Featured Member: Amanda Rataj
We love our members, so every month we’ll be featuring one of them on the site and in the newsletter. This month, our featured member is Hamilton weaver Amanda Rataj (@amandarataj), who gamely answered all our questions about her work and her life.
(P.S., not a member yet? What are you waiting for?)
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Workshop: Describe your business in 10 words or less.
Amanda Rataj: I am a weaver and artist.
W: What was the first product you sold?
AR: I started selling my work when two things happened at once: my skills had increased to where I was making more than I wanted (or needed) to keep, and a university classmate opened a shop, Likely General, underneath my apartment. At the beginning I made lots of kitchen towels — they were an excellent learning tool as I learned the material and technical aspects of weaving.
W: What’s your latest innovation?
AR: Good question! I like the knitter's term "unventing," coined by Elizabeth Zimmerman. "But unvented — ahh! One un-vents something; one unearths it; one digs it up, one runs it down in whatever recesses of the eternal consciousness it has gone to ground. I very much doubt if anything is really new."
W: What’s something you’ve done in the past year that you’re proud of?
AR: I have been slowly overcoming my (unreasonable) fear of dyeing!
W: What’s the most recent thing you’ve bought from another Canadian maker?
AR: I bought a tea cup from Candice Boese of CAND Ceramics. My excuse was that I needed a prop for my latest weaving pattern... I also purchased some things from my friend Megan Samms of Live Textiles. Beyond being an incredible weaver and natural dyer, Megan is a farmer and has a line of apothecary goods. She's also starting a weaving residency out in Newfoundland.
W: Describe your dream studio.
AR: My dream studio is simply time and space! It's not anywhere in particular, but, having studied photography in art school, I am partial to bright, light-filled rooms balanced with complex, moving shadows.
W: What’s one book, movie, TV show, magazine, podcast or album that you’re loving right now?
AR: I'm getting a friend the book How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell for Christmas. I read it a few years ago and it is wonderful. It's not really about doing nothing — it's about how to do real, meaningful things in a world defined by (often) superficial digital interaction.