Art Saves • by Gudrun Johnston

What is an Artist?
In some ways, I still find it difficult to think of myself as an artist. Perhaps that’s because the medium I create in, yarn, seems less obviously an artist’s material. I certainly always enjoyed the more traditional methods of creating art as a child, but it was never a significant strength of mine.

For a long time my creative outlet was in music, mostly singing. This was the career I set out on in my late teens, no knitting needles in sight! However, it didn’t take me long with the divas of The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London to realize that my ego was not cut out for the life of a classical singer. I felt like the thing I loved most became less enjoyable the more seriously I took it. It wasn’t an easy decision to leave my training, but I was still very young and felt the need to explore the world, and expand my horizons.

Art Found Me
Next came a period of wanderings. First to far off exotic places that blew my mind, then trying out different career options (non of which stuck). Next I met my husband and we traveled some more, had a couple of babies, and our life as parents began. During this whole time my creative endeavors were fairly low key and it wasn’t until about seven years into being a mother that I found what would become my artistic passion. Or rather it found me.

Funnily enough knitting had been a part of my heritage. I was born in the Shetland Islands, a land famously known for it’s fine lace and Fair Isle knitting. My mother even ran her own knitwear business back in the 1970s (The Shetland Trader, which became the name of my blog). My siblings and I have photographic evidence of often being clothed from head to toe in knitwear. Important when battling the elements that far out in the North Sea!

It wasn’t until about 30 or so years later that I came to have my own relationship with knitwear design. I credit this to our move to Western Massachusetts, where fiber enthusiasts abound, one of whom was to become a dear friend of mine and who encouraged me to pick up those knitting needles in the first place.

I don’t know if there really was some latent knitting gene in my make-up, but it didn’t take long for me to want to create my own designs and patterns. Thus began my life in knitwear design.

Art in the Everyday
I think we are all capable of being artistic in one way or another. Some people make a career out of it and others express their art in less obvious ways. Now that I’m older (and possibly a little wiser) I find it easy to see art all around me, in the everyday. It can be found in a stone wall, a snowflake, a delicious cake, a song, a story, a dance, a drawing. It can definitely be found in children: in the things they create, say, and do, and just in their bodies as they grow and change. Art—in this wide sense of the term—touches all our lives and makes us all the happier for it.

Since I believe that, I guess it makes sense to believe that knitwear is very much art as well. It’s art that you can inhabit, that you breathe life and warmth into by wearing it. Art that takes on its true form when it’s partnered with our bodies.

Now that I think about it, that seems a rather special thing.

To learn more about Gudrun Johnston, visit theshetlandtrader.com.