Spool
This simple block is all about making. The spool is a quintessential tool of quilters and seamstresses, and links back to the long history of making in the US.
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Mel Weyant
1819 Ground Floor Makerspace Technician
Mel is a maker by trade, and manages the prototyping studio at UC’s newest makerspace. She maintains the machines, teaches classes, and helps students with their projects. In our interview we talked about the importance of making, the changes in her job since the COVID-19 outbreak, and allowing yourself to make ‘bad art’.
So now that I'm recording, if you could go ahead and state your name, your pronouns, and why you think I asked you to be part of this project.
My name is Mel Weyant. My pronouns are she/her. You and I have been talking about this project for a really long time. I think since it started being born in your mind of what you're going to do. I think you asked me about it because I am not a native Cincinnatian so I have sort of strange connections to community here. I'm relatively new to the city but kind of connected in interesting ways. Somewhat because of my job. Somewhat because of just sort of the things I'm interested in, my history of community organizing and zine making and just being a maker out in the community in general.
Yeah, definitely. So what brought you to Cincinnati?
I moved here in September of 2018 to be one of the full time staff that runs the Ground Floor Maker Space at the University of Cincinnati. It was a brand new initiative. It wasn't open when I came out here. I had been working in making at a public library system, the DC Public Library and was managing a lot of the Makerspace side of that for a lot of the system. But I'm not a librarian by trade and I didn't necessarily feel like I was doing the most good or even doing the most interesting work. I was doing a lot of introductory classes, a lot of really basic intro to making stuff, which I think is really valuable. But I wanted to feel like I was connecting to making with a larger impact, help people that were maybe actually pursuing research or doing things that were more than 3D printing Warhammer figurines or plastic toys or that kind of thing. So I came to Cincinnati to be the additive manufacturing and prototyping staff person at the Ground Floor Maker Space. 've been doing that for about a year and a half now. It's cool. It's been really cool. It was sort of isolating the first couple months cause all we did was get the space up and running. So for a long time I didn't feel like I had much of a connection to the Cincinnati community, the art scene, any of that. I think generally when you move to a new place, especially if you don't have connections there already, or a lot of free time or even just know people to introduce you to spaces, it can feel really isolating. I've done that a couple of times- moving to new places- so I knew what to expect. I also just didn't realize how hard it was going to be as I got older and have less free time to make those connections. When I moved to DC I had been in grad school. Working at the library, all of my coworkers were all under 35. I worked with the team that was sort of the young tech savvy team. It was just really easy to connect, go to shows, you know, I was really big into the zine making community there. I get tied in with that stuff really easily. So it was a little bit more of a challenge here when I came to Cincinnati.
What kind of work were you doing when your job was normal at the 1819 Maker Space?
At 1819 I primarily work and engage with students and anybody who's doing research projects. So that could be faculty, graduate assistants, anybody who's assisting with university research, undergrads. We were in the middle of working on a lot of capstones when all of the COVID-19 stuff started to happen. Helping the students, anything from, 'I have an idea and I need to make it happen' to 'I've got a prototype, but I need to 3D print it' or you know, 'I've got to convert my files' or anything all the way up to much more complex. Like 'how do I scale this up now that I know those prototype works?' Within 1819 there are a couple of different units that do work on innovation. I was doing some work with an organization called the Venture Lab, which is a startup accelerator. So folks would have an idea, go through the cohort for the startup accelerator and then come down and we would 3D print, we would potentially machine or mill out different things for them. So there was that connection to the innovation idea. And then a different connection to student projects. Two sides of the same coin, but those were the major aspects of my job. I guess I should say 'are', but obviously things have changed significantly in the past couple weeks. I also taught a lot of classes, so that's probably the bread and butter part of my job is just teaching people, either new skills or advanced prototyping and making skills around our machines.
So you've had a lot of jobs in making and fabrication and prototyping. Why is that? Cause I know it's not what you studied for.
No, it's not my background at all. I came out of grad school in 2015 and my master's degrees is in conflict resolution. My undergrad degree is political science. I really had an interest in community peace-building, community connection. I did social work for a number of years right out of college. I've sort of done everything in the gamut. I've done a lot of work in community connections, a little bit of community organizing, some get out the vote work, just all sorts of different things in that general sphere.
