I’ve been teaching art for a number of years, back in high school I taught crochet to many of my artsy peers. This was back before it is the trend that it is now and, at the risk of aging myself too much, back before youtube was completely bursting with tutorials. My most watched video on the internet is still the 8-ish minute long video I posted to demonstrate how to crochet for right handed people, my second was supposed to be for lefties but I sadly never got around to it. Not that it was a huge loss, the video I posted was terribly done. Out of focus, unorganized, unedited, and I used my little digital camera mic. I wish I had stuck with making youtube content though, it is still one of my favorite websites and, despite the myriad of bullshit the company has (and continues to) put its creators through, it is still a truly incredible space to discover smart and creative people.
I paused a lot of my creative pursuits during my university days, I still made art but I was so overwhelmed with everything that my heart wasn’t really in it. My work was solitary and I was only occasionally sharing things on instagram.
What really reinvigorated my passion and creativity was learning bobbin lacing and pysanky. When I started to take lace classes with local lace makers, and going to pysanky retreats with my mother, I realized a huge part of my creative drive was in community. I wanted to cultivate the feeling I got from my lace classes and from pysanky retreats in my own space, one that would be inclusive of folks of all backgrounds and skill levels.
So I started Aurora Ypsi and ran that for a couple of years. At first, it was supposed to just be an art showcase, with cabaret style performances, displays, and vendors, all local artists or all skill levels. It was great fun, but not something I could sustain by myself at the time. Hosting events is expensive and I only took donations to pay performers. I started offering free art classes on the days we didn’t perform, mostly zine making and crochet. I’ve taught dozens of people to crochet at this point. It was fun, but I started longing for longer form classes, where we would progress through different aspects of a skill instead of just the basics. I could never get a consistent enough crowd. When I started working at the library, I thought I would get that opportunity, alas it is not easy to get people to come back every week for a free class.
Now, I’m still trying to work out how I can offer low-barrier classes to my community that people will actually consistently show up to. I would even take a simple meetup at this point. I dream of cultivating or joining an active art collective where there were collaborative projects, skill sharing, and community building. That’s ultimately what I wanted Aurora Ypsi to be, but I never quite got it there.
My desire to offer a space for art classes and creative community making has only grown over the years, but I still struggle to figure out how to go about it and how to make it sustainable.
Currently, I am planning on offering small group pysanky classes to my local community out of a friend’s store front. I will update the blog when I have solidified details of this.
If anyone is curious about the video I mentioned in the article, here is a link to my old youtube channel.
mani 
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