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W O L V E R I N E FA R M P U B L I S H I N G ’ S
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MAT TERHORN
free : a quarterly print supplement : winter 2012
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a storehouse of wonder : fort collins , co : free
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making t h e wo r l d s p i n b ac k wa r d s :
T HE I mp orta n c e of
Cr a f t E s s ay B y To d d S i m m o n s P ho t o g ra phs B y C h a rl e s J. M a l o n e
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here used to be a shoe cobbler with a small shop just north of Laurel on College Avenue. One day I walked into his shop and offered myself up as an apprentice, free of charge. I was shiftless—but not lazy—and wanted a mentor in some worthwhile craft. At some point in their lives everyone needs shoes, and that meant job security. The shoe cobbler wanted a three-year commitment to teach me his craft. I was bowled over with the thought of spending three years in that small, packed, leathery place. Did I really want to be a shoe cobbler that badly? I thanked him, but declined, and left him some of my own shoes to repair. The shoe cobbler is no longer on College Avenue and the building now houses a tattoo shop. What are we to do with our flapping and failing soles? I imagine that shoe cobbler saw a lot of different people like me over the years, people who wanted to learn a craft, some valuable trade they performed with their hands, but couldn’t commit to the time necessary to learn it. I have a feeling that downtown Fort Collins might be able to support a shoe cobbler again, as traditional crafts are swinging back into mainstream culture. Craft is very hip with just a little hype. Sometimes, though not often enough, when these qualities get attached to a social or cultural phenomenon, it signals the return of common sense. Economic uncertainty married to resource depletion, climate change, and general global instability sheds a new light on things crafted locally. Some things get built, some produced, but when something is crafted, then to me it rivals art—it is unique, and usually handmade out of desire; it’s something that is put together well and meant to stay that way. Like a good book, or a wheel of handmade cheese. Like a chair that does not squeak, or a small-batch beer that goes down too well in the afternoon sun. Like a pair of shoes that can be fixed, if need be. In a world hell-bent on speed and instantaneous everything, some people invest their greatest assets—their time and energy—and over a period of time learn a set of skills in order to become craftspeople. Almost without exception it takes a long time to learn how to make something that will last. And as we all wade around in the great big digital ocean of curiosities known as the Internet, searching for that thing we want immediately, the craftspeople toil away in their workshops with their tools, spending countless hours on one guitar, or one piece of jewelry, or a novel that needs to be just right. The pains of their labor are often their greatest reward, but nowadays the idea of a paycheck need not be lost amongst the sawdust and sweat. continued on page 3
agriculture : bicycles : book reviews : travel & adventure : photography : local culture & activism wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
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M A T T E R H O R N exists because good news exists. The good news is that our community changes constantly. Our neighbors are innovative and creative. Amidst the dynamo of Fort Collins, we support these forward thinking activities, we applaud those who earn it. We are interested in good ideas paired with right action wherever they occur. When necessary we also sound our horn to call attention to wrongheadedness and missed opportunity. We exist at a vibrant nexus between journalism and the literary arts. We believe in interviews, information, research, thoughtful exploration, and poetry. We aspire to do better, to reinvent ourselves incessantly. We're driven by our community, we encourage everyone to participate, to think, to write, to engage the issues at hand. We crave feedback and interaction.
wolverine farm publishing ’ s
MA T TE RHORN A Quarterly Print Supplement # 5 winter 2012
managing editor Charles J. Malone contributers Michael Bashkin Matthew & Danelle Brit Diane Findley Katie Fromuth Patricia Gambino Shannon Hayes John Jenkins Beth Kopp Heather Manier Andrew Maxell Erin Mortensen Kevin Murray Laura Resau Jane E. Roberti Stefan & Amy Sasick Christoper Schooley Jerry Smith & Matt Webb Nicolas Theisen Beth Wehmeyer & Susan H. Rich Colin & Shannon Wescott publisher/designer Todd Simmons board of directors Bryan Simpson Gary Wockner
special thanks
The Matter Bookstore Volunteers, The Bean Cycle, Anne MacDonald, all the wonderful craftspeople who let us in to their lives, ShaveCo, and the NCC. The Fell Types used in this newspaper were digitally reproduced by Igino Marini. www.iginomarini.com Everything herein Š 2012 Wolverine Farm Publishing. All rights held by the individual authors and artists unless otherwise noted.
Send monetary donations, comments, questions, story pitches, books and/or music to review, agricultural tools to try out, bicycles to ride, etc., to: Wolverine Farm Publishing, PO BOX 814, Fort Collins, CO 80522 Especially seeking letters to the editor . Please send in by March 1, 2012. For more info visit: www.wolverinefarm.org.
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As we enjoy this revival of craft we cannot ignore one simple fact: most of our paychecks are spent on things made by Industry and Corporations. Their style of manufacturing supplies the world with an increasingly wide array of cheap goods, and many of us lead comfortable and interesting lives because of their efforts. Where would we be without our Corporations? This societal trajectory has made many Corporations wealthy beyond reason. And while it is true that some Corporations have good hearts, and do good things with their money, they are far too rare. Almost by definition, most Corporations simply want to make money; the more the better. The world hums with mass production of things we think we need, but the consequences are piling up all around us: watch videos of how our cell phones or electronic gadgets are made. If you don’t wretch just a little bit, and want to throw your own gadget into the mountainous landfill at the edge of your city, you’re probably more credit card than flesh and blood. Mass production typically leaves little room for people to learn valuable skills. Mass production leaves far less room for the planet or the plants and animals we share it with, paving over ecosystems and killing off species left and right. As a result, we’re left with a world full of unskilled workers doing mundane tasks, amidst degraded ecosystems and ghosts, producing more and more highly desirable yet utterly soulless things each year. Somehow, even
knowing what we do, we continue to gobble it all up. In this light, the importance of craft becomes exceedingly clear: we need craftspeople in our lives and in our communities to supply us with things that we need. That begs the question: What is it that we need? As you ponder your own needs, we are proud to present fourteen different people and businesses based in and around Fort Collins that are doing a very good job of keeping the importance of craft alive. We visited their workshops and talked with them about their magnificent skills and creations. Additionally, we’ve dedicated an entire year of book discussions, workshops, and events on the subject of craft at our shared space with The Bean Cycle—come join us. Craft may be hounded by commerce and bullied by convenience, yet it persists, and a growing number of people are listening and opening their wallets and lifestyles to the local, handmade, and crafted. We encourage you to go out and support them and other craftspeople directly, and give them some of your money. Money is really only a medium of exchange, but over time it has shed this simple definition and wormed its way into our hearts and minds as that which makes the world go round. Maybe if we support these and other craftspeople, we can make the world spin in a different direction.
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EM P I RE CARP ENTRY Who are you? Kevin Murray, Owner of Empire Carpentry LLC (since 1979) Building Contractor What do you make? We build, remodel, and design homes and small commercial buildings. We build furniture occasionally. We do specialize in Historic Preservation too, which is what I think you are interested in. In that area, we stabilize and rehabilitate buildings to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Historic Preservation. To meet that goal, we often have had to learn not only to copy how a building was originally created but also how to use the tools that were commonplace when the building was made. We have traveled extensively working on Historic projects around the State. Some of our projects deal with log structures, some timber frames, and others hybrids. We have created matching trims, rebuilt windows & doors. How did you get into this? I guess my curiosity about old things. I also had old Carpenter friends who showed me their tools, how they were used and how to care for them.
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Over the years, people have asked me to save buildings that others thought better bulldozed. I’ve always thought anything can be saved if there is reason. How long have you been doing this? Since I was young, I’ve found ways to repair old houses, but I’ve been paid for it since 1979. How did you learn these skills? As I said, older Carpenters have mentored me. When you decide to learn a skill, you start to look around and find workshops, skilled craftsmen, etc. Some of my vacations over the years have been taken up by going to workshops. I was an apprentice to a violin maker for a short time. What are your most important, most interesting, most specialized or unusual tools? Most important tools? Your hands, brain, and patience. Most interesting? I have specialized tools for different types of work. I have sets of tools that are specifically made for timber framing (chisels, planes), log work (broad axe, clamps slicks), trims (planes, gauges). I have specialized tools for working on musical instruments too. Often, they are miniatures of the large wood tools. Using these specialized wood tools creates a whole set of other skills to learn, like how to sharpen them all correctly. It’s a joy to use a very sharp tool. From timber framing to violin making, it’s all similar. Learning to use the tools (and locating them) has its own rewards. Most Carpenters treat going to the hardware store as a child would view going to a toy store. Simplifying building construction has sidelined many useful tools, by eliminating their need. Is this how you support yourself, or, if not, what does your making mean to your living? Yes, this is how I support myself, though, often I find myself behind a computer. Doing specialized carpentry can’t always pay the bills though. We also enjoy doing additions, homes, and commercial projects.