WHEN I FINISHED GRAD SCHOOL IN 2015, I WAS VERY FRIED ON THE TYPE A NONPROFIT SCENE IN DC. I JUST KNEW THAT I NEEDED A BREAK FROM THAT WORK AND FROM BEING IN GRAD SCHOOL AND I JUST REALLY WANTED TO DO SOMETHING HANDS-ON AND OF WITH PEOPLE. I HAD SOME EXPERIENCE WITH 3D PRINTING AND LASER CUTTING JUST AS AN INTEREST. I JUST WAS INTERESTED IN THOSE THINGS. I HAD DONE SOME PROJECTS WHERE I HAD LASER CUT FABRIC AND THEN SEWED THEM TOGETHER AND SOME THINGS LIKE THAT. I HAD LASER CUT SOME STUFF TO DO ZINE COLLAGES AND SO WHEN I APPLIED FOR THIS JOB AT DC PUBLIC LIBRARY, I WAS KINDA THINKING LIKE, 'OH, I'LL JUST WORK AT A DESK FOR A COUPLE OF MONTHS AND GET MY HEAD ON STRAIGHT AND FIGURE OUT WHAT I WANT TO DO'. WHEN I WENT TO MY INTERVIEW, I TALKED TO HIM ABOUT 3D PRINTING AND MAKING AND HOW JUST COOL I THOUGHT IT WAS THAT THE LIBRARY HAD THE BIGGEST FAB LAB MAKER SPACE IN THE COUNTRY THAT WAS IN A PUBLIC LIBRARY. WHEN THEY OFFERED ME THE JOB, IT WAS TO WORK IN THAT SPACE.
So I was splitting my time between what was called the fab lab and a digital technology center, which was the largest public computer lab in the city of DC. So a really incredible resource space. Lots of folks who were experiencing issues with homelessness and were job searching. I mean we had people coming in just to print. We had people coming in to print tickets for the arena venue down the street. We had people who hung out there all day. It was just a path that was completely open. And I think working in that space and then also working in the bigger space, I really developed this passion for helping people develop skills. I think as adults, one of the things I encounter the most is this great fear of failure- in myself and in other people. We just don't want to fail. It's not something most adult humans are comfortable with. I would see that in the computer lab in this way that was just terror about technology. Then I would see it in this maker space in this way that was a different deep intimidation of, 'Oh, I can't do that. It's technologically advanced. I don't have a background, I don't have training'. But then also this interest. I think the way that those two things play together, I was really passionate about how I could make technology accessible to folks who were not the traditional makers. Not the white, well-educated, more often than not male maker population that has come become so big in the United States over the last 20, 25 years. I was really passionate about expanding that dynamic and expanding that group. That's kind of why I stayed at the library. I think when I came to the university, one of the things that I was the most interested about was, I had done this on a community level for several years and I wanted to take it into an academic level and see A: what kind of what new skills I could learn, and B: how I could help young people who might be creating this new biomedical technology who are maybe creating a life saving device or some kind of problem solving technology. Or working with ID students who are creating really interesting solutions to problems. I was more interested in looking at that as a problem solving mechanism since I had done so much of the community stuff at the library.
What sort of making do you do for yourself?
I've gotten pretty good at sewing. I moved into a new apartment a couple of months ago and I sew myself curtains. I'm actually much more of an analog maker with my own practice. What I've really come to love is trying to find a way to cross those two over. I throw pottery on a wheel- clay. I've laser cut myself a number of tools and I've done even done things like laser cut stencils that I could then use to apply on pottery. I really like to take a traditional craft and one of the things that I love about that is that's where folks who are nontraditional users can come into making- more modern tech making. You can bring somebody in who might have been a knitter forever and show them how to laser cut a new ruler needle gauge guide. And that just blows their mind cause that's traditionally something they would've had to spend anywhere from $10 to $25 on. And they can just make one. Even teaching the DAAP art students to use new technologies to laser cut their work or add to aspects of their work with 3D printed pieces or using stamps that were made on a laser cutter or something like that is pretty cool. For my own making traditions, as I've become more involved in making professionally, I've actually taken a step back from that kind of making in my home life. It's a lot more handicrafts. Sewing, knitting, I do really bad watercolor sometimes. Then also to be honest,
I'VE DEVELOPED THIS REAL LOVE FOR TEACHING MYSELF MORE ABOUT WOODWORKING AND HOME SKILLS AND HANDYMAN SKILLS AND THAT KIND OF STUFF. CAUSE I ALSO FEEL LIKE IF I EVER WALK AWAY FROM THIS KIND OF JOB, I WON'T NECESSARILY HAVE ACCESS TO A 3D PRINTER, BUT I'M ALWAYS GOING TO HAVE TOOLS. I'M ALWAYS GOING TO HAVE HARDWARE OR ARE BE ABLE TO GET THOSE THINGS REALLY EASILY. SO I'M ALSO INTERESTED IN JUST KNOWING MORE AND LEARNING MORE, WHICH IS ALSO PART OF WHY I LIKE TEACHING SO MUCH. CAUSE I LIKE SEEING THAT POINT WHEN OTHER PEOPLE GET THAT ITCH TO JUST EDUCATE THEMSELVES MORE.
