Musings of the Day
The Value of Handmade
Connection to real healing spirit
Hear this read aloud below
When buying handmade, you’re buying more than just an object.
You’re buying hundreds of hours of failures and experimentation. You are buying days, weeks and months of frustration and moments of pure joy. You aren’t just buying a thing.
You’re buying a piece of heart, part of a soul, a moment of someone’s life.
Most importantly, you’re buying the artist more time to do something they are passionate about, something that can enhance our experience of living and add richness to our lives.
When buying handmade you are also buying the imperfections that are inherent in anything made by a human hand.
Not all stitches are perfectly aligned. Brushstrokes are uneven.
There are marks of a human touch everywhere and that is what makes it an intimate connection with the artist. You see her process, her mistakes and triumphs in every inch. You get to feel her humanity. This is precious because handmade objects have a unique character that no machine can reproduce.
In a world where so much is mass produced and appears perfect, a handmade piece of art reminds us that we are not machines, we are part of nature in all her imperfect perfection.
Like the beauty of an old worn piece of wood, a rusty sheet of metal, or a broken shell on the beach, a piece of handmade art reveals the true allure of the inexact. We collect these objects from nature and put a high price on them, calling them precious finds.
They speak to our hearts in a way that flawlessness cannot because they are REAL.
I find handmade objects, those created with love and awareness, to be healing, not unlike the natural world in which we live.
They are medicine for the body and soul.
The Earth and all of nature are portals to the Divine, to the source of all. When we create, especially from nature’s materials, we are using her healing energy.
The act of creating with my hands, incorporating natural materials, is healing for ME and in sharing those creations, that energy is transmitted to others.
The hallmark of all that I create is that it invokes Spirit and touches the heart and soul.
Colors and textures have energy, the power to move us emotionally. Using images from my paintings which come to me through Spirit, and then transforming them into new designs in fabrics, the original energy, the love, simply takes on another form, one you can feel and embrace in a very literal way.
It might sound as if I am making a case for sloppy workmanship. Quite the opposite.
I am making a case for real life, perfect in its incompleteness and imperfection allowing us room to be human, to make mistakes, to be unfinished beings on the path to discovering our wholeness.
Handmade art is a mirror to our own humanity, our imperfectly perfect beauty.
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