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What do you see as the importance of your craft? The importance lies in a preservation of skills. Many of these skills that are no longer mainstream are harder to learn; not because they’re rocket science, but because we forget. When using these skills, we celebrate and help save accomplishments of generations gone by. While working on restoration of the Echo Lake Lodge this summer, I averaged five people a week, thanking me for the work we do. An example: In a time of energy efficiency and throw-away mentality, we rebuild existing windows in old homes to be more efficient and workable. A more sustainable (and beautiful) option. What advice do you have for beginning carpenters? As a beginning Carpenter, your job is to learn to use all the tools correctly and how to get along with others in a semi-dangerous situation. I would say as you learn the basic skills, listen to what is going on around you, and realize how everyone works together. An electrician has to know electric. A plumber has to know plumbing. A good Carpenter needs to know carpentry, some electric, some plumbing, some roofing, some excavation, etc, and often supervisory skills to make sure the day goes smoothly for all. If you stay a Carpenter, you will find yourself tending toward one type of carpentry or another. Once you find that direction, learn all you can to be your best. That will make every day at work interesting. I find that I learn something new every day. That makes it worthwhile to go to work. Where can people find the projects you’ve been working on? We’ve done a lot of work in Old Town, over the years. It seems like there’s at least one project we’ve done every couple of blocks. In Historic Preservation, we’ve worked all over the state. Locally, we did the Franz-Smith Cabin at the Museum, the Virginia Dale Stage Station, the Trolley Barn offices, and the windows in the Lincoln Hotel in Loveland. We recently moved a home from Loveland to Fort Collins, up on Maple Street.
www.empirecarpentry.com
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F INDL E Y P OTTERY
Who are you? My name is Diane Findley. What do you make? I make art every day in my Fort Collins studio. The studio stretches from a backyard kiln and pottery to a sunny spot with paints and brushes, scissors and glue. The products range from functional pottery to original paintings and House Pins used in fundraising for CARE Housing. All handmade, all heart-felt and ever-evolving. It has been said that simply looking at my paintings will make you happy. I take the moniker Colorful Colorado very seriously, as testifies a purple river, a green sky, or a blue lip. This is the art of a Fort Collins fauve, a brightly colored visual commentary on life today. Any recent shows or programs you’re particularly proud to be part of? This spring will mark the third season that I will perform with Streetmosphere. As a visual artist I take my easel and painting supplies to the street corners where passersby can watch the art unfold. This Beet Street event is the most fun I can imagine, exciting, uplifting and rewarding. I generally travel to the job site on bicycle. I pull a wagon piled high with canvas, bucket, stool, TV tables, and assorted paints all secured with a weave of bungee cords. My signature palette is a very nice Frisbee, which I hope the rightful owner will never miss. Where can people find your work? Trimble Court Artisans Coop, just west of the fountain in Old Town, is where you can always find my work for sale. I am currently the leader of the pack and have been a member since 1976. I invite you to join me at Trimble Court each First Friday evening of the month as we celebrate Gallery Walk. There may be a large gap between rich and famous, but I wouldn’t skip a beat. Fort Collins is a wonderful place to be an artist. www.dianefindley.com
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Who are you? Erin Mortensen. I grew up in Craig, CO but lived in Idaho, China, Grand Junction and Oregon prior to moving to Fort Collins. I have always loved working with my hands. Anything that involved building something, I was in. A lot of our projects as kids often involved mud. When I rediscovered it in college I was hooked. What do you make? I primarily make functional ceramic wares, ceramic jewelry and some sculpture. I like to play around with random materials and found objects but most of those projects don’t ever leave my house. How did you get into this? I started going to school for interior design and when I decided it wasn’t for me I switched to visual art. I was required to take a ceramics class. I was hooked immediately. I just never stopped and ended up emphasizing in ceramics and sculpture. How long have you been doing this? A while. 10 years or so. How did you learn these skills? Mostly through school however I have learned a lot from friends I’ve made within the clay community throughout the years. I still have a lot to learn! What are your most important, most interesting, most specialized or unusual tools? I wouldn’t say anything is too interesting. A lot of basic household items, random sticks and found objects. The cool thing about clay is that you don’t necessarily need any tools, just your hands. Is this how you support yourself, or, if not, what does your making mean to your living? No it’s not how I support myself though it definitely helps. What do you see as the importance of your craft? There’s something about any trade/craft where the quality is typically better but there’s an added element that doesn’t’ exist in mass produced products. There’s something about knowing where the products you are using came from and that you’re supporting people in your community. Where can people find the things you make? My home studio, etsy and various shows.
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E QU INOX BR E WING Who are you? Equinox Brewing Company. Started, owned and operated by Colin and Shannon Westcott. What do you make? Delicious beer. How did you get into this? Colin worked as a professional brewer for nine years before moving to Fort Collins. When we moved here and he couldn’t find a brewing job we opened Hops and Berries, our homebrew supply shop. We always wanted to own a brewery and when our tenant moved out of the space next to Hops and Berries it seemed like the perfect opportunity. How long have you been doing this? Colin has worked in breweries and our homebrew store a total of 15 years now. Equinox opened in April 2010. How did you learn these skills? Colin started homebrewing at 19 and became the head brewer of Kettlehouse Brewery in Missoula, MT at the age of 22. He is self-taught, learning by reading, asking questions and just doing. Owning a brewery is more than just about making beer of course. It is first and foremost a business. Shannon has a business degree and learned the ins and outs of running a business and managing employees by running Hops and Berries. With Colin in the brewery and Shannon taking care of the business side it is truly a team effort. Is this how you support yourself, or, if not, what does your making mean to your living? We are so fortunate to support ourselves through our two businesses. When we first opened Hops and Berries we didn’t have employees for the first couple of years. Now we have four employees at Hops and Berries and ten employees at Equinox. So we not only support ourselves but are able to help support others as well.
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What do you see as the importance of your craft? Craft brewing is an exploration of flavors; our goal is to show people as many facets of beer flavors as we possibly can. What advice do you have for beginning brewers? For homebrewers I would say don’t be afraid to give it a try. Homebrewing is a lot like cooking. Follow the recipe and instructions when just starting out, keep everything clean and just have fun. For those that want to start their own brewery, don’t forget that it is a business. A little experience goes a long way. Where can people find the beer you make? Mainly in our tap house connected to the brewery. We currently have 11 draft taps, with 3 more in the works, 2 beer engine taps, and a weekly firkin tapping every Thursday. We also have a few draft accounts in the Old Town area and beyond. We won’t deliver kegs to a bar or restaurant if we can’t walk or bike it there. We had a special keg delivery trike custom made this fall that has expanded our delivery area to the University. www.equinoxbrewing.com
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FI D D L ETOW N BAKERY
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Who are you? My name is Andrew Maxwell, Fiddletown Bakery. I was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana. My parents moved to Windsor, Colorado, when I was 10, and I moved to Ft. Collins when I was 18. What do you make? I specialize in fine breads and pies but also make quick breads and other small pastries. How did you get into this? When I was 18 I took a job as a dishwasher at The Sunflour Bakery. It wasn’t long before I was mixing and shaping bread, and beginning my lifelong love affair with baking. How long have you been doing this? I’ve been extensively baking for 10 years. How did you learn these skills? I spent five years at The Sunflour Bakery submerging myself in high-volume baking. Then I took a job at Silver Salmon Creek Lodge, a remote fishing lodge in Alaska. It was there that I was able to fine tune my skills focusing on “old world” baking techniques. Now I’ve incorporated my knowledge of both high volume, and small batch “old world” styles into a unique blend of quality craftsmanship. What are your most important, most interesting, most specialized or unusual tools, or ingredients that make your work fun? My hands are my most important tool that I use at the bakery. Everything is hand rolled, giving not only personality to my products, but hopefully a connection is felt with my customers—knowing that work and love went into the recipe, not that some machine spit it out. Is this how you support yourself, or, if not, what does your making/baking mean to your living? This is how I support myself. What do you see as the importance of your local baking? Local bakers are important to the community for many reasons. The most important, like all local businesses, is that it’s a great way to support our local economy, by buying bread at The Fiddletown Bakery, you are not only supporting the bakery, but you are also supporting local wheat farms, local dairies, bee farms, vegetable farms, and many other local businesses. It also is important to me to provide the public with quality, wholesome bread that one might not be able to find in a grocery store. How do you explain to people the value or deliciousness or healthy benefits of handcrafted baked goods? The deliciousness is easy, you just have to try it to understand that. There are many healthy benefits to my baked goods; I use zero trans fats or chemical preservatives, I use only local honey (which is proven to help pollen allergies), only fresh, local, and in-season fruits and veggies which may not be any healthier to consume than nonlocal produce, but it is a way to cut down on our carbon footprint. Where can people find the things you make? Every other Saturday at the Winter Farmers’ Market in The Opera Galleria. Jax Fish House, Tasty Harmony, Cafe Vino, Beaver’s Market, The Fort Collins Food Co-Op, The Hilton, our baked goods are also distributed through Lo Co Food Distributors. The Fiddletown Bakery Fort Collins, CO (720) 443-2158
OLD TOWN ACUPUNCTURE CLINIC
“Earth connected, heart centered, gentle and effective care for your entire being.” 723 Cherry St. in Old Town Fort Collins, CO (6 blocks west of College Ave.) Our hours are: Mon.-Fri. 8 am-6 pm Sat. 8 am-2 pm Call to set up an appointment: 970-482-3700
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BA S HKI N G UI TAR Who are you? Michael Bashkin, Bashkin Guitars What do you make? I make steel string acoustic guitars
What are your most important, most interesting, most specialized or unusual tools? I have a lot of specialized shop-made tools and jigs. I don’t really have a favorite one but I enjoy the process more than the final product.