Awesome. So it sounds like what you used to do at UC, it was a lot more involved. It was a lot more face to face interaction with students. So now that the campus is shut down to students, what type of work are you doing?
Yeah, that's a good way to say that. On a daily basis, I was spending five to six hours in the shop interfacing with people. That's obviously not the case now. We're actually on the front lines of UC's efforts to create PPE for the local hospital systems. Which is scary in its own regard, but a really interesting way to be spending my time right now. There are tons of other things that, as part of the Office Of Innovation, we're working on doing all sorts of stuff. But as the Ground Floor Maker Space, one of the projects is that we're working with some partners at UC Health and also some partners at Cincinnati Children's Hospital System, to do things like face shields. We're trying really hard to avoid anything like the cotton or fabric face masks that are really challenging. Because they're fine for people if you're just trying not to touch your face or those sorts of things. But it's becoming really challenging to get your hands on the materials that you might need to make them sterilizable or reusable, which is ultimately what we need. Cause we know we're going to see this incredible amount of waste coming out of this because hospitals can't reuse a lot of these materials. They don't have the ability or the materials or the cleaning technology to actually clean up. So we've been trying really hard to think through things like face fields, which are not going to be last step PPE. They're not going to be the things that are closer to people's bodies like goggles or gloves or those sorts of things. But they are going to be a really easy way to keep the droplets, the virus, whatever from actually kind of getting to people's faces. So it's a clear shield. There are a million different designs out there. Several companies have designed them, but what we're doing is we've been working with some DAAP professors, primarily Steve Doehler and then the Maker Space manager, Ben Jones, has been doing a lot of work with of development. They've been prototyping a lot. As of this weekend, we're still waiting on the go ahead from the legal systems on either end and all of that stuff. But I believe that we're going to start going into production this week on face masks that we can actually package up, make sure that they're in as sterile an environment as possible, and then hand off to some medical professionals. So my day looks like running a lot of laser cutters and babysitting a lot of 3D printers and then doing the actual assembly for a lot of parts, along with my coworkers.
How do you feel about still being at work during this virus?
You know, it's a really odd time. I think my friends are kind of stuck at home or working from home, I would certainly be very antsy if I was just working from home.
IT'S SCARY TO THINK THAT I'M MAKING PPE FOR MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS. IT'S SCARY AND EXCITING. WE WANT TO HELP AND WE WANT TO BE USEFUL. BUT IT'S ALSO INTIMIDATING TO THINK THAT SOMETHING THAT I'M MAKING IS GOING TO BE A FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE FOR SOMEBODY WHO COULD POTENTIALLY CATCH COVID-19.
I think it's a good thing. I am in a lot of maker groups. I try really hard to stay up-to-date on what the making community is doing and be involved and also have my voice heard as a woman who's fairly young in this field. As somebody who's actively involved I like to keep an eye on what things are going on. One thing that's happening is, in many of the groups that I'm in every single day things are just changing super rapidly. I think that's the case for all of us, right? Even those of us who were just at home, it feels like everyday there's some new fresh hell. Now we're not supposed to do this or now let's change on this process. All of those things. For us professionally, that sort of same thing is happening where we'll start moving in a direction and then we'll get feedback from the hospital that they don't like some aspect of a design or something like that. For you as an ID student, you know that normally that process can take weeks or months to really get a new design vetted by the people who are going to be using it or engaging with it. But we don't have weeks or month. The country doesn't have weeks or months. Our healthcare professionals don't have that time. So we don't have the ability to do this really nice slow testing period or R&D or anything like that. We just have to move.
That's very true. I'm going to ask you a question that I've been asking every participant of this project, that is: what would you define as your community? I think especially cause you've moved so recently, you've been exposed to a whole new group of people, you have varying interests in the maker community and in other communities. What do you think is the one thing that ties you together with the people you choose to spend your time with?
I DON'T KNOW THAT I COULD SAY ONE THING, BUT I THINK A LOT OF IT IS THAT I TRY TO DEFINE MY COMMUNITY BY CREATION AND INTENTION. MAYBE I WOULD EVEN SAY INSTEAD OF INTENTION- CARE. I THINK ESPECIALLY BECAUSE I HAVE UPROOTED MY LIFE SO RECENTLY, IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT TO ME THAT I MAKE MY COMMUNITY WITH PEOPLE THAT I FEEL I CAN TRUST AND I FEEL LIKE ARE GOOD STEWARDS OF EACH OTHER, OF COMMUNITY AT LARGE.
