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Oh hi
Do you ever watch Top Chef, where the contestants and judges call each other chef? "Hey Chef," "Hi Chef" they'll say to each other as they interact. Whenever we watch it, my (fellow artist) husband and I will invariably say "Hey artist," "Hey artist" to each other. It's funny, although not as amusing as when we're watching a particularly dramatic movie and someone will ask if there's a doctor in the house, or they'll need a bomb disposal expert or some other specialist to save the day... then one of us will call out to the TV "I'm an artist, I can help!"
We sometimes joke that our Master of Fine Arts qualifications, our MFA's, stand for Master of F*** All, but most of the time we're being ironic. Artists are thinkers and problem-solvers and makers and do-ers, observing and reflecting on society and the world in which we find ourselves.
It's easy for people to say that creative pursuits are not as important or as essential as other occupations, but they really are at the core of the human experience. Imagine your world without books or music or films or visual art. Imagine never being able to pick up a pencil and paper, or a needle and thread, or never touching a musical instrument. We need makers and we need to make.
I'm a British artist, designer, university lecturer and entrepreneur. I live in beautiful Portland, Maine with my Danish artist / writer husband, our three amazing but very opinionated girls (ages 15, 13 and 8), three cats, a bunch of fish, a lizard-y thing and our stubborn but hilarious pug duo, Waffles and Pepper.
We moved to Portland sight-unseen in 2012, determined to build a life for our family centered around curiosity and creativity. Before that we were in Auckland, New Zealand for a year and a half, and before that we were in Minneapolis / St Paul for eleven years. And before that move we were in Edinburgh, Scotland, where we met at Edinburgh College of Art.
Life is busy, always, and in the last few years creativity was starting to get pushed to the edges of our lives rather than taking its place right at the center. As artists (the husband and I work collaboratively) we nearly always have a project on the go for an upcoming exhibition, but life was becoming increasingly compartmentalized with art on one side, family on the other, and work in the middle. It was time for a giant shake-up of a change.
I've been planning this business for the last 10 years. Seriously. Between babies, moving country, jobs, clients and making artwork, it took a really long time to get to the place where I finally said, ok, it's time. It's now or never. It's time to focus our lives around creativity and make it easy for other people to do the same.
Each and every one of us has an epic to-do list which never seems to get any shorter. It's easy to move creativity into the "one day" category, when it should be something that happens every day. My motto that I try to remember when life gets too crazy is "do stuff and make things”.
And then came the pandemic. Perhaps now, more than ever, we need to feel like we're making things, that we're doing stuff, that we're making progress with something, anything, when nothing else feels like it is under our control.
I created And Make Things because I love the energy and excitement of starting a new creative project, one which can be anything. I love not knowing the end result, being motivated entirely by your own curiosity and explorations. This to me is art; making work that isn't a painting or a drawing or a sculpture, it's an investigation.
And I love subscription boxes. Perfectly put together bundles of potential sent to your door each month, what's not to love? I figured that it's about time that there was a subscription box for creatives who don't want to just get more art materials in the mail and who don't want to follow someone else's instructions to make a project that they may or may not be interested in.
Plus, who doesn't love a challenge? Sometimes it's hard to get motivated, you just want some serious catch-up time on Netflix. But when you have a challenge you have a deadline, and when you have a deadline you can find some energy. In the words of Tim Gunn, it's time to "make it work".
And Make Things is the perfect extension of everything my adult life has centered around. I have an MA in Fine Art- a fairly unusual 5 year long joint degree in art history and studio art from the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh College of Art, and an MFA in Sculpture from Edinburgh College of Art. The husband and I have been making large scale installation art collaboratively since 1999 (over twenty years!) under the name tectonic industries, exhibiting internationally. I have been running online businesses since 2008. Throughout that time I have taught art classes and workshops in schools, colleges, galleries and museums, always focused around the notion that art can be anything, it does not have to fit into any stereotypical definition of how a piece of art should look.
And Make Things partners with One Tree Planted so that we can help reforest the world, one tree at a time. For every subscription box or item from the shop that is sent out, we plant one tree. The first boxes ship in summer 2021 with very limited availability. Make sure you don't miss the chance to be part of this by getting on the wait list - and you could win a year of boxes for you and a friend!
GET ON THE WAITING LIST!