How did you get into this? I started building guitars when I was in grad school at CSU. I have played guitars since I was 12 and music has always been a big part of my life. And although I had never done any professional woodworking or work with my hands I always enjoyed it when I did. So it seemed like building guitars was the perfect intersection of my interests. How long have you been doing this? 16 years How did you learn these skills? I did a guitar repair apprenticeship with Charlie Gannon, read everything I could get my hands on, and lots of trial and error, with the emphasis on error.
Is this how you support yourself, or, if not, what does your making mean to your living? This is my sole source of income and I like to think of it as earning a lifestyle. What do you see as the importance of your craft? Handmade guitars are soul-filled artistic tools. They don’t meet our basic needs but meet our human need to create, appreciate beauty, and make music. These things have the potential to elevate everyday experience. Where can people find the things you make? I sell my guitars direct and through a small network of boutique guitar dealers. www.bashkinguitars.com
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Article & Photograph by Mattthew Sage
LAU RE L CYCLES Who are you? Jerry Smith and Matt Webb, Laurel Cycles
How long have you been doing this? For the better part of 5 years.
What do you make/save/recycle? We save old bicycles, bicycle parts and paraphernalia from the sands of time and the ravages of un-use, under use, or unwise use, and we return them to the road.
How did you learn these skills? What are your most important, most interesting, most specialized or unusual tools, or means of collection? Both of us have mechanical backgrounds, whether in work or hobbies, and it was easy to apply this to fixing bicycles. Initially it was all trial and error, learning from our error, repeating the errors, and learning some more. We worked on our own bikes and rode them until our fixes failed, and tried again. Eventually we found old bike books, such as Eugene Sloan’s Complete Book of Bicycling, and learned from the pros. Sheldon Brown has always been at our fingertips, guiding us as we disassembled our first coaster brakes and Ashtabula cranks, or tuned finicky derailleurs on our ten-speeds. Experience has taught us more than all of the books or Internet searches combined, getting covered in grease and trying things out has brought us to where we are today.
How did you get into this? Both of us got into fixing bikes for different reasons. Jerry used to drive the collection truck for a local thrift store chain, and spent a decent portion of his paycheck on old, interesting things found there. His apartment resembled a junkyard of obsolete technology. An old Schwinn Racer 3-speed bicycle that his coworkers threw in a dumpster seemed like a waste of something beautiful. This was reinforced, when, a little later at the same job, he found a perfectly good Panasonic road bike that had been wheeled into the metal recycling bin. He purchased both, and the rest is history. Matt grew up taking things apart and putting them back together just to see how it worked. One time a friend’s parents were horrified to discover that he had removed every moving part on their rotary phone while watching cartoons one Saturday morning, but they were able to use it to make calls again before lunch time. He’s always been intrigued by how things work, and it seems that the bicycle was invented just for him! He can tinker with it and then use it to get around!
At one point we were given a quite useful tool that had been fashioned by a local bike guru who took us under his wing. It is simply a spoke that has been sharpened at one end and a loop tied at the other end. It was built to open the clipped end of new cable housing in order that cables move freely through it. This tool opened up a new world for us, both in realizing how important specialty tools are, and realizing that you don’t always have to purchase a tool—some of the best tools can be made. Also our first bike stand was an incredible boost, we had been working on bikes on the concrete floor of the basement of the building we live in. Our
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first tools were far from specialty…we started with only a metric wrench set we had previously used to put together an old Volkswagen Scirocco race-car. Is this how you support yourself, or, if not, what does your making mean to your living? We’re both students and this is our only job outside of class. Making our own hours is a nice way to get by while we are focused on finishing school. What do you see as the importance of your craft? We place high value on the idea of re-use; the bikes that we generally work on are usually from 15 to 50 years old and are still fully functional. We have a robust dislike of the consumerist culture that we live in that demands a constant supply of new things. Obviously, better design is a good thing, but constant redesign for the sole purpose of planned obsolescence is ridiculous. Older bicycles usually have so much life left, and to our eyes, so much more beauty than the new designs. Of course, there is a place for the newest, high-tech bicycles for serious riders, but you can have an amazing commuter bicycle built of high quality steel that is thirty years old—and it will probably last longer than most bikes purchased new for a higher price. In addition, there is a certain aesthetic appeal of riding an older bike—so much more character. We both became interested in bikes through our appreciation of the older designs…first the old cruisers and three-speeds, then classic road bikes. Over and over again, we’ve been impressed with the quality and durability that we see in many of the old frames and parts that come through our shop— these are bikes that have seen years of use and are still going strong. Where can people find the things you make? http://www.laurelcycles.com or http://www.facebook.com/laurelcycles
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Fermentation Workshop with Sandor Ellix Katz
The Bread Builders by Daniel Wing and Alan Scott
Review By Katie Fromuth
Review By Nicolas Theisen
Sandor Katz, a “fermentation fetishist,” takes his book Wild Fermentation to the next level with this instructive DVD. During the two-hour workshop, Katz stands in a dining room wearing both a friendly demeanor and a goofy mustache. His audience listens with awe and interest to extensive facts Katz throws at them about the wonders of food fermentation. To start, Katz explains what fermentation is: the transformative action of microorganisms. He continues with the benefits of fermented foods and common misconceptions. You learn that through the manipulation of environmental conditions you can create food that not only tastes yummy but lasts longer than in a refrigerator, improves your immune system, and improves the nutritional of the food you eat. He explains the difference between wild and cultured fermentation, demonstrates how to use Kefir, how to make sauerkraut, and different techniques and vessels people use around the world for fermentation. Sandor Katz covers an impressive historical and cultural background of food fermentation around the world, from Korea to Japan and Russia to Germany. When he delves into history, he emphasizes the significance of the double meaning behind culture—the cultivation of microorganisms in a medium containing nutrients, or the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular people. Katz says culture, in regards to humans, probably began with fermentation, more specifically the spontaneous fermentation of honey into mead or barley into beer (I’m sure you can appreciate why this type of discovery would bring people together). Katz communicates with love and expertise that the fermentation process is truly magical and deeply rooted in our culture. I have dabbled in fermentation by making kombucha from a culture given to me from a coworker. Fermentation is a wonderfully healthy hobby and lifestyle for crafty types. I wanted to get more into the fermentation so I bought Katzs’ book and got into the idea of furthering my cultures. Still, it wasn’t until I watched his workshop, that I finally got the motivation to start a batch of sauerkraut. If you are looking to dive into this world of “microbiological transformations” and learn well by listening and watching, then this DVD will help you on your way to new and creative foods through fermentation.
