Katherine Ferrier

After a recent discussion on Instagram with some fellow makers about the difference between curating and collecting, I got to thinking about what curation means to me.  It's a word I often use in conjucntion with my work as the Coordinator of a fine arts gallery, and also in my role as Artistic Director of a contemporary dance festival.  But it's also a word I find myself using more and more in reference to how I shape my daily life.

The word curate means to "select, organize, look after or present" as in items in a collection or exhibit. It comes from the Latin word cura which means to care.

To curate is to choose.  

To choose is to compose.  

To compose is to arrange with care. 

And this, for me, is what lies at the heart of any kind of curation, whether it's selecting artists for a gallery, choosing handmade goods for a retail shop, building a network of like-mided makers to follow on Instagram or arranging cherished items in your home: the act of caring....

Enjoying having Marlee Grace of Have Company in residence this week at Little River. One of the projects we're sharing this week is making this simple and elegant dress by Sonya Philip of 100 Acts of Sewing. 

The simplicity of the pattern is an invitation to slow down and take one's time with each step of the process.  Ironing the pattern paper to make it smooth, then ironing the fabric reminds me to breathe, to really experience the exhale. Smoothing out the wrinkles, and gently pinning them together is a meditation on attending to one thing at a time.

But it's cutting the fabric that really gets me.  Like the magic of making a decision.  A simple action that cannot be erased. To make a mark that makes a space. To call forth something from the cloth by cutting it away from the wide, unbroken field of all that is possible.  The space the body makes, and what can be made by moving into it.