Roxanne Furlong discovered tools to make crafting easier as her disability progresses.

Which Craft?


Roxanne Furlong
Roxanne Furlong discovered tools to make crafting easier as her disability progresses.

No matter if you paint digitally with your eyes or mold pottery with your hands, crafting can be the catalyst for transformation and healing

October is the time of year when most kids get excited with the creativity, imagination and anticipation of Halloween. While scheming to shock or surprise their neighbors at their doorsteps, the costumed visitors know the resulting prize is a bagful of candy. It’s that same creative process — starting from one’s imagination — that allows crafters the fulfillment of a finished quilt, sculpture or piece of jewelry.

Creativity inspires some of us to become more spiritual, benevolent and wholesome. For others, it begins as a cathartic healing process after an injury. For lifelong crafters, such as myself, adapting our craft to our disability creates a new dimension of art. No matter if you paint digitally with your eyes or mold pottery with your hands, crafting can be the catalyst for transformation and healing, and if you’re not careful, it will teach you a lot about yourself.

Mixed Media
I’ve been a mixed-media artist for as long as I can remember. My first piece was a mural of milking cows drawn with crayons on our dining room wall. I was 3 years old, and when my mom saw it, she freaked, spanked my bottom and sent me to my room. But I was so proud of myself because Mom’s anger did not come from my drawing on the wall — this modest, Midwestern Catholic woman was upset because my cow’s teats were so lifelike.

I continued crafting and now incorporate vintage ephemera, ribbon, fabric, game boards, buttons and cardboard into my photo albums, greeting cards, wall art, journals and lamps — instilling my sense of humor into each piece. I swap Artist Trading Cards — mini works of art, traded like baseball cards — and mini albums with fellow artists from around the world.

Art is my sustenance. It gives me great pleasure and helps me stay positive and fulfilled. I give a lot of my art away and sell enough on Etsy (www.Etsy.com) and in local stores to help pay for more stash.

But like other wheelers who craft — and because of increasing pain and weakening in my hands and wrists — I’ve had to adapt my tools to cut dies or paper and bind books. Lucky for me, the scrapbook craze and an aging population have spurred many companies to create tools that help me continue my artistic journey.

To cut shapes and letters, Making Memories Slice die cutter only requires the weight of my hands and a button push. Fiskars Spring Action scissors — Arthritis Foundation endorsed — and squeeze punches make it easy to cut and punch paper. To bind books, 7gypsies Binderie Punch — available from Blue Moon Scrapbooking — also just takes a touch of a button. My previous die-cutting and binding machines were hand-cranked, and after using them for a short time, my hands were cranked.

Quilting
Marquetta Johnson, from Decatur, Ga., comes from four generations of textile artists, including a grandmother who beautified her bathroom with a crocheted toilet tissue cover.

Marquetta Johnson adapted a sewing machine by simply placing the presser foot on the table.
Marquetta Johnson adapted a sewing machine by simply placing the presser foot on the table.

Until 20 years ago, when a bullet injured her spinal cord at the T7 level, Johnson, 54, focused her art on painting and dying fabric to make money. Now a quilter, she teaches others the art of benevolence.

During rehab at Shepherd Center, Johnson learned to use a sewing machine by placing the presser foot on the table, manipulating it with her right hand and guiding the fabric into the machine with her left. Any right-handed sewer knows this is no small feat. She then began to see herself in a broader sense, creatively. Now she is facilitator of Call My Name, whose goal is to increase the number of panels included in the AIDS Memorial Quilt that are dedicated to African-Americans who died of AIDS/HIV.

“My view of art is now more positive,” Johnson explains. “Before, my view was reflective on a Western, materialistic view of art — art as an economic base. My injury opened up something in me and I began to see art as a way of promoting social justice. I now see art as a way of sharing good healing energy, and as a way of edifying people.”