It’s been a decade since I first encountered The Bread Builders. I had just moved to a farm in the foothills of Colorado’s Front Range where, in the farm store the book was lying on an adobe shelf next to a wood-fired brick oven built by Alan Scott. I had previously dabbled in home bread baking, inspired by my grandpa’s somewhat insatiable quest to bake the perfect loaf of French country bread. But, this massive soot blackened oven and the photo of crackly, brown, flour-speckled loaves on the cover of The Bread Builders were something I had never seen. I was certain at that point that I would learn the craft of natural leavened breads and brick-oven baking, and The Bread Builders was where I began. Alan Scott and Daniel Wing co-authored the The Bread Builders, which was first released in 1999. Though Daniel Wing did much of the writing and historical research for the book, Alan Scott was the inspiration and the man who lead the way for the renaissance of brick-oven baking in the United States. One cannot overstate the significance Alan Scott and The Bread Builders book had with regard to baking in North America. I must admit that the first time I read it I was a bit overwhelmed. It’s not a book to reference if you simply want to bake a loaf of bread. In fact it is difficult to find a bread recipe anywhere in it. It is not a cookbook, it is a guide book. The first half is dedicated to bread and baking, including relatively in-depth discussions on natural leavens, types of grains and flours, mixing technique, dough development, and types of ovens. If you are already a baker this section will prove to be tremendously informative and useful. If not it certainly won’t concisely teach you how to bake a loaf of bread, but it will introduce you to many important subjects surrounding the craft. All levels of bakers will be able to glean gems of baking knowledge from this book though beginners may find it, at times, a bit bogged with jargon. The second half addresses masonry ovens including history, construction materials and tools, site preparation, and oven construction complete with oven blue prints. Scott and Daniels cover with great detail the brick-oven in a very readable, informative, and enjoyable manner. However, only the most resourceful student would be able to construct a brick-oven with this book as their only guide. “The Bread Builders” also includes a glossary of baking terms, a useful list of baking related resources, a section of color photographs, and insightful case studies featuring “visits” to bakeries and other bread related enterprises. I have referenced the The Bread Builders so many times on my path to becoming a professional baker that it feels like an old friend filled with anecdotal wisdom. Though the writing does not standout, nor is it particularly lyrical, it is without a doubt an iconic book in the small but ever-growing realm of brick oven bakers. If you are interested in natural leavened breads and brick oven baking it is an essential read and an indispensable reference.
The Repurposed Library Review by Patricia Gambino Give old tomes new life with this how-toguide from designer and mixed media artist Lisa Occhipinti. She invites us to deconstruct old thrift-store books and transform their many pages into “obra de arte” such as pleated sculptures, biographical bracelets and more modern uses like a kindle keeper. She writes: “After college my appetite whetted, that’s when I discovered altered books—the art of giving books a new form.” This beautifully photographed, stepby-step guide accompanied by easy to follow diagrams is a cool find and hip addition to any artist or crafts-person’s library.
Made by Patricia Gambino
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Inside The Bean Cycle at 144 N. College Avenue : 970.472.4284
An Interview with Shannon Hayes, Author of Radical Homemakers
Why did you decide to write Radical Homemakers? For years I’ve made my living around grassfed meat, including selling my family’s products at our local farmers’ market and writing cookbooks and teaching about how best to work with them. So I was always in a position to defend their high prices (or, shall we say, “educate the public about the cost of real food”). The prevailing myth around sustainable/local foods was that they were a niche product for the wealthy. But one day I sat down and reviewed the profiles of our best customers. They weren’t wealthy at all. Indeed, many of them had single incomes or less. They had culinary skills, and knew how to make prudent use of food in the kitchen. And they would figure out how to produce for a number of their needs themselves, lowering their household cost of living. In short, they were effective homemakers. I suddenly realized that the big missing piece from this whole local food/go green/social justice movement was an acknowledgement of the homemakers’ power to transform our culture. Raised in the shadow of The Feminine Mystique, I felt like I was broaching a taboo subject (was I advocating for the subjugation of women to save the earth?). The subject intrigued and frightened me so much, I had no choice but to pursue it as a book. What does it mean to be a Radical Homemaker? Can a person work outside of the home and still follow the tenets of Radical Homemaking? Radical Homemakers live by four basic tenets: ecological sustainability, social justice, family and community, with the intent of ultimately producing more than one consumes. One’s life should allow time for all these things. If an outside job allows this, then there is no problem. When an outside job forces a household to compromise the four tenets, then most radical homemakers would argue there is an ethical obligation to question its merits. What surprised you about the Radical Homemakers you interviewed for this book? Did you learn anything that you ended up applying to your own life? I traveled around the country interviewing RHers in 2008, as the news was telling us that our economy was collapsing. Since these folks were all living on a single income or less, I anticipated witnessing a lot of economic stress. Instead, I saw peace and stability. That’s when I pieced together that there is another economy at play in this country, a life-serving economy. The goal of a life-serving economy is to generate a living for all, rather than a killing for a few. These RHers were living in the life-serving economy, and thus were sheltered from the vicissitudes of the conventional, extractive economy. I learned lots of things to apply to my life. I learned that my well-being was reliant as much upon my relationships and my domestic/homesteading skills as it was on dollars in my pocket (perhaps even more so). I learned that I didn’t need as much income as I thought. I also learned about lots of skills that Bob and I had never considered exploring, which we subsequently used to further our steps along the path: fruit cultivation, honey bees, food dehydration, and other such things.
What advice would you give individuals or families that want to take the first steps in reclaiming domesticity? Naturally, I’d love it if they read the book. There are stories about families from all different walks of life in there—seniors, single moms, former corporate couples, high school drop-outs, folks with advanced degrees, and folks in the country, in the cities and in the suburbs. It will give folks an idea of what is possible, and it gives folks the intellectual tools to articulate to themselves and others WHY they are about to make life changes. From there, I encourage folks to start with something small and simple, such as hanging clothes out on the line, or commiting to buying foods from the farmers’ market, rather than the grocery store (which will put you on a path to learn how to use those foods as prudently as possible). From there, the would-be RHer can go in any number of directions that meet their interests, as long as they work toward producing more than they consume: maybe they find a way to start a garden, or brew their own beer. Maybe someone figures out how to fix cars or other equipment, or gives up the car all together and starts riding a bicycle. The options are endless, and all of them are fulfilling and helpful. One final thing I recommend for folks considering this path is that they get a copy of Vicki Robin’s Your Money or Your Life. This book helps folks develop the technical skills to manage their finances with the goal of becoming finanically independent (which is not the same as becoming “rich”). There are some excellent, practical steps to follow.
Matter Bookstore’s Favorite Art, Craft and DIY Books of 2011 1. The Tumbleweed DIY Book of Backyard Sheds and Tiny Houses: Build your own guest cottage, writing studio, home office, craft workshop, or personal retreat by Jay Shafer (Fox Chapel Publishing, Sept 23, 2011) 2. The New Artisans: Handmade Designs for Contemporary Living by Olivier Dupon (Thames & Hudson, Nov 7, 2011) 3. The Repurposed Library: 33 Craft Projects That Give Old Books New Life by Lisa Occhipinti (STC Craft, May 01, 2011) 4. The Art of the Chicken Coop: A Fun and Essential Guide to Housing Your Peeps by Chris Gleason (Fox Chapel Publishing, June 01, 2011) 5. Terrarium Craft: Create 50 Magical, Miniature Worlds by Amy Bryant Aiello and Kat Bryant (Timber Press, May 11, 2011) 6. The Bust DIY Guide to Life: Making Your Way Through Every Day by Laurie Henzel and Debbie Stoller (Stewart, Tabori, & Chang, October 01, 2011) 7. Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post -Consumer World by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen (Rodale Press, April 26, 2011) 8. Craft Wisdom and Know-How: Everything You Need to Stitch, Sculpt, Bead and Build by The Editors of Lark Books and Amy Rost (Mar 30, 2011) 9. Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield (Gotham Books, Sept 01, 2011) 10. Farm Anatomy: The Curious Parts and Pieces to Country Life by Julia Rothman (Storey Publishing, October 01, 2011)
All reviews written by Matter Bookstore volunteers, and all books available at Matter Bookstore.
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WO O L HAT Who are you? Matthew and Danelle Britt, Wool Hat. We’re two bad dancers who aren’t any more graceful at business and parenthood, but they have fun. Matthew wanted to be Jesus, and in the book “What Would Jesus Do?” it said the first thing he would do is to learn how to work with wood, the second thing he would do is grow a beard, and the third thing is to start a religion that challenges corporate greed and existing religions. Matthew has faithfully followed the first two rules but is still working out how an Atheist starts a religion. Danelle was born on the plains of Colorado in the middle of no-where
farm land. Learning to manipulate and use what was available to create function was inherent, and essential. Applying these skills and values, some marketing skills via CSU, love of good brews and home . . . .Danelle is the hunter, de-constructer, painter, optimist, and mother at Wool Hat. What do you make/save/recycle? We are saving the world one consumer product at a time by making Pre-Apocalyptic Reconstructionist furniture with classic, clean lines ranging from Shakers to the Industrial Revolution to Mid-Modern from materials marked for the landfill.
