IAm just beginning.

My name is Kara Ginther and I am a creator.  In May 2007, I graduated with a degree in Textile Design from the University of Wisconsin Madison.  It was natural, in the beginning, for my thoughts to echo the concerns of my father:  What will you do now?  How will you work?  How will you live?  Except that in typical introspective fashion, I would take this several steps further:  Why design?  What good can it do, for me, for others?  Can I make a difference?  Can I push beyond the trends, the markets, the consumers?  And if, just maybe, if I can work past all that, will this offer the lifestyle I want?

So I sat and thought and wrote and read, read, read and thought and wrote some more until I noticed something very peculiar happening.  Instead of becoming focused as I had intended, my world view was broadening.  I felt as if I was being slowly pried away from my person, my life, my thoughts and beliefs.  My perspective grew wider and wider until I began to realize that my issue was not simply with design, but with creativity as a whole.  It came down to me, me.  Who did I think I was and how could I gain the confidence to firmly face each and every challenge that the creative process indubitably brings? Who did I think I was? 


From that moment on, I decided to study everything.  As you might have guessed, this lead to more sitting, reading and thinking, but this time it was about me.  The books started piling in my room:  philosophy, spirituality, science and physics, psychology and self-help until one day I looked up and found myself face to face with the Big Picture.  For the first time, the immensity of it all hit me: creativity, design, making things with your hands, ideas, inspiration, passion, motivation and what I've come to call Work with a capital W.  It all lies at the very core because, really, what else are we supposed to be doing?  Really!  And I began to see that the creative process applies not only to the material world, but to how we live our lives.  The more I learned about how to create, the more I learned about how to live and how we are utterly and completely responsible for both.

I still know very little about what this means, but with the launch of this site, I am dedicating myself to finding out.  More importantly, I want to create a community of creators who are equally as interested in exploring beyond what we learn in design school and discovering the true importance of design and the creative process.  With the recent explosion of DIYers, we are bombarded with tips at how to become a successful creator, how to market, how to sell, how to advertise.   Yet few, if any, of our crafty benefactors have taken the time to delve more deeply into creativity and our compulsion, our need, to design and make things.

I am confident that I am not alone here.  I know for a fact that there is an entire generation of creative young people who are facing the same concerns that I am.  We are not satisfied with the answers we have been given.  We are not satisfied with the lifestyles of our parents, our grandparents. We are living in a world that exemplifies the need for change.  It is an exciting time to be young and alive and creative and we are ready.

I want to end with an extra exclamatory point.   I don't know the difference between art and craft.  I don't know the difference between art and design.  Everyone is welcome.  As long as you create, I welcome you all.