As I was driving back from getting a haircut today, I was thinking about writing this post. It’s not really about art which is what I usually talk about here in the studio journal, but in a way it is about color and I think that makes it relevant.

My hair started going white when I was about 30. My dad has beautiful curly white hair and has for decades. (He looks like Santa Claus; I am not even kidding.) It was inevitable that mine would end up white and when I was about 40 I started to kind of hate it. Not because it was white but because it was just boring. I absolutely admire people who embrace the grey and let theirs go beautifully silver, but that just didn’t feel like me. I felt blah.

I am an artist. I love color. I almost never wear black or white, but my glasses are bright orange or turquoise depending on the day. I do not own any beige furniture. My hair has always been a mediumish boring shade of brown. (My mom’s a redhead and I am still mad the genes didn’t go my way on that one.) And in my 40s my hair was then a mediumish brown grey blah. So I asked my hairdresser to color it. She’s been doing my hair for about 18 years and I love her to pieces. So I just let her do some magic. Don’t get rid of the grey just make it more interesting.

I’m sure some of you are thinking, ok Becka so you dyed your hair. What’s the big deal? I’ve never done anything to drastically change my hair before. As a kid I had long Little House on the Prairie braids. When I was in highschool I cut a blunt bob. (That’s my senior picture on the right.) The fashion was long spiral perms and huge curled bangs, so I was not on trend even a little bit. It’s thick and straight. I never colored it, permed it, or even cut it in anything remotely interesting. Adding color was a big deal to me and I second guessed myself a little bit. Would it feel too fake and would I hate it? Nope. Loved it.

It would be a very boring story if it ended there. About a year ago, I sat down for a haircut and my hairdresser says “I have a brand new color and I don’t really know how your hair will react to it and I am curious to try it. What do you think?” I am pretty easy going about things like this generally and she knows it so I said, “Sure! Let’s experiment.”

Friends, my hair was purple. Not burgundy or maroon or reddish. Streaks the color of grape candy.

When I first saw it in the mirror I was like OMG I love it. And then I immediately started to doubt myself. Was I a purple hair kind of girl? Did it look silly on someone who was 50? I felt self conscious and within half a minute I had kind of settled on “It will grow out”. I talked myself out of it.

I LOVE wild colored hair on other people. Love it. It’s art and it’s fun and it’s powerful. Know that if I’ve seen your neon green or pink stripes, I have thought you are a rock star. And that’s kind of the point of my post. I hardly ever tell someone, “wow I like your hair” but I should do it more.

So the next week, I had purple streaked hair and a bunch of classes to teach in person and I was still feeling a little unsure of the whole look. But then some random people out in the world made a couple of simple comments. One student picking out threads said “ooh I love this color. It matches your purple hair”. And someone else said, “Your hair is so cool. I love how the color is so subtle but still fun.”

And those were really just a tiny something said in a moment to a stranger, but they changed my whole attitude. It was like by hearing them say “I love the color” then I could say “I do too.” Now I love the purple. I look forward to haircut day when we “re-purple”. The streaks fade and kind of blend in over a month or two so if you see me out in the world, they won’t always be as vibrant. But I know they are there.

I didn’t pick purple. Purple is not even close to my favorite color. But something about purple and kind strangers was exactly what I needed. And that’s why I’m writing this post. Because you never know when saying something as simple as “I love your hair” is exactly the thing that someone needs to hear.

Doreen and Jen are both spinners; they met at a neighborhood spinning group. All of us are teachers; Jen and I met as school residency artists for the now-retired Textile Mobile program about 20 years ago. We’ve always done demonstrations in our booth. This year we had a huge warp-weighted loom that Doreen set up with rocks-in-socks as weights while she talked to people. And we set up a “card your own batt” station with a drum carder and let people pick out their own mix of fibers to blend together.

We got a new goldfish neon sign for the booth this year and it was really fun. We got a lot of questions about “do goldfish really love fibers?” and “where are the two fish?” but it was easy for people to find us. Just look for the neon goldfish sign!

We have a big variety of things in the booth. I bring digitally printed zipper bags for notions and projects that are packed with puns. Our booth literally has the most puns per square foot of any space at the festival. I also have mini craft kits and wool eye glass cases. Jen brought hand-carded batts, handdyed and natural colored wool top from local sheep, and some beautiful handspun yarn. And Doreen had dye kits, handspun yarn, and embroidery threads.

Shepherd’s Harvest is our favorite weekend of the year.

When I think about the values I have in my art practice, I try to save time to do things to support the local art community. For years I worked at an arts non-profit and every weekend during the summer I did outreach and demos in dozens of tents and parks and farmers markets. I’ve done creative work like graphic design and website maintenance for several organizations. I’ve served on boards of directors for non-profits. I’ve been a panelist and guest speaker for arts events. All things I am good at and I love doing. Because I worked at a non-profit, I know exactly how valuable volunteers are to the success of a lot of programs and I try to be one of those volunteers when I can.

One of my favorite tasks (and one of the hardest) is serving as a panelist to review grant applications. You have to apply to be a panelist and attend a training session to learn about the specific grant and criteria to look at. Then, you read and score applications from arts non-profits who are looking to help lower the cost of tickets for musical events, or buy new sound system equipment, or hire specialists to help them out. They get to tell what their need is and how it will help the organization accomplish its goals. The proposals are always fascinating to read and I learn so much about organizations I had never heard of before and art media that I don’t know anything about. I feel like grant panels are really important because I have been the recipient of several grants; someone sat on that panel and evaluated my proposal and so I feel like I am paying the community back.

Sometimes it’s hard to be a volunteer.

I’ve had some volunteer jobs that ended up being not a lot of fun. I had long-term volunteer job that broke down recently into a not so great situation. We were working on a couple of big projects and things just melted down. I think there was some miscommunication and some timeline stress behind the scenes. I emailed some other non-profit friends for advice. How should I handle this? What do I do to not make the situation more stressful? Should I just step away?

One comment really stood out for me and I keep thinking about it: I never volunteer to do something I get paid for.

My friend basically said that “volunteering your time is not the same thing as giving away your expertise”, especially when it comes to creative/art work. There’s an idea that creative volunteer work is supposed to be “fun” and flexible. You can do revisions, slip timelines, or change things on the fly because it’s free volunteer work and something you do for fun or because you believe in the cause. However, the exact same tasks become more “official” and valuable the minute someone gets paid for it.

We laughed when I said “no one has ever given me a hard time about how I cleaned up trash after a fundraising party”.

That statement is abolutely not true for other more skilled volunteer jobs like graphic design. Ironically, the creative work that I’m good at is much harder and less rewarding to volunteer for than things like folding programs, working the registration table, or cleaning up the trash.

So I’ve been thinking about that statement a lot.

I’m curious: Do you have boundaries or rules that you set around volunteering? What makes you want to volunteer? Or NOT volunteer for something?