Dale TaylorIntarsia
Dale Taylor is an award-winning intarsia woodworker from Provo, Utah. Intarsia is the art of creating mosaic patterns from different woods. The grain and color of the wood used is dictated by the look he wants to achieve. It has taken years of practice to sand and fit each piece snugly. He estimates that each wildlife piece — none of which are painted or stained — takes 50 to100 hours to create.

Taylor, who has FSH muscular dystrophy, saw a decrease in his physical strength 10 years ago. At that time he began using a wheelchair.

“I have a hard time lifting a spoon to my mouth to eat, I can’t pick up a can of coke, but I’m doing woodwork that I shouldn’t be able to do,” Taylor says. “This keeps me going, and I take pride in my work.”

To continue his craft, friends built Taylor a 20-by-20-foot workshop while another friend lowered his woodworking benches and tables to accommodate his chair.

Minna HongJewelry
In an effort to pull out of a severe depression after a 1999 car accident caused the death of her husband and paralyzed her at the T12-L1 level, Minna Hong, 45, from Atlanta, began making pearl necklaces for her friends. Always creative, she taught herself how to bead, eventually adapting her jewelry to her abilities and to those who wear her jewelry.

“My technique is more wire wrapping and knotting,” Hong says. “I don’t crimp, use heavy tools or do any heavy soldering. In a strange way, when you’re limited with a technique, you become more creative and build on that technique.”

Given this, Hong has learned to “cover things up” so there’s no middle, beginning or end to her necklaces and earrings. Because most pieces are designed without neck sizes or clasps, anybody — even those with low strength, hand coordination or arthritis — can wear her designs. If there is a clasp, Hong makes it easy to put on by lengthening.

Though she works full time at Shepherd Center, Hong, with a partner, has created a successful business, selling her jewelry in 500 stores nationwide and in Puerto Rico.

Smudging is a spiritual practice for Jenny Peterson, who designs and sells her own smudge feathers.
Smudging is a spiritual practice for Jenny Peterson, who designs and sells her own smudge feathers.

Smudging Feathers
Jenny Peterson, of Mound, Minn., has been making art all her life, beginning as a kid rock painting at the lake with her uncle. In high school, Peterson decided on a career in pottery with dreams of schooling in Japan, but a downhill skiing accident, which caused a C6-7 SCI, rearranged her destination from pottery to communications and public relations.

“My formidable artist kept popping up,” she says. “One day I tagged along with a friend to a beading store and I was like a raccoon with baubles — all these pretty shiny beads! My friend spent $10 and I left the store with $80 worth of beads.”

Beading helped relieve stress while Peterson worked as executive director for Helping Paws of Minnesota. She eventually left Helping Paws, is now working on her Ph.D. and owns an executive coaching business. She makes jewelry and creates smudging feathers — honoring her interest in Native American spirituality — that she sells on Etsy and at craft shows.

“I feel more fulfilled making smudging feathers,” explains the 43-year-old. “I can’t make my own beads because I don’t have full use of my fingers, whereas I’m actually designing and constructing the smudging feathers.”

Smudging is a ritual where it is believed that burning sage, cedar or sweet grass cleanses negative energy. Johnson considers the ritual of smudging as one might think of cooking or writing — “getting into your zone as a way to tap into your essence of self and spirit.”

Except while wheeling or driving, Johnson uses a tenodesis splint that allows her to pinch her thumb and fingers together. With it she can write, draw, garden and continue her crafts. The splint allows her to do everything but crimp; her husband does that.

Everything about Johnson’s smudging feathers has spiritual significance, down to the type of wood used for the handle, the animal leather used, and the feathers. She is unable to use migratory bird feathers and instead uses her painting ability to paint turkey feathers to mimic eagles, geese or loons.

No matter your disability or inner motivation, there is always a positive payback when you immerse yourself in crafting.

Resources:
www.atikaart.com
www.bluemoonscrapbooking.com
www.designsbyminna.com
www.roxpaperscissors.blogspot.com
www.roxpaperscissors.etsy.com
www.tailfeather.etsy.com


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