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We have combined excess maple flooring and a discarded metal workbench into a butcher block kitchen island the envy of any cook and named it after our local icon Chef Happy. We have turned salvaged post-and-beam framing from Estes Park into Farm Tables. We have taken a Rock Star Anvil case and converted it into a Courtney Love Wardrobe for the closet hungry nomad who is now renting a room in Old Town, but as soon as she graduates wants to pack up everything, take it down to UPS and ship it to NYC, where there aren’t any closets, either. How did you get into this? The realization that functional furniture could be made from reclaimed material came directly from ReSource. While we were remodeling our house, ReSource received pallets of unfinished cabinet doors that we tore apart and used to reface our kitchen. We then set out to see if we could remodel our whole house with 80% reclaimed material without having a reclaimed feel. When we ran out of house to remodel we started making up-cycled furniture. How long have you been doing this? Wool Hat has been a full-time occupation since March of 2010. Matthew has been employed as a woodworker since 1999 with a small hiatus to raise a couple of kids, start and sell another small business venture, and write a couple of novels that aren’t on the New York Times Bestseller list because they aren’t published. Danelle had been in the brewing industry marketing and sales until two little people helped her focus on the stuff that filled their house, and the vital community that makes a home. How did you learn these skills? What are your most important, most interesting, most specialized or unusual tools, or means of collection? The skill of furniture making is a never-ending journey that has been learned from Vo-Tech teachers, on-the-job mentors, and The New Yankee Workshop with Norm Abrams. To make a skill or a craft into a business the craft has to come first, but it’s everything else that has the largest learning curve from designing a website to product placement to learning that most commercial real estate agents don’t have a sense of humor. There’s no class to teach you that you just missed out on a great collection of broken drafting tables because you couldn’t understand the auctioneer. There’s no class that teaches you that chiseling off 1970’s fake-wood laminate can lead to solid real wood. There’s no class that advises getting a tetanus shot before tearing down a 120 year old barn. Is this how you support yourself, or, if not, what does your making mean to your living? After a year and a half of endlessly working and investing much of our savings into Wool Hat we are almost able to pay our rent, buy a button-down shirt at GoodWill on half-off day, and splurge on special occasions for a bottle of Snow Creek Berry Boone’s Farm.
in plastic. It’s an extension of our story and philosophy. The white leather contemporary couch in the formal living room covered in plastic is the same as being a Christian that has never read the Bible. The understated craftsmanship of the Shakers respects the hardworking, frugal ethics of the Protestant Reformation. Our craft, our Pre-Apocalyptic Reconstructionist furniture is a testament to making life sustainable in a time when consumer products are designed to break, religions are failing us as a viable belief system, and shipping from around the world is cheaper than local production. How do you explain to people the value of recycling, up-scaling, and providing “pain-free alternatives” to our dominant paradigm of consumption? When we are in a place to explain the value of up-cycling we say in a world of limited resources we are being efficient with what we have: however, being in this community we’re not fighting to explain the value of recycling and up-scaling, we can simply get to work offering a pain-free alternative. Where can people find the things you make? Our products can be found at modmood in Wheatridge, Made in Boulder, by appointment at the Wool Hat Studio in Fort Collins, and online at www.woolhstuff.com.
ANNOUNCEMENT OF A FREE FILM SERIES “Transitioning to a Sustainable and Resilient Future” Film Series I: Envisioning Transition to a Sustainable and Resilient Future “The Next Industrial Revolution” January 25, 2012 “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil” February 1, 2012 “A Convenient Truth: Urban Solutions in Curitiba, Brazil” February 8, 2012
More films to follow. Brought to you by Transition Fort Collins. The host for this film series is College America and films will be shown in their auditorium located at 4601 S. Mason Street just off Harmony Road near the South China Restaurant. Each film begins at 6:30 pm.
What do you see as the importance of your craft? Furniture is inherent in our lives and space and can span the spectrum of unnoticed utility to a white leather contemporary couch in the formal living room covered
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Cultivating the Creative Mind. Mountain Sage is a free, public, charter school inspired by Waldorf education and sustainable living. Created by local parents and educators, Mountain Sage Community School is dedicated to education that respects the creative journey of childhood. Waldorf-inspired education integrates the arts (music, movement, story, drawing and more) into the learning process of all academic subjects, offering students an experience that fully engages and empowers them. Sustainable living practices are fully integrated into school life. • Opening in August to serve K-4 students. Currently accepting online Intent to Enroll forms for K-4. • Will grow by one grade each year until becoming a K-8 school. • Arts-integrated, experiential, nature-based curriculum supports the whole child and fully incorporates Colorado Academic Standards. • Age appropriate music instruction, world language immersion classes, gardening, handwork and artistic movement classes for all grades. • Nurturing kindergarten program emphasizes the importance of creative play, rhythm (structure) and social development. • Class and teacher continuity over a number of years creates strong, supportive relationships that promote academic achievement. • Ample outdoor time promotes balanced development and respect for the natural world.
Informational Enrollment Events for the 2012-2013 School Year Join us to learn more about Waldorf-inspired education at Mountain Sage, have your questions answered, and meet the founders. Saturday, January 28th from 2-3pm & Tuesday, February 7th from 6-7 pm at The Gardens on Spring Creek in the Evelyn Clark classroom 2145 Centre Avenue, Fort Collins 80526
www.mountainsagecommunityschool.org
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JA NE E RO BERTI j e w e l ry a n d ac c e s s o r i e s
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Who are you? Jane E Roberti What do you make? I grew up making every craft in the world in my basement. There has been such a huge loss of knowledge of basic skills in our society: whether it be at the behest of the technology boom or the information age. I believe that arts and crafts are fundamental to society and to psychological health, and I believe we really need to get that knowledge and self-sufficiency back. And a lot of people seem to have come to this same realization that I have, so that makes me hopeful. How did you get into this? I went to my local art center, back in the north shore suburbs of Chicago, and took a beginning metalsmithing class. How long have you been doing this? Since the end of 2008, but I’ve been in and out of creative pursuits for many years. I found an old cutout silver charm I made in 7th grade jewelry class (back when we had required “life skills” courses like cooking, sewing, and shop) and thought if I could do that when I was 12 yrs. old, I could do it now. I also accidentally became a children’s clothing designer when my passion for making my own kid’s clothes got out of control. I had started out that business making everything myself and selling at craft shows, then ended up mostly managing others’ sewing and worrying about piles of borrowed money while my big store orders were in production.
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What I like about making jewelry now, is that I am back in the studio making stuff for a good part of the day, listening to great music on my old school stereo, making a good, dirty mess. Also I like selling directly to consumers through my Etsy site. Small, personal, handmade BY ME is my biggest ambition now. What are your most important, most interesting, most specialized or unusual tools? My throatless shear and my drill are indispensable. Oh, and so are my really fine well made saw blades from Switzerland. Basically I sit and saw all day at a bench pin with a hand saw. I also have a little silver watchmakers hammer that makes riveting awesome. Setting up a fully tool-equipped jewelry studio can be very expensive. I have a very simple technology-wise studio. No tumbler or electric polisher, no flex shaft, no fancy gas tanks for soldering. Except for the drill, the noise is kept to a minimum, so I can hear the radio! I use a lot of sandpaper and elbow grease. Is this how you support yourself, or, if not, what does your making mean to your living? I am supplementing my family’s income with this pursuit, and it is growing. Flexibility and independence are key for me at this point in my life. Where can people find the things you make? You can find my stuff on my Etsy shop (www.janeeroberti.etsy.com) and at the shop Curiosities, on Walnut Street in Fort Collins, which also carries a lot of my designs.
CANYON SPIRIT GALLERY Featuring Pottery & Studio Furniture by Owners/Artists Bonnie Antich & Scott LeCocq and Many Other Local Artists
Hours: Thursday & Friday 12pm - 5pm Saturday 11am - 5pm
246 Pine Street, Old Town 970-221-1778 CanyonSpiritGallery.com
Celebrating 10 Years......Thanks! jane e roberti
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OA K RO OT P RESS Who are you? My name is John Jenkins. What do you make? I’ve produced birthday cards, Christmas cards, a wedding invitation, poetry broadsides, business cards, a CD cover for the local band Wildwood Holler, an event flyer, and myriad other things. At this stage it is a hobby, but I’ve just begun my first big project — a 52-page book of poetry, hand set in Civilite font, in a limited edition of 200 copies. I’ll be producing this on my little Shniedewend & Lee foot treadle press, which was made about 1892. How did you get into this? Since I was a kid I was fascinated with words, and anything having to do with them. At age ten I garbage-picked an old Remington and produced a two-page newspaper. When I was 24 I worked in a print shop for a few months. They had an old letterpress printer in the back—a monstrous iron beast with a flywheel and foot treadle, but it wasn’t until recently that I began to get into traditional letterpress printing. In 2007, an old print shop in Denver was going out of business, and I acquired a Chandler & Price press, built in 1902. The old presses are very difficult to find these days, as tens of thousands of them were scrapped in the 1970s and 80s. I like the idea of human powered printing. You kick the foot treadle to move the mechanism, which inks the hand set type while you hand feed in the paper, one by one. My interest grew and so I set up a hobby shop in my garage. It’s a design process, and as an author whose worked with seven or eight mainstream trade publishers on my own books since 1992, it is very satisfying to produce limited edition, high design items of quality. How long have you been doing this? I’ve been at it for about four years.
