By Ed Trask

 

I turned the corner and there it was – a beautiful Camille Pissarro painting. I had never experienced anything quite like it.

Layers and layers of paint blended roughly to capture the perfect essence of pure beauty and color. This was physical; I mean this in the sense that I could imagine Pissaro’s hands applying paint in that sculpted impasto way. Mesmerized, I quickly walked up to the painting and placed my hands on it – really, directly on it.

By the time the security guard and my perplexed wife intervened, it was too late. The connection was made and I was set on a path of painting and constantly using my hands to spread, shape, blend, and erase paint on canvas and walls.

I just flat out love the way paint feels on my hands. So this leads to the subject of my next “Take a Minute” exercise for Grid magazine: the power of the human hand. The power of YOUR human hands to create.

Almost one year ago at the RVA Street Art Festival, I bumped into Dr. William Fitzhugh, the doctor who helped deliver my son. I initially had a hard time placing him. It’s hard to remember people’s faces when that beautiful, surreal, humbling, and terrifying moment happens. But, what I do remember of Dr. Fitzhugh are his hands. Yes, his hands. Birthin’ hands, y’all, are no joke.

It struck me as we were shaking hands at the festival that I had to look at them up close and I would have to get a picture of them. Strong, calloused and, yet somehow, gentle hands. These hands showed that the doctor was not afraid of manual labor. These were hands that had helped bring hundreds upon hundreds of babies into this world.

But here’s the rub.

We live in a time where technology is requiring a new sense of hand dexterity and a new responsibility for our greatest human tools.

I often think about a picture of my grandfather in New York, standing in front of the house he had just built without any power tools. He built the house with just hand tools, some he had made himself. I can only imagine handing him an iPhone and watching his hands stumble and poke at the thing.

Digital advancements, 3D printers, C&C routers, and robotics help to create a product that looks handmade, or at times the exact opposite. They can look stripped of any hand interpretation at all.

Similarly, many school systems have forgotten the value of traditional tools by eliminating shop classes, art classes, and any classes that use the hands to solve problems. This sensibility, coupled with a standardized and mechanical way of teaching, can perpetuate the decline of hand use. We breed this post-post Industrial Age of non-hand users who just don’t have the ability or gumption to fix what they use in their everyday lives, let alone create or build what they use.

And then there are consumers, many of whom simply don’t care about the origins of products. For example, these days you’re not supposed to fix what you own. Or for that matter, you’re not supposed to own it that long.

Technology and modern mass production is making many aspects of our lives easier, but at the same time, it can knock the wind out of us.

Well, maybe not all of us.

Look around. In many corners you’ll find a backlash to mass-produced products that have lost the sense of craft. The sense of the hand.

Just take a look at the rise of Etsy, and other handcraft sites like Folksy.com, ArtfFire.com, and iCraft.com. These examples show that a makers market still exists for online shoppers. But at the same time, we can’t forget the effect that this online outcropping has on our local economy. Especially now, when we are witnessing a resurgence of local handmade goods in RVA – ranging from beer, food co-ops, metal and glass fabrication, jeans, dress shirts, furniture, bikes, coffee, jewelry, landscaping, musical instruments, sculpture, paintings, and signs. Those that are looking to get involved in metal fabrication may want to invest in specialist equipment such as a tote bag for welding gear and of course the welding machine itself.

The challenge becomes searching for these places, and supporting them, when it’s just so easy to use our newly acquired hand skills of typing on an iPad and shopping online.

So what can we do to make a change?

Let’s start by never letting the sensibility of play and hand construction leave preschools and kindergarten. Amazing teachers, tons of hand play, lots of tools for construction (and deconstruction), and an endless use of hands. Just let kids find a relationship with free play and tool use. Let’s fund more community gardens and create more adult collaborative workshops.

And for the adults, it’s time that we all attend Shop Class, organized and hosted by Peter Fraser, Ansel Olson, John Sarvay, Lauren Boynton, and Lauren Stewart. These classes are an example of the perfect marriage of creative thinking and actual hand production in RVA. Whether we take a class at the Visual Arts Center or the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts or we tackle a labor-intensive project at home, it’s time that we leave a creative structural legacy. This can be as simple as making a handmade birdhouse, digging a fishpond or a fire pit, creating a tree fort, or planting a tree. Maybe it’s as simple as playing a hand drum, changing your own oil, or rotating your own tires. Or a personal favorite – paint an image, then smear it all up with your hands before it dries and start all over.

When you’re finished, go to the Bizarre Market or Craft Mafia events and support local, real handmade goods.

Last, but not least, go to VMFA and stare at a piece of art. Take that beautiful, long deep breath and think about the origins of the artwork in front of you. Think about the endless hours of conceptual thought, playfulness, failure, and handcraft that led to its success. Try to find your connection (without touching the art, please). Then, stare at your own hands and imagine them creating this piece of art.

Now as you take another long breath remember that those hands of yours have the ability to create infinite masterpieces and have the ability to create infinite positive change. The trick is not to let technology, and our busy info-speedy lives make us forget about the power of those lovely hands. Instead harness that technology to spread the word of the handmade. Then, throw up them hands and say “hell yeah”!