Craft trackin'

When we talk of jaded indie rockers, shiny-shirt clubbers, bearded beer snobs, weekend gallery voyagers and quirky alterna-crafter chicks, the "S" word gets tossed around like Canadian change. Yep, many are obsessed with the word "scene." It's efficient enough a phrase because a scene unites diverse groups for a common cause, usually for a chuckle and a cocktail, and at their best they can define decades. Either way, they exist in a state of flux: exploding, crumbling and, if lucky, finding a plateau. Sometimes a scene can become integral to a city's cultural soup. Sometimes it gets cooked out.

So to find that a metropolis synonymous with hot rods and cold steel, smashed glass and dive bars, that still claims a surging craft craze — some four years after planting roots — is a surprise. I thought a conversation with the ladies of Handmade Detroit, the online hub for Detroit's DIY community and the organizers of the Detroit Urban Craft Fair, would help tell the story of what happens when a scene, an extracurricular public trend, finds its level.

"How do you ensure your scene survives? What do you do when the frenzied buzz recedes to a cozier hum? Forecast your evolution ..."

That's the story I wanted to write, but it's one that Handmade Detroit and the DUCF couldn't help tell. Not that they didn't want to. Crafters, by nature, have a sort of innate knack for helping out where they can (insert grandmotherly joke here), but Lish Dorset thinks they're "just getting started in Detroit."

Last year's fair went down at the sizable Fillmore theater. Dorset and her handmade mafiosas — Carey Gustafson, Stephanie Tardy, Beth Nixon and Amy Cronkite — saw more than 4,000 walk through the doors. This year, they're back at the Majestic Theatre (Gustafson calls it home base), a local business that can match the independent streak that fuels the DUCF.

Metro Times: What can you tell us about the progress of alternative crafting communities nationwide and how Detroit compares?

Stephanie Tardy: Austin, Portland and Chicago all have big craft scenes, and now lots of other cities do, including Detroit. When we started, we just wanted this group of "makers" to be recognized in this city. When we started, we had to explain what DIY craft even is — now there's a much broader awareness around the city. How do we compare? I think Detroit's artists and crafters tend to be a little more edgy and loose than in other cities. Detroit forces you to take risks and a lot of the art produced here — music, craft and otherwise — reflects that on some level. The other thing that sets us apart is that the ideas behind DIY are very much tied into how Detroiters look at the life. No one is going to start the things we want, so we have to create them ourselves. For Handmade Detroit, that meant we had to create our outlet while creating our crafts; we have this duality of creating the work and creating the space for it. This makes us dedicated on a deeper level than just selling "X" amount of one-inch buttons.

MT: How have economic realities impacted the handmade community and the urban craft fair? Where do the two intersect?

Bethany Nixon: We've watched the economy motivate so many talented people to venture out into new ways of bringing in a second income. Crafting is definitely a great way to make some money, but you make new friends, as well.

MT: What is Handmade Detroit at this point? What can we expect at the DUCF? We've heard it's "not your grandma's craft fair," so who are those 4,000 people who show up — broke-ass hipsters?