How did you learn these skills? The literature around letterpress is extensive, and it is fairly easy to teach oneself. Craft is the practice of a skill with the intention of constantly improving. The traditional printing craft requires careful attention to design elements, maintenance of equipment and tools, patience, and persistence. What are your most important, most interesting, most specialized or unusual tools? There are different types of equipment that can be used in a human-powered print shop. There are the platen presses, with optional foot treadles (the bigger ones are typically motorized). There is the hand crank proof press, which is a flatbed and cylinder design. You can have hand-operated guillotine cutters and bookbinding frames. Then, beyond the off-grid approach, there are bigger flatbed cylinder presses, like my circa 1890s Campbell “Century Pony” press. This press came from Leadville, Colorado. I went through a phase of rescuing equipment that was heading for the scrapper. It was sad to see these great old machines continue to be thrown away. Now, I’m spending more time on projects. I’ve acquired some interesting and functional old tools—a Rouse miterer, slug cutters, and so on. What do you see as the importance of your craft? Cheap, mass-produced and disposable impulse books have come to be the gold standard in modern publishing. Quantity has trumped quality. But there is a grassroots movement afoot with increasing interest in the traditional book arts, with letterpress printing as the centerpiece. In truth, my shop is part museum and part workspace. I continue to restore equipment that I’ve acquired. It’s fulfilling to bring these things back to life, but it can be expensive. I do it out of love for the history of printing and book making. In the old tradition, I’ve registered my press name, Oak Root Press, and you can see developments at http://alignment2012.com/OakRootPress.html.
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BA S E M E NT APARTMENT Who are you? Basement Apartment is a crafty, creative, collaborative space started by Beth Wehmeyer and Susan Hazel Rich in, well— a bedroom in a basement apartment. We’ve always loved that crafting and sewing tend to create an amazing community of people who gather to work together. This studio is not only meant to provide us with a place to house our mounds of fabric and layers of notions, but also to be a space where friends could join us to sew, learn, teach, and be inspired. This basement apt. strives to be a host to all types of gatherings fabricated by creativity and a little needle and thread. What do you make? Just about everything fiber based. Susan spends most of her time appliqueing oneof-a-kind fabric collages onto vintage garments, greeting cards, and wall hanging art quilts. Ms. Beth specializes in anything and everything she can get her hands on. She loves to sew garments and things for the house, crochet little animals, hats and gloves, and make cards for her loved ones.
How did you get into this? Susan started sewing about four years ago when she and a friend happened upon an old Brother sewing machine in the thrift store. She started with aprons and cards and things quickly grew from there. Although her mother sewed throughout her childhood, she never did quite pick up the skills growing up. Susan taught herself a lot over the first few years with her new machine, but what made this hobby stick was all the friends she made who helped her learn about different techniques along the way. Beth learned to sew from her mother when she was seven years old. She made clothes and presents for her friends. A couple of years later her grandmother gifted Beth all her beautiful fabrics and notions she had collected throughout her life. This gave Beth the access to everything she needed to start a long career in sewing. From here, she taught herself all the skills she knows today. Her mother and grandmother remain her inspiration until this day.
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How long have you been doing this? We’ve been collaborating for about a year now, ever since we met at Mama Said Sew. Our studio is only about 2 months old but we’ve been dreaming of it for a long time. As far as our individual craft: Susan has been sewing for 4 years and Beth has been sewing for the past 20 years.
This is partially how Beth supports herself, although she also works and teaches classes at Mama Said Sew in Old Town Fort Collins. In addition, Beth also does contract sewing jobs on the side such as home dec. style re-designs, custom clothing and classy crochet. If that’s not enough, Beth also works at Kansas City Kitty a locally-owned clothing boutique also in Old Town.
How did you learn these skills? Susan is pretty much self-taught, but also got a lot of help from other local crafters, which was a big inspiration for creating this shared work space in hopes that she could share what she’s learned along the way with others. After learning the basics of the sewing machine as a young child Beth has spent a lot of time searching out the techniques she knows today. She also has learned a lot from fellow crafters that she knows around town and from working and teaching at Mama Said Sew.
What do you see as the importance of your craft? Susan sees her craft as an opportunity for people to own affordable and wearable pieces of one-of-a-kind art. She hopes, through the materials she chooses and the re-purposing she does, that people will be inspired to keep a little more fill out of the land; turning the unlikely into the fashionable. Beth sees her craft as an expression of herself and a way to implement her creativity. But the main importance of what she does is the ability to share her passions, teach others, and show them the joys of creating something yourself.
What are your most important, most interesting, most specialized or unusual tools? Perhaps Susan’s old Brother sewing machine deserves to be the right answer as it was the first crafty-like purchase, but honestly the extensive collection of vintage fabrics and notions Susan finds at estate sales and thrift stores are what keeps her inspired day-to-day—sorry ol’ Brother. Beth holds dear to her heart the array of different sewing that she has collected over the years, but probably the most important source of inspiration is the collection of vintage fabrics that her grandmother collected from all over the world. Is this how you support yourself, or, if not, what does your making mean to your living? Not for Susan, but close—she works fulltime for Interweave Press as a Graphic Designer for their Crochet magazine, which is one of many different crafting titles they publish. Susan sees her daytime profession as a graphic designer as a balance to the more loose & expressive style her sewing takes on. Although she’d love to one day spend her days sewing in the sunlight & cuddling her two kittens she remains a crafter by night & crafty style designer by day.
Where can people find the things you make? Susan has taken a little break from craft markets and her Etsy shop to focus on creating individual collections of work for gallery shows, local boutiques, and by special request. Susan was very excited to be the featured artist at Kansas City Kitty for the month of December 2011. She is planning a gallery show to be displayed at Harper Point’s photo studio for February’s First Friday. Beth has currently taken a break from selling her creations around town but hopes that with the convenience of having her very own studio she will have more time to up her inventory. In the future, you can find her craftiness at Kansas City Kitty and on Etsy. For the moment you can see her walking in Old Town wearing the outfits she has made.
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Who are you? We are Stefan and Amy Sasick, although most people recognize us as Raw Urth (probably because of our classy truck decals). What do you make? We like to think that we can create anything out of metal. We work with steel, bronze, pewter, zinc and copper, but we don’t really think copper is all that cool. We are known out and about for the patina finishes we apply to the metal pieces we create. The patina adds so much depth and artistry to an already interesting medium. Stefan is the patina guy-extraordinaire and has really honed his skills on bringing the natural beauty of the metal out with the variation of chemical reactions he can create. To paint a piece of metal is a sad state of affairs and in our opinion, if you are going to paint it, you might as well use plastic. How did you get into this? Liking the idea of all things metal, and finding only all things we could not afford, we bought an anvil, a stack of how-to-be-a-blacksmith books, and made what we thought was cool. We started with little forged hooks and fire pokers (classic, considered a rite of passage for any blacksmith—level 101). These cost every bit as much as the pieces we couldn’t afford if you factor in the time it took us to pull off one little hook. That being said, the pleasure of creating something ourselves, in our garage, that was oh-so-cool. It made the time and effort worth it, not unlike the three, smaller-than-the-seed-packet-promised tomatoes harvested after an entire summers worth of gardening. In hopes of having more time in the garage to hammer fire hot steel, Amy started spreading the word that we were starting a metal business and were taking orders. Through some highly skilled, textbook networking strategies, we got our first client—Stefan’s mom. It’s true that we made her a few pieces that were worthy refrigerator art that any mom would proudly display. Our big break came when a builder touring Stefan’s mom’s house noticed a forged fire basket we had made. He, believing we knew what we were dong, invited us to work with him on a house in Winter Park. Lack of any knowledge or real experience allowed us to say “yes”. Our learning curve was fast and the house ended up winning every Parade of Homes Award it could win in Grand County. This gave us a platform to show off our work and get a few more jobs. We could just say, “we got lucky”. So it all started when we forged our first fire basket for Stefan’s mom about 6 years ago. Now, we support ourselves and the 8 totally awesome people that help us make it all happen! What are your most important, most interesting, most specialized or unusual tools? Hands down, I’m going to say fire. Who doesn’t love fire? In a close second to fire would be the anvil. As a kid, when I watched the Acme anvil drop from the cliff in a close miss of the Road Runner. I had the vague idea that an anvil might have something to do with elves making shoes at night, or maybe some sort of industrial mystery I couldn’t understand. Now, I find myself actually clearing up others vague ideas on the totally misunderstood anvil. I guess once Hollywood gets ahold of you, your character is forever set like Jennifer Aniston always being Rachel, Keanu Reeves always being Ted (or was it Bill?) and the anvil always being a dead weight intended to flatten a roadrunner. What do you see as the importance of your craft? For us it’s just cool and beautiful, and different and interesting. Where can people find the things you make? If people want to know more about our work they are welcome to call us (970.484.8851), swing by our studio just north of the Food Bank on Blue Spruce, or, if they prefer something a little more private and anonymous, they can check out www.RawUrth.com.
