Hello friend,

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day and so, I want to tell you about the place where I fell in love with textiles.

It's not a quaint vintage fabric shop in Paris, although that would be romantic, eh? It's a corner of the internet built by a quilter on the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee called the Quilty Nook.

When I left politics and media, I didn't know what I was walking toward. I revved up my Singer and started sewing with wild abandon… sewing all alone in a pandemic. Until I found Zak Foster via his zine Queer Quilters Tell All and then wandered into his online community of about 1,500 fiber artists. What I found was a model for how humans can actually be together and make art.

There are no algorithms deciding what you see. Nobody is selling you anything. When someone shares their work, the response can be a conversation, questions or simply celebration... you decide those parameters.

I met Kimmie Dearest there, an illustrator and activist in New York who told me the Nook held her in her confusion and her loneliness. She started hosting Open Home Fridays at her studio where anyone can come through, use the sewing machine, and throw some vegetables into a tofu scramble. She told me sometimes people stay twenty minutes, sometimes they stay all day.

I learned about artist Nathan Ford in the Nook, an improvisational quilter in Kansas City who asked himself: how can I open my practice up to serve those around me? His work was introduced to me by his collaborator and friend Maret Miller who organized quilts for Dee Dee's House, the first trans-led shelter in Kansas. 

And of course, I met Zak there… everyone on the Nook eventually meets our host. He’s a community-taught artist who now teaches the community and you’ll hear more from him as the series rolls out. 

All of these people are in today's episode.

Zak described the Nook as a “container”. A safer place where people who feel the desire can put their elbows out and make room for themselves and others. And, honestly sometimes people aren’t willing to do that and they self-select out of the community. 

I now know the difference between a space that extracts from you and a space that holds you. And, like I love to say… this isn’t new!

The quilting bees that have existed for a long time before the Nook, right?

I don’t think those spaces existed because people needed help cutting fabric, or even that the act of quilting together was faster (though it might be!), but because people needed a reason to sit together and be honest while their hands were busy… and that’s what the Nook is so good for. Come join us, you’ll find me hosting in the LGBTQ+ room where we also have regular Zoom-based sewing circles. 

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. While I don't have flowers or chocolates for you, I offer you this episode about the radical, unglamorous work of showing up for each other. The episode is really about how we hold space so people feel belonging, and that includes finding the places and spaces were you can flourish.

Like Zak says, “all flourishing is mutual”. I really do believe that. I've lived it. And remember, our hands know how to build the world we want.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Love, 

Ian

Ps. The best gift you could give a tiny little indie podcast would be a five star rating wherever you listen, or even better… a few words in a review. It really does help other people find us!

New Episode: Community Care, The Society for Inclusive Blacksmiths

Episode 7 is out now: artagainstempire.net and on all podcast platforms!

At the centre of this episode is the Society of Inclusive Blacksmiths, an organization that started in 2018 when eleven women gathered at a forge in Oregon. They planned to make a conversation chair. What they built instead was a home for every person who'd ever been told the forge wasn't for them. Their motto: everyone has something to offer, everyone has something to learn.

You'll hear from Joy Fire, Olivia Hall, and Lisa Geertsen on what inclusive blacksmithing actually looks like. Woven through their story are the voices from my own community: Grace Rother and the Abolition Quilting Bee, Kimmie on why you don't have to do all the things, Nathan and Maret on what community response looks like, and Zak on why all flourishing is mutual. And as always, we will dig into just some of the history and politics of community care and blacksmithing.

We thought after the last episode on grief we would lift ourselves up with learning more about community building the word they want.

Art Against Empire is co-created by Shawn Dearn and produced by Secret Agents.

New episodes every two weeks on Fridays.