There's a lot of systems and things that I don't really take up with like. I don't really care about gatekeeping. I was involved in the art scene in DC and I couldn't care less about the quality of what people are making to be honest. I'm mostly interested in intentionality and an interest in making. In DC we used to hold this thing called 'bad art night', which was again getting to this point of like, we're all so afraid of being bad at stuff and making bad art or, making a bad thing or failing. And that has really driven a lot of my connections with people.
YOU GET TO A POINT WHERE YOU'RE HAVING A CONVERSATION WITH SOMEONE NEW AND MAYBE YOU START TALKING ABOUT MAKING OR CREATION AND THEY'RE LIKE, 'OH YEAH, I PICKED UP THIS NEW SKILL RECENTLY, BUT I'M STILL REALLY BAD AT IT'. AND SO OFTEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE THAT IMMEDIATE CONNECTION WITH SOMETHING OR THAT IMMEDIATE CONNECTION WITH THE MEDIA THAT YOU'RE TRYING TO GET BETTER AT, IT'S SO EASY TO JUST GIVE IT UP.
So I think I'm kind of embracing that aspect of something that has really been unique to a lot of the community that I've tried to build here and existed a lot in DC. I still have a friend who actively will hashtag on Instagram #makebadart, which I really love. Also I sit on the education committee for the Contemporary Arts Center in downtown Cincinnati and that was something that I'm just interested in making an education for young people. I think if you can get people making really early on, it really helps fight that failure switch. I worked with them on a project with Cincinnati Public Schools last summer and since then have just been involved with the volunteer board. And that's been really cool just to see all of the different levels of care that people are putting into what the education and arts community in Cincinnati is. For me, it's not just arts. And that's really, I think, where it goes back to creation. It doesn't have to be this grander scale of art or this really good art or anything like that. It's just having a passion to make and create, which I think is a lot of what brings us together as humans.
Have you felt at all isolated as a human these few weeks?
Yeah. I had been making bread with my friend before all this happened and going to just have coffee dates. Even though I'm still going into work the past two or three weeks, I've been the only one there. Cause my colleagues are working from home. Nobody else was babysitting the 3D printers. I think even in my relationship with my partner and even in my relationship with our friends who live in a different apartment in our house, it's hard not to feel isolated cause you can't actually reach out and touch somebody or give your friend a hug or a high five or have a stitch-and-bitch circle or whatever. I actually think that in some ways I'm probably better at handling this kind of isolation than a lot of people because a lot of my communities are on the East coast. I have this big group of friends in Philadelphia, I have this big group of friends in DC, I have friends in Baltimore. I'm so used to, since moving out here, I can't just get in a car or get on the train and go see them. I have to be a lot more intentional about scheduling a FaceTime or texting or calls or whatever. So from that regard, my relationships haven't changed. It's just that we talk a lot more about what it's like to be isolated. But I think I'm lucky in that way because a lot of my community is digital.
Do you have any other topics or subjects that you think you would like to share with those who do not have the benefit of knowing you in person? Cause that's what this project is all about. It's introducing new ideas to people who would otherwise not have access to them.
I would say that this period, especially as we don't know how long this is going to go, this is a really, really great time if you're up for it and have the emotional capability to teach somebody a new skill and also to learn a new skill yourself. It doesn't have to be something that you're perfect at. I don't believe in the whole 'hustle through the quarantine' thing.
WE ARE ALL IN THIS PLACE OF STRESS AND ANXIETY AND POTENTIAL HEALTH ISSUES AND JUST TRYING TO KEEP OURSELVES SANE IN OUR HOMES. I THINK THAT THIS IS A REALLY COOL TIME TO SEE IF YOUR NEIGHBOR HAS SOME PAINT SUPPLIES THAT THEY DON'T USE ANY MORE THAT THEY COULD LEAVE OUT FOR YOU AND YOU COULD GRAB AND CLEAN OFF. OR ORDER SOME STUFF ONLINE FROM YOUR LOCAL ARTS STORE OR WHATEVER. PICK UP A NEW SKILL, TRY SOMETHING NEW AND LET YOURSELF JUST BE SHITTY AT IT FOR A WHILE. LET YOURSELF SUCK AT SOMETHING FOR A LITTLE BIT, CAUSE GUESS WHAT? YOU'RE IN QUARANTINE. YOU DON'T HAVE TO SHOW ANYBODY. YOU CAN JUST SIT WITH TRYING TO LEARN A NEW PRACTICE.
