Greenpoint Gets Crafty at the BUST Magazine Spring Fling

BUST Magazine’s annual Spring Fling Craftacular isn’t your grandma’s crafts fair. On Sunday afternoon more than 200 of the country’s craftiest indie artisans gathered at Greenpoint’s own Warsaw concert hall to sell their stuff at one of the year’s most hotly anticipated craft fairs, complete with jewelers and bakers and messenger bag makers, clothing designers, headband bedazzlers, book publishers, guerilla gardening gurus and more—so you can forget popsicle sticks and Elmer’s glue.

The Spring Fling—the two-year-old, slightly less flamboyant, younger sister of BUST Magazine’s Holiday Craftacular, held annually in December—has gained a reputation as one of the premier contemporary craft fairs around, and while the Holiday Craftacular provides a larger venue, offering space for nearly twice as many artisans to sell their stuff, this year’s Spring Fling attracted more applicants than ever—approximately 500 for 200 spots.
The idea for a contemporary craft fair originally grew out of BUST magazine’s founding feminist philosophy, and the desire to reclaim the art of craft-making—traditionally looked down upon as “women’s work”—and subvert the stereotype by incorporating a fresh, modern, punk-rock DIY aesthetic. BUST also wanted to give their advertisers—so many of whom independent female artists and designers—a physical marketplace in which to show their stuff.
“We started writing about crafts ten years ago in the magazine—women love doing crafts, they are fun and rewarding and creative, but also looked down upon unfairly, so we decided to reclaim it,” said BUST Magazine Co-Publisher and Creative Director Laurie Henzel. “Crafts are becoming more and popular, and women are really participating so we decided to create an environment that’s cool and fun and super creative. This isn’t popsicle stick art—they don’t call it ‘crafts’ for nothing. This stuff takes skill.”
Michael Quinn, an artist who started her own accessory business, Glampire Designs, just six months ago, feels that crafts allow her to express her creative and artistic side—and also provide her with something to do after losing her job: Crafts are cool, creative and cutting edge, but most of all, they are recession-proof, and now more than ever artists, artisans and independent thinkers are starting their own businesses, and taking artistic risks that may not have been fiscally feasible before the economic downturn.
“I started Glampire Designs after coming back from a five-month-long backpacking trip, and learned that I didn’t have a job anymore,” Quinn said. “I love love love what I do now. I started out by just making things for friends, and it has grown so much. I grew up around the punk DIY aesthetic, and I see it making a real comeback. It’s awesome to know that you can start from nothing, and you can do it. It’s a self-discovery.”
While craft-making—an art form notorious for incorporating recycled and found materials—is practical for the producers, the notion of hand-made and one-of-a-kind is also becoming more and more attractive to consumers who, given the economic climate, must now chose what goods to purchase more carefully than before. And,as a result, consumers are taking more time, care and consideration—for the nature of both the product itself and the materials used to craft it—when shopping for goods.
Sarah Jones and Maxwell Sherman run their own independent clothing company, Ruffeo Hearts Lil’ Snotty, or rhls. They pride themselves on using all found or recycled materials to craft their couture, and believe that the craft revolution has just as much to do with increasing consumer interest in independently designed and responsibly-made goods as it does with the fiscal practicality of craft-making for producers: It’s an economic win-win situation. Also, as people lose their jobs en masse, arts and crafts—and the notion of truly creating something out of nothing—can be an incredibly empowering experience for even the most down-and-out recessionista.
“I think we are going through a major readjustment of awareness and ethics,” Sherman said. “There is a real investment in movement of handmade. And I think people really want to create right now, and reimagine their own relationships to consumption. People are becoming more and more conscious of their own purchase power, and what they are spending their hard-earned money on.”

Jones chimed in, adding that “we want to run an ethical business. The social and ecological impact we can make is just as important as our creative impact.”
The Spring Fling itself—in addition to creating a craftacular environment in which consumerism is, to an extent, re-imagined into something a bit more careful, more worthy, more thoughtful than in the usual free marketplace—was organized around a mission of environmental sustainability, hosting demonstrations by Trees not Trash about guerrilla gardening and ecological responsibility in an urban environment like Brooklyn.
“There is a major correlation between the craft movement and the green movement,” said BUST Magazine Sales and Marketing Associate Susan Juvet, who was responsible for organizing the Spring Fling. “There are a lot of obvious connections here. We support recycling and reusing materials, making things and not buying them from a corporation, have access to locally-made things. It’s all very important.”