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Who are you? Chistopher Schooley
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C OFFE E SHRUB
What do you do? I am a coffee sourcer-er for Coffee Shrub, meaning I source raw/green coffee for small coffee roasters. I’m also the Chair of the Roasters Guild Executive Council and working to build the Rocky Mountain Craft Coffee Alliance. How did you get involved in coffee roasting/sourcing? I got a job with a coffee company in Chicago that roasted their own coffee and it clicked that that’s exactly what I wanted to do. Then I worked my way up to roasting. Through that company I also got involved with the Specialty Coffee Association of America and the Roasters Guild. How long have you been doing this? I had my first coffee related job almost 19 years ago, and have been in the coffee industry solidly since 1999, and I started roasting coffee 10 years ago
How did you learn these skills and values? I learned a lot about coffee quality and analysis at the companies in Chicago that I roasted for, I was also the green buyer and Director of Coffee there, but I’ve learned the most through my involvement in the Roasters Guild, which offers a wide variety of classes and workshops on roasting and other subjects directly related to coffee production. More importantly, it has introduced me to a worldwide community of roasters, importers, exporters, and producers that I’m constantly learning from. What are your most important, most interesting, most specialized or unusual tools? Tools? I have a whole mess of manual brewing equipment as well as cupping and tasting supplies which include special spoons, scales, and hand mills and what not. The really fun tools are the roasters. At my home lab I have a Probat PRE1Z single barrel sample roaster as well as a Quest M3 electric roaster. I’ve worked on: 23 Kilo, 40 Kilo, and 90 Kilo antique Gothot roasters. 15 and 45 Kilo antique Porbat roasters,12 and 24 Kilo Diedrich IR roasters, a little bit of roasting on a Samiac 5 Kilo, as well as various Probat, Jabaez Burns, and Gothot 3 and 4 barrel
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sample roasters. I’ve taught classes on Ambex YM2’s and YM15’s, Diedrich IR3’s, US Roaster Corp 3 Kilo, and Probat Probatinos. One of the best pieces of advice that I ever received was to get my hands on as many different roasters as possible, it makes a big difference in understanding roasting concepts rather than just the quirks and intricacies of one particular machine. Is this how you support yourself? This is how I support myself. I’ll be involved with coffee for the rest of my life. What do you see as the importance of your craft? The specialty coffee industry is an amazing enterprise. We’re directly tied into environmental and agricultural issues, humanitarian and socio-political issues, and world economics as well small, independent American businesses. All of that is wrapped up into something as simple and accessible as a wonderful cup of coffee that you can share with a friend. As far as my work with Coffee Shrub, the Roasters Guild, and RMCCA; these endeavors are all about creating access. With Shrub it’s access for roasters to more unique coffees than what they can general find as well as access to producers to a wider audience for their coffees and starting conversations about these coffees. With the Guild it’s about access to training, information, and the community. With RMCCA it’s about drawing the community of coffee professionals and coffee enthusiasts together to promote the idea that when we work together we can grow this thing into something special that benefits and enriches everyone involved. We want to put amazing coffees in peoples’ hands. Where can people find the things you make? A number of Colorado roasters use coffees from Coffee Shrub, but we source coffees to roasters all over the country and internationally as well. Here in Fort Collins
you can find some of our coffees at Bean Cycle, The Black Cup at Crankenstein, and Harbinger Coffee will feature some roasters from throughout the country who use Coffee Shrub coffees. I also do a number of public cuppings at various locations and we, the RMCCA, are working at putting together some more public focused events.
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LAU RA RE SAU
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course, it’s unpredictable how much I make from year to year, so it’s reassuring to have my husband’s regular salary to depend on. What do you see as the importance of your craft? I find it amazing that novels have the power to change readers’ way of seeing themselves and the world. I think that young readers are especially receptive to these eye-opening shifts in worldview. I remember, for example, how reading A Wrinkle in Time as a kid made me think about space/time/existence in an expansive and liberating way that has stuck with me over the years. And now that I’m a novelist, one of my biggest joys is getting e-mails from readers telling me how their own understanding of life has changed after reading my books. It’s an incredible honor and privilege to have this role, and every day, I feel grateful for it.
Who are you? Laura Resau, day-dreamer, writer, traveler, mother. What do you make? Novels for older kids, teens, and adults. Most of my books are set in another culture—Oaxaca, Mexico; Otavalo, Ecuador; Aix-en-Provence, France. I also write the occasional creative nonfiction piece.
Where can people find the things you make? My books are available at libraries and wherever you can buy books. I like supporting the great local indies, which usually keep my books well-stocked—Matter Bookstore, Old Firehouse Books, The Clothes Pony, and the other wonderful bookshops in Fort Collins. Indiebound.org is a great way to get my books online. You can read more about my writing and see photos of the inspiration behind the books on my website: www.LauraResau.com. You can take a photo tour of my writing trailer on my blog: www.LauraResau.blogspot.com. Just click on the trailer image on the right sidebar.
How did you get into this? I’ve loved creating stories for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t consider it to be an actual career possibility until I was in my twenties. After I got my Master’s degree in Anthropology, I realized I wanted to explore different cultures not through an academic lens, but a creative one. I ended up weaving my experiences abroad as an anthropologist, teacher, and student into my books. How long have you been doing this? Since I learned to write. I found one of my earliest stories in a dusty box in my basement a few years ago. I’d written it when I was about seven years old-- a choose-your-own-adventure book called The Adventure in the Blizzard. Interestingly, some elements in that little stapled-together book have found their way into the novel I’m working on now (chocolate, a magical shop, mysterious older guide). I believe that at a young age, we become enchanted with certain ideas… and then spend our lives exploring these ideas, expressing them in our own creative ways over the years. How did you learn these skills? My anthropology background has been helpful for my research, which involves participant- observation in communities in Latin America and Europe. One of the basic principles of anthropology, as I see it, is to attempt to put yourself in another person’s shoes-- to understand their worldview without judgments or assumptions. This, I believe, is also a basic principle of creative writing—having the deepest possible empathy for your characters. What are your most important, most interesting, most specialized or unusual tools? I love my writing trailer—the sweet lil fifties rig that sits in my driveway, full of smells and sights and sounds that inspire me. It makes me happy to write in my own cozy place, surrounded by objects of meaning—sea glass I collected by the Chesapeake Bay, old bottles salvaged from a junk heap in Maryland, photos of a mysterious island in France, copal incense from a market in Oaxaca, little vintage brass bells and pink fairy lights from flea markets, musty children’s books my dad found for me at secondhand stores. Settling inside my little silver trailer helps me leave behind the stresses and responsibilities of mundane life and eases me into a deeper place, where I can tap into the source of creativity. Is this how you support yourself, or, if not, what does your making mean to your living? At this point, I can more or less support myself with my advances and royalties, supplemented by visits to schools and libraries. I’ve published seven books so far, but it wasn’t until my third book came out that I gave up my part-time job as ESL teacher (although that had something to do with my son coming along, too.) Of
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N e i l K au f m a n Executive Director, National Center for Craftsmanship
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n approaching this issue of Matterhorn, our staff at Wolverine Farm Publishing had a range of questions about the current place of craft in our culture. The diversity of studios and workshops we visited stretched these questions and any definition of craft more so than offering any resolution. After our workshop tours we’d only touched on some of the broadest, most important issues at hand. It was clear we should talk to more people. Luckily, Fort Collins is home to the National Center for Craftsmanship, a collaboration between skilled craftspeople and educators who create opportunities for a new generation to get its hands dirty and learn through action. If anyone can help us understand what it means to to be a craftsperson in this world of mass production and planned obsolescence it is either the people at NCC or the guy at SHAVECO. We’re grateful to Neil Kaufman for the time he took to help us with our questions and to tell us how the NCC is fighting to keep craftsmanship alive and well.
