,200 square foot structure in Paducah, Kentucky (a walkable community, he pointed out). The couple paid good money for energy efficient appliances, used prefabricated wall panels with dense foam insulation to build with and of course designed the home with climate and geography in mind, in a passive solar fashion.

It’s going to take this kind of intentionality in our design of life, I believe, in order to make renewables work. Sure some things might cost more now and then, but Wright made a point of saying that even though their uber efficient Swedish microwave/convection oven might have cost them $3,000 they built the home for only $85,000 (doing some of the work themselves, such as painting) just four years ago.

Wright also pointed out that we used to do better at designing our dwellings and communities as they relate to their local environments. What will it take as a culture to forgo the more common and under-considered living spaces we create in the United States?

Intentional Observation: Love the place you’re in

Damaris over at the Internet Monk posted a wonderful little entry earlier this week about place after realizing that the monastic vows of Saint Benedict included not just poverty, chastity, and obedience, but also stability.

As I’ve mentioned numerous times here before, this kind of stability is something we Americans mostly don’t understand. In the past century or so we’ve been given the opportunity to be geographically mobile and a lot of us jump on that every chance we get. A few excerpts from Damaris’ post:

There is a virtue to staying where you are. There is a virtue to being where you are. Too many of us are never where we are. We live with our windows closed, shades drawn, televisions on. Our feet never feel the ground, and our skin never feels the air. While our bodies occupy a vague, in-between world, our minds are editing the past or worrying about the future . . .

This place where we are now is the only place we can meet God. God will never be in the imaginary places, the greener grass springing from our discontent, and neither will we.

The author then implores us to take a hard look at the place we’re in now. Be it high or low, noble or ignoble, and find beauty in it. There is beauty in it. “This place where we are now is the only place we can meet God. God will never be in the imaginary places, the greener grass springing from our discontent, and neither will we.”

Read the brief entry and contribute to the conversation via this link.

Racism at the bank

So I went to the bank again this afternoon. Ahead of me in line were people of all colors and ethnicity, again. The man directly in front of me was in what I presume to be in native garb from somewhere in North Africa, a simple white robe and a well crafted skull cap of sorts.

An American man got into line behind me. He had a young Latino next to him with whom he spoke fluent Spanish. Apparently the American, from what I could tell, was helping this man open or withdraw from a bank account.

Africans at a bank in the Midwest.

In this particular Wells Fargo branch there is a large antique scale. The American told the Latino to go see how much he weighed. As he went to discover that he weighed a slight 120 pounds, the man escorting him said to me under his breath, “Too many of them here. Too many of them too,” he continued while pointing to the African man in front of me. “They’re taking over.”

I had to restrain myself from replying to this blatant racism, though in my mind I formulated a response, something to the effect that “I appreciate the cultural diversity that’s come to the Midwest.” He’d just come in and I didn’t really know how much of a conversation I wanted to have in line at the bank, a conversation of that nature. So I said nothing and looked ahead.

As the line was fairly long and slow we did end up exchanging a few more words, mostly to discuss our weight, the pens in the bank which never write and how Fridays are always the busiest day to make a deposit. It became somewhat obvious this man was pretty unhappy in general, or at least liked to complain. I wondered if he was harboring some sort of bitterness that poured into all aspects of his life, including impatiently waiting in line at the bank.

I know this is a fairly common prejudicial sentiment, but what I don’t understand at all is how people get there. I grew up in a very, very Caucasian Midwestern community. There were a lot fewer Latin immigrants (legal or otherwise) then than now, and very few black people in the town.

The one black kid I remember in school, in my grade, was a bully. He was a leader and had a cadre of people around him that didn’t respect anyone else for the most part. My first life experiences with an African American were negative, and yet I’m somehow not harboring any ill feelings towards him or people of any color.

How is it then that so many Americans, perhaps particularly in the Midwest, find and foster such feelings towards people of other ethnicities? Is it thanks to media reports that talk about crime in the poorer neighborhoods where immigrants end up living? Did they have parents who instilled specific prejudices instead of compassion, respect and love for other people as themselves? Or did they have bad experiences like I did as a child that they couldn’t work through?

Last weekend my wife and I were thinking about patriotic American holidays and church. We were wondering if the patriotism often worked into Sunday morning services on or near certain holidays — which my wife and I don’t really appreciate — would be lost on someone not born in the United States. Other’s pointed out, though, that these people might have a greater appreciation for America and feel right as rain celebrating the country (in lieu of celebrating God, which is the problem we have with such services).

And this makes sense in most cases. So how do so many Americans end up so down on these people who so love their country? Isn’t it flattery for people to try and get into your country for the freedoms and opportunities it affords?

