Adrien Lucas and Cemantha Crain, seated after sundown in the caged lanai behind Crain's home, run through items on their printed meeting agenda. A bottle of neon-orange Gatorade and a bag of Terra Red Bliss Potato Chips crowd the table, already littered with paperwork and pens.
Lucas looks as if she's jogged over for the meeting, with running sneakers and stretchy black pants, her hair pulled back tight. Crain wears navy jeans, a black sleeveless T and a lime bandana.
Discussing the niggling details of the arts and crafts fair they are organizing, the two hash out potential advertisers, on-site security, swag bags. They pore over booth schematics, debate the value of fair T-shirts and examine the $4,957 budget. They fret about the sound system at Sarasota's Municipal Auditorium. They trade stories about how they're spreading word of the event.
Oh, and they need to decide: Yuengling or Pabst.
"We can switch to Pabst," Crain suggests. "It's five bucks cheaper per keg." Lucas nods enthusiastically, puffing on a borrowed Gauloises Light. "That's 50 bucks," Crain says. "That's two more ads." Pabst wins.
Atomic Holiday Bazaar is a craft fair. With beer.
The world of alternative crafting — or "anti-craft" as Lucas dubs it — has popped up all over the media map in recent years. For instance, back in August Creative Loafing art critic Megan Voeller reported on the growth of Crafting Out Loud. The Tampa Bay craft fair has proven so popular it's now held twice a month, at Sacred Grounds Coffee Shop near USF and at New World Brewery in Ybor. Founder Alison Odowski made the necessary connections with local artisans through etsy.com, one of the centers of the handmade movement.
National media outlets have caught on, too. Style Channel hosted the short-lived Craft Corner Death Match, on which contestants were challenged, for example, to make jewelry out of soap and string. The magazine Make launched Craft, a sub-publication originally planned as a one-off special issue which quickly grew into a regular quarterly. Debbie Stoller, editor of the feminist magazine Bust, authored the book Stitch 'n Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook and promptly watched 250,000 copies find their way onto store shelves in 2004. Two follow-ups are already out.
And in the ultimate tip-off that a trend has made it to the big time, some in the know worry that alt-crafting has already sold out. A post on the fashion blog Anti-Factory reads: "I'm just generally annoyed with alot of 'crafts' these days. Alot of the stuff people are making just seems so wasteful and useless."
Such misgivings about the popularization of crafting don't sound far off from underground rock fans complaining that their latest fav has just signed to a major label, and that subversive, DIY, starve-the-corporation mentality is a common streak in the alt-crafting world. The mischievousness is even obvious in the aesthetics of the pieces. The crafters — mostly women, it must be noted — often appropriate the style and iconography of 1940s and '50s housewives, twisting that period's kitsch into saucy irony. It's not a stretch to suggest a parallel with the way punk rock updated the simple beat of early rock 'n' roll as a rebellion against contemporary lifelessness.
Even the fact that these "modern-day punk hippies" (Lucas's phrase) are choosing to crochet and knit and hem is revealing. They're taking back domestic arts that were once foisted upon women and owning them.
For Michelle Triecca, who transfers photographs to T-shirts and sells them under the name Mo T's Photo Tees, the contrast between the scene she left in San Diego and the one she's struggling to help build in Naples is stark. "In San Diego, it's just really well-known," she says. "Everyone's pretty savvy with the indie craft movement." She settled in Naples, where her parents live, only after she and some friends were evicted from their home out west after failing to come up with rent.
She's found a small but burgeoning circle of similarly minded crafters and even a friendly boutique in her new hometown, and got plugged into Atomic when she read a magazine article about Lucas and dropped her an e-mail.
She originally came just to save up enough cash to return to San Diego, but with her success, she's rethinking her plan. "I love San Diego. … but I'm here now, and I feel like a pioneer," she says. "I feel like I've inspired a lot of people."