Even if it's something simple, like, I don't know, baking more or trying to meditate or whatever. I don't think it really matters what the thing is, as much as it is getting yourself into the practice of dedicating some time to something other than your Zoom meetings for work and managing your own anxieties. Just trying something else.
My name is Mel Weyant. My pronouns are she/her. You and I have been talking about this project for a really long time. I think since it started being born in your mind of what you're going to do. I think you asked me about it because I am not a native Cincinnatian so I have sort of strange connections to community here. I'm relatively new to the city but kind of connected in interesting ways. Somewhat because of my job. Somewhat because of just sort of the things I'm interested in, my history of community organizing and zine making and just being a maker out in the community in general.
Yeah, definitely. So what brought you to Cincinnati?
I moved here in September of 2018 to be one of the full time staff that runs the Ground Floor Maker Space at the University of Cincinnati. It was a brand new initiative. It wasn't open when I came out here. I had been working in making at a public library system, the DC Public Library and was managing a lot of the Makerspace side of that for a lot of the system. But I'm not a librarian by trade and I didn't necessarily feel like I was doing the most good or even doing the most interesting work. I was doing a lot of introductory classes, a lot of really basic intro to making stuff, which I think is really valuable. But I wanted to feel like I was connecting to making with a larger impact, help people that were maybe actually pursuing research or doing things that were more than 3D printing Warhammer figurines or plastic toys or that kind of thing. So I came to Cincinnati to be the additive manufacturing and prototyping staff person at the Ground Floor Maker Space. 've been doing that for about a year and a half now. It's cool. It's been really cool. It was sort of isolating the first couple months cause all we did was get the space up and running. So for a long time I didn't feel like I had much of a connection to the Cincinnati community, the art scene, any of that. I think generally when you move to a new place, especially if you don't have connections there already, or a lot of free time or even just know people to introduce you to spaces, it can feel really isolating. I've done that a couple of times- moving to new places- so I knew what to expect. I also just didn't realize how hard it was going to be as I got older and have less free time to make those connections. When I moved to DC I had been in grad school. Working at the library, all of my coworkers were all under 35. I worked with the team that was sort of the young tech savvy team. It was just really easy to connect, go to shows, you know, I was really big into the zine making community there. I get tied in with that stuff really easily. So it was a little bit more of a challenge here when I came to Cincinnati.
What kind of work were you doing when your job was normal at the 1819 Maker Space?
At 1819 I primarily work and engage with students and anybody who's doing research projects. So that could be faculty, graduate assistants, anybody who's assisting with university research, undergrads. We were in the middle of working on a lot of capstones when all of the COVID-19 stuff started to happen. Helping the students, anything from, 'I have an idea and I need to make it happen' to 'I've got a prototype, but I need to 3D print it' or you know, 'I've got to convert my files' or anything all the way up to much more complex. Like 'how do I scale this up now that I know those prototype works?' Within 1819 there are a couple of different units that do work on innovation. I was doing some work with an organization called the Venture Lab, which is a startup accelerator. So folks would have an idea, go through the cohort for the startup accelerator and then come down and we would 3D print, we would potentially machine or mill out different things for them. So there was that connection to the innovation idea. And then a different connection to student projects. Two sides of the same coin, but those were the major aspects of my job. I guess I should say 'are', but obviously things have changed significantly in the past couple weeks. I also taught a lot of classes, so that's probably the bread and butter part of my job is just teaching people, either new skills or advanced prototyping and making skills around our machines.
So you've had a lot of jobs in making and fabrication and prototyping. Why is that? Cause I know it's not what you studied for.
No, it's not my background at all. I came out of grad school in 2015 and my master's degrees is in conflict resolution. My undergrad degree is political science. I really had an interest in community peace-building, community connection. I did social work for a number of years right out of college. I've sort of done everything in the gamut. I've done a lot of work in community connections, a little bit of community organizing, some get out the vote work, just all sorts of different things in that general sphere.