I’ve heard the arguments against immigration, so spare me your pat rhetoric in response to my deeper apolitical inquiry. And understand that I’m not condoning the illegal crossing of borders here. The man in question at the bank this afternoon should know better than to assume all or most immigrants are illegal. The Africans in line were almost certainly not illegal. They were probably refugees.

How can so many Americans have so little sense of their personal history? How can they forget so easily that this country is a country of immigrants (my sincere apologies to the Native Americans)? I’m grateful for my own family’s interest in their history. I’m glad that I’m regularly reminded by my parents and grandparents of our Danish, Swedish and German heritage. Apparently there’s a little bit of French in there too somewhere. Do other families not talk about their roots? Doesn’t someone in their clan have an affinity for genealogy?

My best guess as to why people find and foster this kind of hatred is that they’re scared. Scared of the reported crime, whether or not it’s an accurate representation of the immigrant community as a whole. Scared of losing jobs I suppose, even though we all know the immigrants generally take jobs a lot of us Americans aren’t willing to do anyway (though I suppose this economy may have changed that to a degree). Scared of the unknown.

Really I just don’t understand, as I said before. I’m not perfect. If we’re honest with ourselves we all know that we harbor some bias, some prejudice. But aren’t things like love for one’s neighbor still basic cultural values in America? Do we not hold to the truth that all men are created equal?

TV as a time-suck, and as a part of us

I grew up with a very moderated television viewing schedule. In fact, the one small TV in our house was often relegated to our parent’s closet if they thought we were watching too much. Cable was out of the question. For the longest time we didn’t own a VCR; we rented one from the video store. As the kids got older this electronic banishment became less and less common, but in college I basically only saw one show, The Simpsons, in the dining hall at supper. I didn’t have a television in my room and really didn’t want one.

A few months after my wife and I got married we inherited the same little TV that occasionally hid out in mom and dad’s closet, along with a VCR that liked to eat tapes. We found that we liked to watch movies together, as so many people do. Since then we’ve upgraded to a relatively inexpensive flat panel television and a DVD player (although streaming from Hulu and Netflix via the Wii have been our preferred modes of video reception of late). We still like to watch movies together but also watch television. In fact, in the past 18 months we’ve watched a lot more television than film, mostly on DVDs. It’s much more pleasant sans the commercials, which probably doesn’t need to be said.

My wife, being female, can multitask. She knits or spins with a show on in the background. That’s harder for me to do, especially considering how much messier my chosen crafts generally are than hers. I’m usually more particular about what I watch than she is partly for this reason. I end up getting sucked into the programs, some that I don’t even like — like 24 — and that’s a giant waste of time when I could be sculpting or working on Scissortail instead. 24 is actually playing in the background as I type this entry.

There are some decent things about 24, such as the overall concept. But I don’t like the writing. 95% of the dialogue is just cheesy and often unaware of itself, and many of the characters are simply idiotic at times. The show also suffers from redundancy. Subsequent seasons are basically the same plot rehashed. A lot of shows grow old before they need to after finding a formula that works, that keeps viewers and advertisers coming back. The art, the imagination that drove the original idea, seizes up in light of the almighty dollar.

Image from Wikipedia

So why do I watch? My best guess is that it has something to do with the innate importance of story in our lives as humans. This is something that I’m just beginning to realize thanks in large part to my wife, who manages to read about 85 books a year. I barely get through five, and most of them are nonfiction.

TV, and therein story, can be more than entertainment. In my own life Bones is a good example of this. The wife began watching this show on a recommendation, as I recall, and it took me a while to get into it. The gruesome representations of human remains stuck in my head, unpleasantly, and I grew tired of the psychopaths. The show is very good though, and I’ve stuck with it. The characters are wonderful, as is the interplay between them — particularly between Booth and Bones. The dialogue is sharp and witty. And most interestingly I’ve become desensitized to the images of decomposing flesh.

Of course, such is commonly considered one of the evils of television. We see murders, we see violence and our observation presumably devalues human life. We’ll begin to emulate the actions of the characters as we continue to follow their stories.

We’ll all be emulating the corpses portrayed on Bones in some way or another (though hopefully not as murder victims dumped down a sewer drain) at some point, barring a present rapture or cremation. Or mummification, but that’s beside the point. Death is reality. Bones helped bring our human mortality to light in my life, at least in part. I’ve never been to a funeral for a person I knew, which for a person of my age seems out of the ordinary — though something to be thankful for as well — at least to me. So the reality of our finite time on Earth is a lesson I’ve had to come by through other means. In this case, through story.

What I’m wondering at the moment is this: How can we balance listening to other people’s stories, written in books or as a television series, with making or living out our own stories?

