Honest Crafts
My vision is to take crafts out of the "grandma" realm and thrust them into a space for all people, every day, for anything!
Mindful production, minimal waste, and complete transparency.
Who is D? (me, duh)
I am a West Australian based emerging artist working primarily in social practice and textile art at the intersection of fine arts, craft traditions, and community engagement. My current focus is on enhancing my practice to be experienced in ways that transcend exclusive art spaces.
My art practice actively invites audiences to participate in crafts, and I am dedicated to using art through crafts as methods to engage environmental issues.
Values
Done By D is the platform on which I share my creative practices. My values shape my craft, and the products available for you to get your cute little hands on!
Below you'll find my core values, and how Done By D embodies them every day.
An inclusive platform for learning, sharing, creating, and chin-wagging.
Respect
I acknowledge the land on which I live and create, wherever I may be. I pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging.
Paramount to my creative practice is respect. Respect for the land, respect for myself, and respect for the global community. I follow a "leave no trace" mentality when foraging for native flora. I only collect from private property with permission, and only ever use barks, seed pods (after flowers bloom), or remnants from tree-trimming or overgrown plants' hair cuts.
I respect all individuals and the lives they lead. For those with alternate abilities I endeavour to make my practices and products as accessible as possible.
Honesty
One of my most important values is honesty. In my personal and professional life, I endeavour to live honestly and transparently. So much so, I often get in trouble for speaking my mind too unapologetically (whoops).
Empowerment
I strive to help others live in strength.
A fiercely independent maker sharing crafts to inspire others.
Community
All people are welcome, always.
I endeavour to share my creative practice beyond the traditional realm of ability-orientated art spaces.
Knowledge and Learning
Crucial to my practice is autodidactic learning, sharing knowledge, and inviting everyone to engage. All of my projects revolve around social connection, developing creative sharing spaces, and inviting conversations to occur outside of their traditional disciplinary realms.
"Socially engaged art functions by attaching itself to subjects and problems that normally belong to other disciplines, moving them temporarily into a space of ambiguity… (which) brings new insights to a particular problem or condition and in turn makes it visible to other disciplines.” Pablo Helguera Education for Socially Engaged Art
Sustainability
Limiting and repurposing waste are central to every project I participate in. I don't green-wash.
My path to natural dye was fuelled by my yearning to limit the chemical and material waste I am responsible for. I only use soy milk or a homemade rusty iron solution for binding agents. All of the old dye baths go into my garden once they're cool enough, and I use every scrap of fabric I possibly can.
I either source my fabrics from FERN Textiles in Melbourne (a conscious collective of textile traders) or from fabric waste of commissioned projects (see Scraps!).