Both Triecca's story and the success of Crafting Out Loud demonstrate that, although southwest Florida may lack venues, plenty of crafters call the area home. It's just a matter of finding them.
Like Alison Odowski, Lucas and Crain also exploited the connective possibilities of the Internet. "MySpace has been invaluable for getting vendors," Lucas says. Originally, the two had hoped for 40 vendors. Now, Atomic is "bursting at the seams," with more than 50.
And with each vendor comes a built-in crowd for the bazaar. "All the local vendors are dragging their friends to this shit," Lucas says, reassuring Crain at tonight's meeting that attendance will match their expectations.
The two have been holding meetings just like this one for six or so months now, coordinating all the details in the time away from their daily work. Lucas is an assistant to the CEO at Planned Parenthood, while Crain handles marketing for Sarasota's Admiral Travel Gallery.
The original spark of inspiration for Atomic may have come last fall, when Lucas visited the Stitch Fashion Show and Guerilla Craft Bazaar in Austin, Texas, but the event is rooted in a network of artsy, anti-establishment businesswomen called Veronica Tart established in Sarasota in May 2005. The group planned to produce something called a "twilight market" and flirted with the idea of setting up a cooperative booth at a Sarasota arts festival, but that narrow concept quickly "mushroomed." "It was strong enough to be its own thing," Crain says.
But that meant work. While the Internet made it easier to find vendors and promote the show, old-fashioned hoofing-it still came into play. Lucas accosted passersby with postcards any time she could, targeting those whose clothes indicated they might be into the fair. Her hours of experience canvassing door-to-door for her pro-choice, feminist politician mother while growing up in Ohio came in handy.
All that time spent promoting and planning Atomic begs the question: Why? With full-time jobs, with their own independent projects, with special DVD editions of Valley Girl waiting to be watched, why are Lucas and Crain sitting at a table discussing the city's insurance requirements?
"Most of us have day jobs," Lucas explains, "but most of us want to quit our day jobs." That dream — supporting yourself doing what you love — is pervasive in the alt-crafting world, and to create a vibrant community where that level of success is possible requires showcases like Atomic.
For Lucas and Crain, if such a community does become a reality, the ramifications are huge. "I think that the way you spend money is a very political act," Crain comments. Spending your buck at Wal-Mart may not seem consequential, but in a sense you're voting: Voting for depressed overseas wages, for the commodification of American cities, for conformity. Spend your buck on handmade items, and you're voting for the decency of the worker, for thriving local culture, for creativity.
"It is up to us to create our own little community," Crain stresses.
You could argue that alt-crafting just fights consumerism with consumerism. But despite being burned out on the glitzy parade of American politics, Lucas, Crain and their cohorts may be helping further a wiser, more organic vision of capitalism that seems to be flourishing right now. Home cooks snap up locally grown, ecologically sustainable vegetables and humanely treated beef. Indie rock fans celebrate mom-and-pop labels and bands that press their own record sleeves. DIY home and car repair have flourished for decades.
"We are a society so technologically connected, we are missing, we are longing for, that manual connection," says Laura Daniel Gale, who owns everything but the girl, one of the few Sarasota boutiques that feature local crafters. She points out that the people in the alt-crafting age demographic — their 20s and 30s — have lived their entire lives in a high-tech age.
But that "manual connection" is also a human one. And forget all the theorizing: At its core, Atomic is a bash. "It's so fun to get to throw a party in my own style," Crain exclaims.
That style explains the rock bands, the roller derby team and, oh yeah, the beer. Even though having alcohol at the city-owned auditorium means more security and more insurance, Lucas and Crain are convinced that the kegs of Pabst are worth the headache. "It's going to make everyone happier," Lucas says, deadpan.
The Handmade Holiday Guide
- The Atomic Holiday Bazaar
- Handmade Gifts
- Bag Ladies
- Glass Works
- Leading Light
- Feats of Clay
- Explaining Hanukkah
- Home Alone
- Holiday Events
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2006.