After a weekend surrounded by high priced high fashion and high priced ‘Affordable Art’, I needed a low-priced respite. I needed to be among real people, real artisans, and real things I could afford. I’m a man in love with all extremes - I’ll chase my filet mignon with a bag of Cheetos, and I’ll relish both experiences.

New York City had chosen the weekend of June 14th to somehow exchange climates with the muggiest depths of Hell itself, so while Brooklyn’s Renegade Craft Fair was an awesome delight, the weather made viscous slugs of us all, sleepily oozing our way around the abandoned and emptied McCarren Park Pool. For such a vast collection of DIY-ers, recyclers, and use-every-part-ers, holding the Fair in an unused pool was an exceptional and clever use of space.

When I attended Renegade 2 years ago, I was charmed by the handmade feel of everything. Magazines and comics were stapled together, many cloth things had visible stitching, and loose ends were the norm. Signs were handpainted. It was an aesthetic that I learned to love, and even embraced in my own works - the hands deliver the heart and soul, as imperfect as they may be. It’s not that this year’s collection of vendors were off-putting, but there’s definitely a climate change in the crafting scene, if Renegade is any evidence. Gone were many of the smartly recycled items from the past - old books and scraps of wood and LPs turned into new things - and replaced by glossy, printed signs for many of the vendors, and mini-mass-produced items at almost every table.

What I’ve always loved about the young crafting scene is that you could look around, get some ideas, and with a little bit of ingenuity, make something similar to what you’ve seen - but with your own flair. It’s that kind of open source crafting that really builds the community into something strong. Pressing prints on your own small printing press is a completely different entity than sending them out to be digitally, professionally replicated, and while I can appreciate and see the merits of both things, the latter seems to be less in the spirit of a ‘Craft Fair’. It makes the process inaccessible, and even worse, costly. No, you can’t do it yourself anymore, and there’s no smart acronym for whatever the opposite of DIY is.

And maybe it’s the cost of living going berserk everywhere, but prices seemed to be twice as much as what they were 2 years ago. Crafters are finding it harder to survive while doing their art, and the cost of materials has also gone up. None of this is to say that any of the artists there were anything less than inspiring - I fell in love with everything, no matter where it came from - carefully-sewn, cartoonish trophy heads, a whole array of great t-shirts and art prints, squid things and robots everywhere, adorable dolls and crocheted monsters that I would have loved to take home with me, were it not for premium costs.

Still, in the true spirit of Do-It-Yourself, there was one girl set up in a tall, vending machine-shaped tent, advertised as a ‘Postcard Machine’. Insert $2 and you’d get a postcard fed back out to you - which would be drawn on the spot by the artist hidden inside of the mini-tent. Somehow, the entire heart and soul of the Fair were inside of that ‘device’ - everything that I loved form previous experiences, which felt absent from this year. An inexpensive, precious item, made by hand, accompanied by a personal experience - isn’t that at the core of crafting?

The heat made the day a sweaty blur, and while I was hesitant to touch too many things lest I leave a moist handprint on them, I felt the need to support my fellow creators. I purchased a small, felt squid doll-thing (which is holding a tray of sushi) for $19 from Cleo Dee, and a set of 10 ‘Presidential Facial Hair Hall of Fame’ buttons to add to my button collection. Plus, I secretly love Presidential trivia, not to mention how funny they looked, and my affection for the World Beard and Moustache Championships. The set of 10 was $20, and even though I own a button maker, I felt the moral need to perpetuate the crafting scene with my wallet. 1” buttons for $2 each, however, is just the climate of things. I miss the 4-for-a-dollar days. Man, I stocked up that year. So, after $40 spent, the rewards were in quality, not quantity.

Nonetheless, I won’t concern myself with having a pocket full of small bills next year, since everything cost over 20 dollars anyhow. I WILL be returning, of course - even the intense heat couldn’t keep me away from such a gathering of pale, dark-haired crafty girls. Oh, and they neat stuff they make.

