I tend to start new projects diving in head first with huge (even larger-than-life) ambitions and enthusiasm. Sometimes I drag friends in with me. Summer of 2005, W and I, and Meredith and her husband (all of us post-grad-school artists) lived in Berlin for four months doing an aritst residency. Meredith was knitting, because that’s what she does, like breathing.
A few weeks go by, and the next thing you know I am trying to talk her and W and the husband into starting a handmade (or handgemacht, seeing as how we get to be German for the time being) clothing business. You know, DIY-style. They agree! What suckers What great friends. Next week, Meredith and I are combing the outskirts of Berlin looking for a used sewing machine. In German. We speak very little German. We spend hundreds of euros (that we really don’t have) on beautiful fabric. We drink German beer and sew while husband designs super-cool website for our new business.
We take our wares around town, dangerously encouraged by the cool Berlin shop that likes our stuff. We have petty fights about quality, work hours, hurt feelings. We were investing in this business. It didn’t pan out long term, post-Berlin, because in order to make something like this work, you have to give it every ounce of your soul and bank account. We each had our own art practices to tend to and lives to establish.
So now it doesn’t come as much of a surprise to me that I am doing NaBloPoMo.
I did learn from my Berlin sewing adventure; and at the same time it’s not like nothing good came from it.
Ahh, baum.baum! It was fun till we never made any money:)
Um, You gave me the best haircut of my entire life that summer – as demonstrated by the photo above.
Come cut my hair… please?