By Willow Beyer, Undergraduate Library Making Fellow, 2024-2025
Over the course of my first semester as a Makerspace Fellow, I have had the opportunity to learn and grow beyond my new skills in crafting. I have watched and experienced the ways that art is not about just the finished product, the skills that go into creating it, or what it communicates; it’s about how its production affects the artist.
When visiting the Makerspace for the first time, many people comment on how calming the act of creating can be. Undergrads come here to work with their hands, take a breath outside of the academic demand of their day to day life, and help each other approach new problems. Sharing advice, working out the logistics of their ideas together, and showing off what they’ve been working on is an essential part of using the Makerspace. In the fiber arts room, it’s always fun to see the clothes people are making and think through the best way to accomplish their goals in a room full of people with varied sewing backgrounds. I love when people teach each other skills they learned that day, like using the Silhouette machine or button makers, because they get to not only solidify that knowledge for themselves, but meet someone new.
The Makerspace quietly works as a space for its users to decompress. Dedicating my service hours to creating has had a massive positive impact on my life. As Library Fellows, we work to create not just physical projects, but an intentional cohort where collaboration and feedback are valued and the methods through which they are carried out are clearly defined and respected. We work on a variety of shared projects, including workshop design and promotion and Make of the Month setup. Because we prioritize each other’s feedback, it’s much easier for me to share my ideas for my peers’ work and I feel more confident that I will get honest and helpful responses. By incorporating others’ insight into my Silhouette designs, stamps, and posters, I have been able to improve more quickly. By practicing articulating my thoughts on others’ work, I have improved in communication and solidified what I’m learning in design. Exposure to a community of intentional crafters and dedicated time for making has been helpful in alleviating stress and lifting my mood throughout the semester. While overwhelmed, spending an hour where my only job is to work on my knitting skills or to carve a stamp or make a Silhouette design helps to give me a break from the theory and abstract thought of my studies to work on something I can actually hold in my hands. I have found this experience very grounding, and can’t recommend enough that you stop by and see what the space can bring to your life!