Though largely overcast and humid, this past weekend’s Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn’s McCarren Park was an enormously pleasant event. Gathering creatives and crafting personalities from all over the East Coast and regions beyond, every one of the few hundred small tents that encircled the walkway along the main park area had wonderful, handmade, exciting things to share.

I came to learn of the Renegade Craft Fair though a long series of coincidences and friendships with other creative types. I’d been planning an outing to this, the second annual New York fair, for months, immersing myself in the world of handmade and recycled objects, and making some objects of my own. With a long-standing fascination with ephemera and the power of the human hand when laid to raw materials, it felt like I was finally among my people. Sure, about 97% of the Fair was cute, creative young women, but it had merits beyond that. You know, when I remembered that there were crafts there too, and not just long skirts and piercings. You might think that ‘crafting’ inspires images of seniors assembling quilts or prepackaged AC Moore schlock, but this was a young, terminally hip crowd. To the left here, you can see the wonderful miss Jenny Harada, politely posing for one of my photographs, and wearing one of her monolithic creations.

Dominant items at the fair included cute hand-sewn plush creatures, handbags, stylish wrist-cuffs with various designs and embellishments, small pins and plenty of raw materials to make your own wonderful crafts. As a self-perpetuating community, the whole atmosphere was very friendly and casual, encouraging the creation of more and more unique THINGS, never a fear that another vendor might be usurping another business with similar items. The appreciation that every single item was lovingly created was far more dominant, and while the prices on many of these items were slightly high, I’m always compelled to spend a few extra bucks on small record labels and independent creators and anyone who puts their heart into their works.

I ended up purchasing a small polar fleece octopus within about five minutes, which cost twenty dollars, from Fish Cakes. Secretly, in the back of mind, I’d vowed to find something cehpalopodic in order to quench my well-known cephalophelia, and this was it. Later, I’d find some expertly crocheted octopi at another booth, as well as small tiles painted with octopi at another, and be forced to restrain myself. Also making an appearance were plush robots and other various robot-themed works, including a hilarious little ‘zine called ‘Young and Mechanical’, a clever parody of the genre of teen-centric magazines that litter the racks near the checkout line at any given supermarket.

Speaking of ‘zines, I also picked up a Richard Pryor Coloring Book by Erica Waldorf for three dollars. While awkwardly drawn and thoroughly ridiculous, I was won over by a scene of Superman saving Mr. Pryor from some unseen danger. I’d like to venture that the Man of Steel was trying to save Mr. Pryor from himself. My purchases were mostly small 1” buttons to add to my growing collection on my multi-purpose satchel (or, if you’re a jerk, my man-purse), two significant purchases being from a 25-cent gumball machine filled completely with small treasure eggs, each with a unique, one-of-a-kind button inside. The machine, re-purposed by a young male crafter, proudly advertised ‘COLLECT ALL 20,000!’, which was pretty much a siren song to a collector such as myself. After inserting a quarter, I turned the crank and got a button which illustrated ‘cocaine’. Luckily, my second mystery pull was a button of a brain. Clearly, the two were meant to be together, a perfect combination of self-destruction. You can guess which one I’ll not be wearing to work. Oh, and for the ladies at work, librarians all, I picked up some small ‘I read banned books’ pins.

The Renegade Craft Fair website tells the story of two women who single-handedly pulled together a large community of crafters into events both in New York and Chicago, further revealing a huge network of craft fairs that take place across the United States, attracting all kinds of people who enjoy getting their hands dirty and making fine objets d’art. This network is further revealed within the many connections on MySpace between crafters trading, collaborating on and promoting their wares, and the list of hundreds of websites that Renegade presents on their event map. The Chicago event will take place in September, if you’re in the area.

So, a subculture is revealed, and for me, it’s an exciting and inspiring one. When you think of crafts, please don’t think of log cabins made out of popsicle sticks or country-chic wooden placards with gingham paint schemes and outsider-art angels declaring ‘Home Sweet Home’. Think of fine art redefined and made accessible, because the line is thinning, and it’s a thrilling one to walk.