WHEN I FINISHED GRAD SCHOOL IN 2015, I WAS VERY FRIED ON THE TYPE A NONPROFIT SCENE IN DC. I JUST KNEW THAT I NEEDED A BREAK FROM THAT WORK AND FROM BEING IN GRAD SCHOOL AND I JUST REALLY WANTED TO DO SOMETHING HANDS-ON AND OF WITH PEOPLE. I HAD SOME EXPERIENCE WITH 3D PRINTING AND LASER CUTTING JUST AS AN INTEREST. I JUST WAS INTERESTED IN THOSE THINGS. I HAD DONE SOME PROJECTS WHERE I HAD LASER CUT FABRIC AND THEN SEWED THEM TOGETHER AND SOME THINGS LIKE THAT. I HAD LASER CUT SOME STUFF TO DO ZINE COLLAGES AND SO WHEN I APPLIED FOR THIS JOB AT DC PUBLIC LIBRARY, I WAS KINDA THINKING LIKE, 'OH, I'LL JUST WORK AT A DESK FOR A COUPLE OF MONTHS AND GET MY HEAD ON STRAIGHT AND FIGURE OUT WHAT I WANT TO DO'. WHEN I WENT TO MY INTERVIEW, I TALKED TO HIM ABOUT 3D PRINTING AND MAKING AND HOW JUST COOL I THOUGHT IT WAS THAT THE LIBRARY HAD THE BIGGEST FAB LAB MAKER SPACE IN THE COUNTRY THAT WAS IN A PUBLIC LIBRARY. WHEN THEY OFFERED ME THE JOB, IT WAS TO WORK IN THAT SPACE.
So I was splitting my time between what was called the fab lab and a digital technology center, which was the largest public computer lab in the city of DC. So a really incredible resource space. Lots of folks who were experiencing issues with homelessness and were job searching. I mean we had people coming in just to print. We had people coming in to print tickets for the arena venue down the street. We had people who hung out there all day. It was just a path that was completely open. And I think working in that space and then also working in the bigger space, I really developed this passion for helping people develop skills. I think as adults, one of the things I encounter the most is this great fear of failure- in myself and in other people. We just don't want to fail. It's not something most adult humans are comfortable with. I would see that in the computer lab in this way that was just terror about technology. Then I would see it in this maker space in this way that was a different deep intimidation of, 'Oh, I can't do that. It's technologically advanced. I don't have a background, I don't have training'. But then also this interest. I think the way that those two things play together, I was really passionate about how I could make technology accessible to folks who were not the traditional makers. Not the white, well-educated, more often than not male maker population that has come become so big in the United States over the last 20, 25 years. I was really passionate about expanding that dynamic and expanding that group. That's kind of why I stayed at the library. I think when I came to the university, one of the things that I was the most interested about was, I had done this on a community level for several years and I wanted to take it into an academic level and see A: what kind of what new skills I could learn, and B: how I could help young people who might be creating this new biomedical technology who are maybe creating a life saving device or some kind of problem solving technology. Or working with ID students who are creating really interesting solutions to problems. I was more interested in looking at that as a problem solving mechanism since I had done so much of the community stuff at the library.
What sort of making do you do for yourself?
I've gotten pretty good at sewing. I moved into a new apartment a couple of months ago and I sew myself curtains. I'm actually much more of an analog maker with my own practice. What I've really come to love is trying to find a way to cross those two over. I throw pottery on a wheel- clay. I've laser cut myself a number of tools and I've done even done things like laser cut stencils that I could then use to apply on pottery. I really like to take a traditional craft and one of the things that I love about that is that's where folks who are nontraditional users can come into making- more modern tech making. You can bring somebody in who might have been a knitter forever and show them how to laser cut a new ruler needle gauge guide. And that just blows their mind cause that's traditionally something they would've had to spend anywhere from $10 to $25 on. And they can just make one. Even teaching the DAAP art students to use new technologies to laser cut their work or add to aspects of their work with 3D printed pieces or using stamps that were made on a laser cutter or something like that is pretty cool. For my own making traditions, as I've become more involved in making professionally, I've actually taken a step back from that kind of making in my home life. It's a lot more handicrafts. Sewing, knitting, I do really bad watercolor sometimes. Then also to be honest,
I'VE DEVELOPED THIS REAL LOVE FOR TEACHING MYSELF MORE ABOUT WOODWORKING AND HOME SKILLS AND HANDYMAN SKILLS AND THAT KIND OF STUFF. CAUSE I ALSO FEEL LIKE IF I EVER WALK AWAY FROM THIS KIND OF JOB, I WON'T NECESSARILY HAVE ACCESS TO A 3D PRINTER, BUT I'M ALWAYS GOING TO HAVE TOOLS. I'M ALWAYS GOING TO HAVE HARDWARE OR ARE BE ABLE TO GET THOSE THINGS REALLY EASILY. SO I'M ALSO INTERESTED IN JUST KNOWING MORE AND LEARNING MORE, WHICH IS ALSO PART OF WHY I LIKE TEACHING SO MUCH. CAUSE I LIKE SEEING THAT POINT WHEN OTHER PEOPLE GET THAT ITCH TO JUST EDUCATE THEMSELVES MORE.