Matterhorn: As manufacturing has been computerized and outsourced, as materials have evolved for better and worse, how has this changed the way our culture values craftsmanship? Neil Kaufman: The computerization and outsourcing of manufacturing is not necessarily a negative thing for the cultural value of craftsmanship. In fact, many more people have access to products that would otherwise only be available to a small percentage of the population. This, as well as the materials revolution is the legacy of mass production and has led to the overall standard of living that we as a society enjoy today. However, all this relative abundance has come at a price. Much like agribusiness has marginalized the small farmer; mass-production has moved craftsmanship out of the visible mainstream and into more remote corners of boutique industries. To stay with the agribusiness analogy; most people take for granted that their food has to be grown by people who have a culturally deep connection to the land and the elements. As a society, we have come to believe that our food comes from the supermarket. We have lost the connection to the land that the majority of our ancestors could never have done without. The same dynamic appears to hold true for the ethic of craftsmanship. Many of the products we take for granted, such as wood trim, pottery, glass, metal products, etc. used to be made by artisans who passed their skills on from generation to generation. As a culture we are losing the connection between the craftsperson and the product. Yet the appreciation for craftsmanship still exists in the majority of our culture. It lives in the ethic of quality. Almost everyone cares about quality in at least one thing. They have one thing that they will not sacrifice on quality. It could be the shoes on your feet, the watch on your wrist, the golf club in your hand, the car you drive, or the pan you cook in. You just have to find out what that one thing is for each individual. The fundamental shift has been from the appreciation of the craftsperson and their attendant skills to a focus on the product. As with the farmer, this shift has dehumanized the craftsperson and relegated him/her to an invisible supplier of people’s wants and needs. MH: What are the costs to our society when we lose skilled craftspeople, including and beyond their knowledge and tools? NK: We are currently experiencing the financial costs of the loss of craftspeople in our society. It’s a simple matter of supply and demand. As the number of skilled craftspeople decreases, even if the demand for their work remains unchanged, the cost of their work continues to go up. We see it clearly in what we call the allied or licensed construction trades. These are typically represented by the electricians, plumbers, and heating/ac contractors. They are some of the most highly regulated craftspeople from the standpoint of licensing and certification. A licensed plumber today charges $75 to $125 an hour in our market, more in the larger cities. That’s what attorneys used to charge about 15-20 years ago. Why is this so? Simple economics—there are fewer licensed master plumbers and the ones that are left are more than 50 years old on average. This economic effect is beginning to trickle down into the uncertified trades (carpenters, tile workers, concrete workers, masons, etc.). The problem here is that demand still attracts supply, albeit unqualified. So the craftspeople who are really good at these trades continue to demand higher wages. The lower quality workers compete with these higher wage earners. When the low quality workers win jobs based on price, the cost of errors and omissions (i.e. warranty work) skyrockets. In construction alone the cost of warranty work, or the cost to do over what wasn’t done right the first time, is a multi-billion dollar industry. When we lose craftspeople we lose a part of our heritage and history. Additionally, we begin to loosen the moorings of our cultural ethic of quality. These are real social costs that feed people’s overdeveloped sense of individuality. It’s easy for people to care about things. It’s much tougher to care about people. But ultimately, the reason we value certain things above others is the connection that the thing has to a person or group. The pine coffee table that was built by your grandfather has much more personal and cultural value than the maple coffee table made in a foreign factory. The reason Hopi pottery costs so much is due to the connection with the people who make it.
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MH: What does it look like when you work with an industry or government partner? Can you offer a specific example that highlights your work? NK: When NCC works with an industry and government it is typically a result of a partnership with a project owner, trade association, and/or other public or private organization. One example is the deconstruction of the former Steele’s Market in Fort Collins. This project was in partnership with Bohemian Companies (owner), LVI (demolition contractor), Larimer County Community Corrections Women’s “DreamBuilders” Program, and NCC. The 23,000 square foot building held near iconic status in the community and Bohemian recognized the opportunity to do good for the community even while taking the building down. Women from LCCC trained on the project for 6 weeks as an intervention to help reduce recidivism through job skills training & placement. As a result, all of the women’s team was placed in full-time employment upon completion of the project, more than 1200 tons of the building materials were re-used and recycled (90%), and Bohemian offset project costs with tax credits generated by partnering with NCC as well as scoring significant public relations points with the community. The alternative was simply to demolish the building and haul the materials to the local landfill. While the project represents a somewhat more complex approach, it exemplifies NCC’s strategy that says, ”If there’s just so much of the pie to go around, make a bigger pie.” MH: What would you like to do that you currently aren’t? Or, are there parts of your mission that have been more challenging to bring to fruition? NK: There are three primary milestones that we see as a part of our strategic growth plan. First, we would like to establish a presence in all the major regions of the country. We have shown that our model is reproducible and the needs we fulfill are national. Second, we see a need to establish a facility that acts as the physical headquarters of the Center that includes classroom, conferencing, and workshop space. Third, we intend to develop and build a database of the country’s craft and artisan human capital and fulfill our mission to become the country’s leader in preserving, enhancing and sustaining craftsmanship. The hardest part is building past the grass roots stage. NCC is still a relatively new organization. When we started NCC, we believed that we were the first and only organization in the country that was focusing on these issues and framing them with a national agenda. We recently confirmed that with a media campaign that was sponsored by New Balance (the shoe manufacturer). New Balance chose us as their partner to highlight American Craftsmanship. Why, we asked, would 2 billion dollar a year international company choose little NCC to partner with? According to their director of marketing, they spent 3 months searching and determined that NCC was the only organization in the country focusing on the issues of craftsmanship. While it’s nice to know we are the first, it’s scary to think we are the only organization working to preserve craftsmanship in this country. MH: What is your personal connection to the motto “Preserve the Craft, Enhance the Craft, Sustain the Craft?” NK: Personally, the motto of NCC brings together the past, the present and the future of craftsmanship. Preservation of craftsmanship acknowledges the debt we owe to those who came before us. The focus is on the people; their knowledge, skills and abilities. “Enhance the craft” acknowledges the ever-changing nature of what craftspeople do. It includes the desire to constantly learn, develop new techniques that are built on what we already know. It also recognizes that craftsmanship doesn’t come in a bottle. You can’t just add water! It is knowledge and wisdom that you can’t find in a book. The Romans lost the recipe for concrete and it wasn’t rediscovered for nearly eighteen hundred years! We can look back, but we can’t go back. Someone has to teach you these things. Sustaining the craft isn’t just an idea about how to keep craftsmanship alive, it’s an imperative. Someone needs to do these jobs every day. Someone we know, someone who lives in our community. If we lose it it’s gone for a long time, maybe forever. Without it, ships don’t run right, cars stall, and planes start falling out of the sky. It really is that important. MH: Who are the people at the heart of your organization? NK: The people at the heart of our organization are skilled craftspeople and educators. NCC began as an idea in 2000 at Colorado State University. Most of us were teaching and studying at the then Department of Manufacturing Technology & Construction Management (now the Department of Construction Management). We are the ones who recognized the “crisis” spoken of in the literature with regard to the ongoing loss of craftsmanship knowledge in our society. We experienced it in our work and dedicated ourselves to addressing the problem in a formal way, thus the creation of NCC. Some of those people who are still with us include Robert Sommerfeld, NCC assistant director and career and technical educator (CTE) at Berthoud High School, Nick Benson, NCC operations manager and former junior high school CTE, Dottie Bentley, NCC schools liaison and former high school CTE, and myself (see http:// www.nccraftsmanship.org/about/staff/) MH: What do you really want people to understand about your work that we haven’t touched on? NK: We think it is necessary to understand that there are still people in this country that believe that this stuff is important. It’s like when the environmental movement says, “we talk about throwing things away, but there is no away”. It’s the same thing with craftspeople and craftsmanship. Someone needs to do this work; someone here. We can’t keep assuming that someone else will do it. These things can’t be outsourced. You can’t email the carpentry or electrical work from overseas. These are jobs that pay well and there will always be a demand for them. Our culture practically deifies the college education and white collar work. Most of the resources spent in our high schools involve preparing kids to go to college. Yet less than half go to college, and less than 1/3 of the population achieves a bachelor’s degree. So what about the other 2/3? They get the message loud and clear: if you don’t go to college you have somehow failed. It’s time our culture rediscovers the value of the skilled craftsperson. This country has been built by craftspeople and they are needed as much today as ever.
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Featuring the work of 51 different authors and artists, the 14th issue of Matter Journal explores the complex relationship between humans and animals. 240 pages, photographs, illustrations
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“We think it is necessary to understand that there are still people in this country that believe that this stuff is important. It’s like when the environmental movement says, “we talk about throwing things away, but there is no away.” It’s the same thing with craftspeople and craftsmanship. Someone needs to do this work; someone here. We can’t keep assuming that someone else will do it. These things can’t be outsourced. You can’t email the carpentry or electrical work from overseas. These are jobs that pay well and there will always be a demand for them. Our culture practically deifies the college education and white collar work. Most of the resources spent in our high schools involve preparing kids to go to college. Yet less than half go to college, and less than 1/3 of the population achieves a bachelor’s degree. So what about the other 2/3? They get the message loud and clear: if you don’t go to college you have somehow failed. It’s time our culture rediscovers the value of the skilled craftsperson. This country has been built by craftspeople and they are needed as much today as ever.” —Neil Kaufman Executive Director, National Center for Craftsmanship
wolverine farm publishing : fort collins , co www.wolverinefarm.org