“The Meaning in Making” is part of the ongoing “How is Your School?” taking place into April at 2739 Edwin Gallery.

Spring is coming (the occasional flurries notwithstanding), and you can tell by the uptick in weekend events stirring loudly to life. This weekend the truly gridiron hit the streets for the annual Marche du Nain Rouge (I seem to recall that last year’s parade was comfortably executed in full sun and t-shirts); high-culture junkies hit the DFT to see the 80-member Rackham Symphony Choir accompany “La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc” (The Passion of Joan of Arc); and very quietly at 2739 Edwin Gallery, the conversation about education as an emancipatory project continued with a Saturday evening event called “The Meaning in Making.”

From left to right, 2739 Edwin Curator Steve Panton and co-facilitators Elizabeth Sutton, Kathleen Rashid and LaVern Homan.

The workshop and discussion was facilitated by LaVern Homan, Kathleen Rashid and Elizabeth Sutton, who used bookmaking as a locus for a discussion about the purpose and effects of making as a learning (and living) process. This process is of personal interest to me, as I find it to be the largest motivator for a creative existence – my experience is that making things fills me with a sense of purpose and calm focus, which justifies the process regardless of outcome. Or better put by co-organizer Kathleen Rashid, “Anything you can invest your whole self into has the potential to be art.”

Some books on display at the workshop.

This seemed to be the consensus in the discussion that followed a flurry of paper-cutting, glue-sticking and experimental binding on the fly amidst a group that largely had no previous experience in bookmaking.

Involving participants in the deeply engrossing process of making something spurred an immediacy to the conversation which followed.

I’ve spent a lot of time this month at 2739 Edwin, due to the fact that curator Steve Panton is doing the serious and oftentimes thankless work of bringing art beyond the scope of aesthetics or profit and using it as a force for social change. A commendable use of his time and personal space, and a noble enterprise within the institution of art that, much like the educational system, becomes increasingly driven by a capitalist agenda. School is definitely in session at 2739 Edwin.

One workshop attendee displays his handiwork.

2739 Edwin Gallery: 2739 Edwin St., Hamtramck; 2739edwin.com