Awesome. So it sounds like what you used to do at UC, it was a lot more involved. It was a lot more face to face interaction with students. So now that the campus is shut down to students, what type of work are you doing?
Yeah, that's a good way to say that. On a daily basis, I was spending five to six hours in the shop interfacing with people. That's obviously not the case now. We're actually on the front lines of UC's efforts to create PPE for the local hospital systems. Which is scary in its own regard, but a really interesting way to be spending my time right now. There are tons of other things that, as part of the Office Of Innovation, we're working on doing all sorts of stuff. But as the Ground Floor Maker Space, one of the projects is that we're working with some partners at UC Health and also some partners at Cincinnati Children's Hospital System, to do things like face shields. We're trying really hard to avoid anything like the cotton or fabric face masks that are really challenging. Because they're fine for people if you're just trying not to touch your face or those sorts of things. But it's becoming really challenging to get your hands on the materials that you might need to make them sterilizable or reusable, which is ultimately what we need. Cause we know we're going to see this incredible amount of waste coming out of this because hospitals can't reuse a lot of these materials. They don't have the ability or the materials or the cleaning technology to actually clean up. So we've been trying really hard to think through things like face fields, which are not going to be last step PPE. They're not going to be the things that are closer to people's bodies like goggles or gloves or those sorts of things. But they are going to be a really easy way to keep the droplets, the virus, whatever from actually kind of getting to people's faces. So it's a clear shield. There are a million different designs out there. Several companies have designed them, but what we're doing is we've been working with some DAAP professors, primarily Steve Doehler and then the Maker Space manager, Ben Jones, has been doing a lot of work with of development. They've been prototyping a lot. As of this weekend, we're still waiting on the go ahead from the legal systems on either end and all of that stuff. But I believe that we're going to start going into production this week on face masks that we can actually package up, make sure that they're in as sterile an environment as possible, and then hand off to some medical professionals. So my day looks like running a lot of laser cutters and babysitting a lot of 3D printers and then doing the actual assembly for a lot of parts, along with my coworkers.
How do you feel about still being at work during this virus?
You know, it's a really odd time. I think my friends are kind of stuck at home or working from home, I would certainly be very antsy if I was just working from home.
IT'S SCARY TO THINK THAT I'M MAKING PPE FOR MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS. IT'S SCARY AND EXCITING. WE WANT TO HELP AND WE WANT TO BE USEFUL. BUT IT'S ALSO INTIMIDATING TO THINK THAT SOMETHING THAT I'M MAKING IS GOING TO BE A FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE FOR SOMEBODY WHO COULD POTENTIALLY CATCH COVID-19.
I think it's a good thing. I am in a lot of maker groups. I try really hard to stay up-to-date on what the making community is doing and be involved and also have my voice heard as a woman who's fairly young in this field. As somebody who's actively involved I like to keep an eye on what things are going on. One thing that's happening is, in many of the groups that I'm in every single day things are just changing super rapidly. I think that's the case for all of us, right? Even those of us who were just at home, it feels like everyday there's some new fresh hell. Now we're not supposed to do this or now let's change on this process. All of those things. For us professionally, that sort of same thing is happening where we'll start moving in a direction and then we'll get feedback from the hospital that they don't like some aspect of a design or something like that. For you as an ID student, you know that normally that process can take weeks or months to really get a new design vetted by the people who are going to be using it or engaging with it. But we don't have weeks or month. The country doesn't have weeks or months. Our healthcare professionals don't have that time. So we don't have the ability to do this really nice slow testing period or R&D or anything like that. We just have to move.
That's very true. I'm going to ask you a question that I've been asking every participant of this project, that is: what would you define as your community? I think especially cause you've moved so recently, you've been exposed to a whole new group of people, you have varying interests in the maker community and in other communities. What do you think is the one thing that ties you together with the people you choose to spend your time with?
I DON'T KNOW THAT I COULD SAY ONE THING, BUT I THINK A LOT OF IT IS THAT I TRY TO DEFINE MY COMMUNITY BY CREATION AND INTENTION. MAYBE I WOULD EVEN SAY INSTEAD OF INTENTION- CARE. I THINK ESPECIALLY BECAUSE I HAVE UPROOTED MY LIFE SO RECENTLY, IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT TO ME THAT I MAKE MY COMMUNITY WITH PEOPLE THAT I FEEL I CAN TRUST AND I FEEL LIKE ARE GOOD STEWARDS OF EACH OTHER, OF COMMUNITY AT LARGE.
