Crafting gifts & building community
Next week I'm giving a brief presentation and showing the items I made for my first-ever grant-funded project.
Hello and welcome to Hungry Woodworker, a humanistic exploration of woodworking, purpose, and making a living. I’m Taliesin and one thing I do when not working is write; some of which gets edited into essays and shared every other Thursday. Thank you for being here.
On April 20, nearly a year's worth of work comes to an end:
I'm going to be talking about and showing the items I made during my project with Habitat for Humanity serving Winona County (which I've touched on a couple of times, here and here).
I am fascinated by people's stories—not the clean-cut versions sanitized for public consumption, but the less refined narratives of how one decision led to another, made way for an insight that transformed their approach or how some mundane detail spun them in a new direction.
We are, every one of us, so damn weird. Or to put it another way, we're intricate and nuanced and influenced by all manner of randomness. Years ago I made a seven-episode podcast series called "Weird Tales from Youth" where I interviewed people about the bizarre ideas they held in childhood and how they acted on them. Kids are so much better at embracing weird; usually by the time we get to adulthood, society has tamed those impulses right out of us.
My hope with the presentation is to share some of those less known, unexpected, perhaps even a little weird (or maybe just more honest and hopeful) stories about this project, how it came to be, and what I made and why. If you are in the area, I hope you're able to come out, as it would be great to see you!
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts & cultural heritage fund.
End note: Josiah, my indefatigable partner of an astounding number of years, asked me why I didn't put my last name on the flyer. The truth is that my last name is just as difficult as my first name to spell and pronounce, so I wanted to do the prospective audience a favor at the outset and not burden them with both. There are all manner of kindnesses we can give to others in this world, some and bolder than others, but the simple, quiet ones are just as important.