When you can appreciate the talent and skill required to create art - the world becomes a little more magical.
It's the difference between looking at the brush marks and detail on an oil painting, versus hanging a poster from IKEA to match your lounge suite.
The creation of art can be found in all makers products. Hand knitting is often mocked as an old fashioned 'daggy' activity resulting in dreadful heavy jumpers. Yet if you look at the detail of handknit garments you will see these pieces are painstakingly created - stitch by stitch. You may find it difficult to distinguish between machine knit and hand knit, but once you realize a garment/article is hand knit you really can't help but be impressed.
This weekend I attended a talk by Jenny Kee and Lynda Jackson at the NGV 200 years of Australian Fashion exhibition.
I was fortunate enough to meet with Jenny afterwards. I told her about my new project and we discussed handknit intarsia vs. machine knit.
I was absolutely stunned to learn that the detail on skirt which my friend and I had decided was machine knit, was in fact hand knitted! Wow, so detailed, so many colours. That is indeed art.
Jenny said she wished the Gallery had actually shown the reverse side of the garment in order for people to see the detail involved.
The art behind the knitting is what makes these garments Fashion; but the hand made process makes it something so much more than any off the rack jumper would ever be.
Well worth watching is this short video (click here) which shows how Lynda Jackson used Jenny Kees' artwork to create the 'knitting patterns' on graph paper for her team of knitters to create.
Happy knitting!