Fiber 19

Groups are “interesting” (insert whatever word you feel is appropriate).

Last night I met with my fiber group. I expect it’s pretty impossible for any group to meld together perfectly, but sometimes this one has me laughing one minute and the next whacking my forehead thinking “what the..?”

We’re together because we took a nine month fiber art class last year. Like the classes before us, decided to continue to meet once a month for socializing and encouragement in our art endeavors – at least that was the idea. Going from having an instructor/ leader handing out assignments, to meeting on our own caused us to flounder at first. Socializing was the easiest thing to do, so we did a lot of that. The art making was not happening for many; they seemed to need an assignment to move forward.

I of course was appalled and disgusted with the non-art making part. I kept thinking, “we just left nine months of work, developing concepts and working in all sorts of ways with all kinds of materials, how could you not have a vision of what you want to do next? How could you not have ideas flying around in your head that you can’t wait to get to?” I had to settle down and keep reminding myself that we weren’t all in the same place; everyone has different priorities and time commitments. (But my head still does explode once in awhile with rantings of “what the..?) Time went on and the social part started to gel, so I figured socializing might be the main focus and I was ok with that.

Then someone came up with a format for our meetings; social for “x” amount of time while everyone shows up and gets settled, then the “business “part of the meeting, and then “show and tell." This gave us structure. We started from the beginning with discussions on why we were meeting and what did we want to do as a group. People started to settle into roles, we had a self-appointed “den mother” who always brought lots of food, took notes, and sent them out. We had people volunteering to look into places to exhibit – our number one mission, and others passing on information on how we could be a more professional group. As in any group, there are people who do nothing and the people that never seemed to know what is going on, but generally it’s working – and I keep telling myself we’re all in different places.

How long will the group continue? Who knows? Will it continue to serve my purposes? I’m not sure. All I know is that last night I had a lot of fun; we’re going to put an exhibit up in March one way or another. The show will be very eclectic and probably not very cohesive, but I guess that’s ok for now. I can only be responsible for my own work.