There's a lot of systems and things that I don't really take up with like. I don't really care about gatekeeping. I was involved in the art scene in DC and I couldn't care less about the quality of what people are making to be honest. I'm mostly interested in intentionality and an interest in making. In DC we used to hold this thing called 'bad art night', which was again getting to this point of like, we're all so afraid of being bad at stuff and making bad art or, making a bad thing or failing. And that has really driven a lot of my connections with people.
YOU GET TO A POINT WHERE YOU'RE HAVING A CONVERSATION WITH SOMEONE NEW AND MAYBE YOU START TALKING ABOUT MAKING OR CREATION AND THEY'RE LIKE, 'OH YEAH, I PICKED UP THIS NEW SKILL RECENTLY, BUT I'M STILL REALLY BAD AT IT'. AND SO OFTEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE THAT IMMEDIATE CONNECTION WITH SOMETHING OR THAT IMMEDIATE CONNECTION WITH THE MEDIA THAT YOU'RE TRYING TO GET BETTER AT, IT'S SO EASY TO JUST GIVE IT UP.
So I think I'm kind of embracing that aspect of something that has really been unique to a lot of the community that I've tried to build here and existed a lot in DC. I still have a friend who actively will hashtag on Instagram #makebadart, which I really love. Also I sit on the education committee for the Contemporary Arts Center in downtown Cincinnati and that was something that I'm just interested in making an education for young people. I think if you can get people making really early on, it really helps fight that failure switch. I worked with them on a project with Cincinnati Public Schools last summer and since then have just been involved with the volunteer board. And that's been really cool just to see all of the different levels of care that people are putting into what the education and arts community in Cincinnati is. For me, it's not just arts. And that's really, I think, where it goes back to creation. It doesn't have to be this grander scale of art or this really good art or anything like that. It's just having a passion to make and create, which I think is a lot of what brings us together as humans.
Have you felt at all isolated as a human these few weeks?
Yeah. I had been making bread with my friend before all this happened and going to just have coffee dates. Even though I'm still going into work the past two or three weeks, I've been the only one there. Cause my colleagues are working from home. Nobody else was babysitting the 3D printers. I think even in my relationship with my partner and even in my relationship with our friends who live in a different apartment in our house, it's hard not to feel isolated cause you can't actually reach out and touch somebody or give your friend a hug or a high five or have a stitch-and-bitch circle or whatever. I actually think that in some ways I'm probably better at handling this kind of isolation than a lot of people because a lot of my communities are on the East coast. I have this big group of friends in Philadelphia, I have this big group of friends in DC, I have friends in Baltimore. I'm so used to, since moving out here, I can't just get in a car or get on the train and go see them. I have to be a lot more intentional about scheduling a FaceTime or texting or calls or whatever. So from that regard, my relationships haven't changed. It's just that we talk a lot more about what it's like to be isolated. But I think I'm lucky in that way because a lot of my community is digital.
Do you have any other topics or subjects that you think you would like to share with those who do not have the benefit of knowing you in person? Cause that's what this project is all about. It's introducing new ideas to people who would otherwise not have access to them.
I would say that this period, especially as we don't know how long this is going to go, this is a really, really great time if you're up for it and have the emotional capability to teach somebody a new skill and also to learn a new skill yourself. It doesn't have to be something that you're perfect at. I don't believe in the whole 'hustle through the quarantine' thing.
WE ARE ALL IN THIS PLACE OF STRESS AND ANXIETY AND POTENTIAL HEALTH ISSUES AND JUST TRYING TO KEEP OURSELVES SANE IN OUR HOMES. I THINK THAT THIS IS A REALLY COOL TIME TO SEE IF YOUR NEIGHBOR HAS SOME PAINT SUPPLIES THAT THEY DON'T USE ANY MORE THAT THEY COULD LEAVE OUT FOR YOU AND YOU COULD GRAB AND CLEAN OFF. OR ORDER SOME STUFF ONLINE FROM YOUR LOCAL ARTS STORE OR WHATEVER. PICK UP A NEW SKILL, TRY SOMETHING NEW AND LET YOURSELF JUST BE SHITTY AT IT FOR A WHILE. LET YOURSELF SUCK AT SOMETHING FOR A LITTLE BIT, CAUSE GUESS WHAT? YOU'RE IN QUARANTINE. YOU DON'T HAVE TO SHOW ANYBODY. YOU CAN JUST SIT WITH TRYING TO LEARN A NEW PRACTICE.
Even if it's something simple, like, I don't know, baking more or trying to meditate or whatever. I don't think it really matters what the thing is, as much as it is getting yourself into the practice of dedicating some time to something other than your Zoom meetings for work and managing your own anxieties. Just trying something else.