In a month we’ll be in Nashville for the Hutchmoot. The thrust of the moot will the importance of stories (from what I can tell anyway; I’m not sure there’s actually a theme). From the moot’s website:

We want you to come and enjoy a weekend of music and conversation about the stories all around us in song, film, books — and most importantly the story being told through our lives; our own story — what it means to get to the holy hidden heart of it, how to tell a better story with the days we’re given, and how our stories intersect each other’s and connect to the Great Story.

I’m grateful for the written word, for oral traditions and I’m grateful for photographic media (including video) as well. I’m glad I’m able to be a part of other people’s stories and learn from their experiences. However, at times I worry we neglect our own stories in favor of other’s.

I’m trying to figure out how to keep that from happening in my own life, how to find a balance.

Standing outside of American suburbia

At some point in the last week I saw something that made me think, as I do on occasion, how nice it would be to be pursuing the suburban dream here in America. My wife and I could [in theory] be fairly successful [financially] if we chose to go that route. We both possess degrees in halfway decent paying fields that we have not pursued as avidly as we could have, even though both of us are still using those skills in our work presently. We could be living on the right side of the tracks if we wanted to be.

We chose instead, just after graduating, to serve in mission mobilization with Mission Data International, which we’re still doing. So from the get go we had to raise money for my own fairly frugal salary. My wife became editing manager of our small town newspaper while we raised support, but she quit as we had planned when my student loans were paid off.

I don’t remember exactly what triggered the desire to seek out suburbia this week. It may have been seeing that happy family driving down the road in their newer car, combined with the chaos of moving into a very small house in neighborhood I don’t know anything about.

And now I’m wondering — not for the first time — now I’m asking the question “What is the appeal of suburbia?” Is it merely social pressure or is there more to it? Could it be there is something about the suburban space that hearkens to our subconscious? Is there something in us as humans that yearns for more open spaces (Yes, I know I’m posting this just after suggesting I miss downtown living.)? In recent years I’ve become a little less of a critic of the American suburbs, realizing we can’t just summarily do away with them and wondering, as already stated, if they came into being and proliferated with some substance beyond the greed of speculative developers.

My wife and I certainly have our reasons for intentionally standing outside of the typical pursuit of American suburbia, keyword here being pursuit. Our own interests, passions, point our time and efforts towards ends that, while still personal, attempt to look beyond our own comfort. We hope to be a counterculture for the common good. While this can be done — and should be done by people who feel called to it — in the context of the suburbs, it’s not where we’re at.

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As an aside, another aspect of this week’s enigmatic desire to have a suburban life — which the wife very accurately pointed out has enough problems of its own since it’s also populated by people — might a sense of isolation I’ve had over the past few months. Working a more or less full time job away from the computer (along with still working my part-time M-DAT job mobilizing, breaking in a puppy and moving) has taken more getting used to than I expected. I miss blogging, being able to read blogs, being able to read substantial articles on the arts or theology during the week. I’m not a news junky by any stretch of the imagination, but I was disappointed to learn just this morning (in an email from M-DAT HQ) that there was a volcano disrupting air travel for mission trips. We also miss our network of artistically inclined friends back in Northwest Arkansas.

How any of this relates to a desire for a suburban life, which is typically associated with isolation itself, I don’t know. But my mind seems to want to make some kind of connection to it at the moment.

Community revival and the artist retreat

Last weekend I came across a property in Hazelton, Kansas that seems like it would work very well for an artist retreat. It’s a very large building that was most recently either a farm implement or oil well supplier from what I can tell. The 1948 concrete structure — from what I can tell it would be best described as Mid-Century Modern — seems to be a organized maze of a five bedroom living space nestled in the midst of a series of garages and open spaces.

It’s exciting to find properties like this in light of the retreat idea, especially ones that seem within some kind of financial reach (best scenario would be if the property was donated to the effort, probably after we receive 501(c)(3) status although not necessarily). My wife will tell you I become obsessed when I find certain spaces that serve certain functions, which is probably a fair assessment.

But this post isn’t about the building in Hazelton. It’s about the community of Hazelton.

Hazelton, Kansas is a very small community (roughly 130 people) about an hour southwest of Wichita. It’s the type of place most people can’t ever imagine moving to, the type of town that’s dying off in America. From what I can tell in Google Maps, most of the downtown buildings (about 10 of them, seemingly well kept) are vacant. A water tower stands over a green space and what appears to be a water treatment facility lies east of its guard; a highway and railway pass by to the west.

This isn’t the kind of place I would expect to end up in, although the vacant schoolhouse idea could also land the retreat in a similarly tiny town. However, as happens when new ideas present themselves, I’ve found myself daydreaming of what Hazelton might become with an infusion of the arts.

