Folly Cove Designers – Community Through Creativity

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Folly Cove Designers – Community Through Creativity

You and I share an interest in making things with our hands. The internet is rich with thought-provoking articles about WHY we love hand-made, which tells us that lots of other folks are thinking and talking about it too. We are all part of a global network accessing community through creativity.

As both a consumer and a maker, I love the search for, and adoration of, other maker’s creations; it’s a forest of inspiration.

I’m grateful for the flourish of community and friendships with like-minded artisans, crafters and DIY aficionados online. Fellowship, Tutorials and Resources are all accessible through our phones via ever-changing and rapidly advancing technology.

Community Through Creativity

Swells of interest in arts and crafts repeat through time in cycles, going back to Medieval days. 

Creative communities are often regional, with areas known for their accumulation of artists specializing in a particular genre, like glasswork (Seattle, Washington), or textile designers (Catskill Mountains, New Yok) or painters (Santa Fe, New Mexico).

Classes and workshops in textile design, both digital and hand-printed are abundant now, and I love that.

Virginia Lee Burton Demitrios

Before the internet, artisans were limited to gathering in groups locally to work on a regular, repeatable basis. (Poor them – what if you lived in an area with no other artists?)

The Folly Cove Designers gathered in Gloucester Massachusetts between 1938 and 1969, with artist Virginia Lee Burton Demitrios at the helm.

Read this amazing article about these inspiring, dedicated makers, (No, really, you’ll be inspired – read that article.) [Thanks to my friend BG for sending it to me.]

The Folly Cove Designers

About 40 [mostly woman] artisans met and worked in a small building in Gloucester, called “The Barn”, and became relief printmakers. They designed and printed on fabric that was sewn into curtains, clothes, and housewares.

When they first started, and didn’t have a press, so they made all their prints by stomping on the blocks! (See above.)

Eventually, they sold designs to Lord & Taylor, and other textile manufacturers, but they kept true to their original output, making things based on good design, simply for the sake of making something beautiful with their hands.

Folly Cove in Cape Ann

I lived in Cape Ann for several summers in the late 1980’s, so I have a deep, nostalgic fondness for the place.

I didn’t know about the Folly Cove Designers back then, but if I ever visit the coast of Massachusetts again, I’ll be spending time at the Cape Ann Museum, for sure.

When You Truly Tap Into Your Creativity

Virginia wore many creative hats. She was a children’s book author and illustrator, and you can still find her books online: Choo Choo published in 1935, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, from 1939; Calico, the Wonder Horse, etc.

Around 1938, she organized a small group for a sketching class, and introduced them to linoleum block printing.

That little group continued to grow, and eventually became the Folly Cove Designers. (Jinnee also won the Caldecott Medal for her book The Little House in 1943, on the threshold of WWII.)

Draw What’s Around You

Participants in Virginia’s classes were urged to look at their surroundings for inspiration, and draw “what they knew” (I *love* this practice). 

They sketched their subjects over and over until they made them their own. What an uncomplicated, lovely concept. You needn’t look beyond your own rooms and yard for inspiration. 

She encouraged designs from simple objects all around them; beach grass, gardens, trees in their yards, their own houses, Cape Ann birds, or neighbors gossiping by the mailbox.

Make Art from Your Own Life

If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you might recognize my love of making art from the things around you. I hope to encourage that practice again with these images and links.

The women of Folly Cove Designers found community through creativity, and they *had* to work locally. I can just imagine the friendships and collaborations that sprouted in the barn. We have the internet as our barn. But that doesn’t mean we can’t host a gathering of friends for an afternoon of art making.

Break out some art supplies or tools, and spin your chair around from your monitor/screen to find something with a good shape, and start drawing, painting, carving or printing something. Consider doing that in the company of artist friends.

Even if it’s just a doodle. Make something with your hands today.

Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll see you in the next post!

Belinda

P.S. Elena Sarni has written a fabulous new book – check it out: Trailblazing Women Printmakers: Virginia Burton Demetrios and the Folly Cove Designers

P.P.S. (You can subscribe to this blog here.)

Art Quote

My first book, Jonnifer Lint, was about a piece of dust. I and my friends thought it was very clever but thirteen publishers disagreed with us and when I finally got the manuscript back and read it to Aris, age three and a half, he went to sleep before I could even finish it. That taught me a lesson and from then on I worked with and for my audience, my own children. I would tell them the story over and over, watching their reaction and adjusting to their interest or lack of interest . . . the same with the drawings. Children are very frank critics.

~Virginia Lee Burton Demetrios

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