24 November

Cat Tales and Creativity

by Jon Katz

Frieda has replaced Izzy as Director of Sales for Yesnoquilts.

  November 24, 2009 – Everybody is always telling me I ought to write more about cats, and here’s my chance. Also an opportunity to make Maria crazy. Maria is an artist, and doesn’t like to make anything to order, or because it’s popular. She gets her fabric by happenstance, poring through thrift shops and back yards and flea markets. She doesn’t order it because she things it will sell. It has to be discarded and found.
   So she found this cat fabric at a Cambridge yard sale. And she has a limited amount of cat fabric. And she is getting a ton of request for cat potholders.
  She isn’t about to go order any new fabric. It has to be vintage, and discovered, and suit her finely-tuned artistic sensibilities. This is not close to the world of publishing, where are keenly attuned to story lines and plots and characters.
  Still, like any artist, she loves seeing her work go out into the world and live, and in an odd way, the story of the potholders is her own dream as an artist – to make art that is cheap and functional, and that people can use as well as look at. I don’t know how Maria will sort all of this out. Success is more complex than anything, really and the tale of the cat potholdes is a modern story of art, creativity, economics, taste and experience. I love the potholders.
  And I love seeing how Maria evolves to meet this new reality. I have no idea what she will do, and she isn’t about to tell me.
  Aside from the fact that I love the person making them, I see them as a metaphor for contemporary art in America, as tastes change and money is tight, and the creatives among us respond.

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