How could the retreat I’m imagining help revitalize this small community? Granted, it’s not going to be the kind of economic boon many of these rural places generally hope for. It won’t be a factory with 50 jobs, but it might (on the high end) employ five people part-time. Instead I’m wondering how an arts related institution can give back to the place that it’s in, large or small. In the case of small, in the case of Hazelton, Kansas, the impact could at least appear more significant than in a larger city.

In my daydream, the retreat is able to employ a few part-time employees (eventually). It hopes to help put the presumably vacant downtown buildings to some good use, even if it’s not installing regular businesses. Maybe one of them becomes a community space available for birthday parties or community wide Thanksgiving celebrations or occasional gallery spaces for movies, music, theater and other art exhibitions. Maybe one of them is transformed into a place where a person with a passion for food cooks a monthly meal for anyone who wants to come. I’d like to see a bonafide park — I don’t think there is one from what I can tell, again from Google Maps — and sidewalks with decorative streetlamps along Main Street from the highway to downtown (donated to the community by the retreat, if God were to ever bless the retreat with such ability).

Adding: Of course, in this day and age of the internet, those buildings could be used for for profit businesses. They would probably be inexpensive to rent for storage for internet sales (thinking of the eBay boom, which is pretty much past now anyhow). Maybe one of them becomes a gluten free bakery that ships breads across the country. These aren’t the strongest ideas related to the point of the internet enabling far flung locations to succeed, but they’re what come to mind off-hand.

My wife was dreaming of creating a library for the community if it doesn’t have one. I would hope to turn the roughly 10 acres around the building into a public, park-like space with a walking trail — preferably one that’s tied to the rest of the community in some form or fashion) — sculpture garden and tennis court (which is already on the property).

This line of thinking is new to me, probably because most of the time (though admittedly not all) I imagine the retreat being on a farm or acreage outside of a city. This enticing piece of property is fostering this new line of thinking. Regardless, for any of the things I’ve brainstormed to happen we’d want to start by garnering interest from the residents. In many ways I’m thinking like a community planner here, a facilitator with the best interest of the place and its people at heart.

Respecting your audience as an artist

Laura Tokie wrote an interesting article over at The Curator last week titled Art Meets Town. There are two things from the article I’d like to talk about.

The first, and more interesting, is that of respecting your audience as an artist. Don’t deny it now: As artists we can be snobs. We sometimes think our own opinions — and not necessarily just on artistic matters — are better than the commoners, so to speak, around us. Tokie uses Squidward as an example of this in pop culture.

She then talks about the founders of the Williamston Theatre in contrast to such snobbery.

The professional artists at the Williamston Theatre are nothing like Squidward. The founders are big-pond tested Midwesterners who love the small-town way of life, and believe that art can be a thread in the greater fabric of a community.

With this belief, the Williamston Theatre challenges attitudes held by many so-called artists, as well as so-called regular people. Some artists assume that they know what “the common man” likes, and dismiss their interests and opinions.

I’ve been a snob in the past, and sometimes I probably still am. I haven’t been able to figure out exactly why this mentality seems so prevalent among artists (though if we want we could use Art School Confidential‘s suggestions), but ever since my wife pointed it out — let’s all be grateful for this kind of marital accountability — I’ve earnestly tried to change my perspective. In all likelihood, my musings (and problems) with the idea of artist as genius are a result of this attempt to loose myself from these chains of egocentrism.

The process by which the Williamston Theatre came into being is worth noting. Instead of just diving into the project, there was talk beforehand with city officials. This was followed by readings in local businesses in order to build relationships and gain support. “The four founders of the theatre didn’t want to thrust art upon the town, but rather tell stories with, for, and about their audiences,” the author notes.

Williamston, Michigan is a small town, and what I don’t quite understand in Tokie’s article is her apparent belief that artists must be “big-pond tested” — which I take to mean that the artists at the theatre were vetted by the big city — before being considered worthwhile.

Squidward represents all that is bad with small-town artistes. They want to be special, the standard-bearers of all that is culturally excellent, but look down on the very people who could be their audience. They yearn for “these people” to be more refined and sophisticated. Ironically, some are not talented. There’s a reason they never tried to make it in the big city.

I’m really trying not to be irked by the last comment in this quote, trying to understand where she’s coming from. However, to me it sounds a lot like the same kind of elitism that she’s trying to debunk by lauding the Williamson Theatre. Yes, there is a cultural understanding that as an artist you aren’t somebody until you make it in the big city. However, quality of craft or concept are simply not directly tied to big city living or galleries. And if she thinks they are, I’d really like to hear her rational for that.