We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Becka Palter. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Becka below.

Becka, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

The most meaningful projects I have worked on are ones tha seem to find me and just stick. Hand Embroidery takes a long time. Which means I’m going to sit with the subject of a piece for a while.
5 and a half years ago I started dating a woman. She was so captivating and wonderful. I’m not great at using my words to express my feelings, so I made a tiny embroidered portrait of one of our dates. Us sitting on the beach wrapped up in her quilt at sunset.
I gave it to her on our one month anniversary. To be fair, it totally shocked her that this is how I was feeling. I probably put 20 hours into this piece. Which honestly says more than I ever could with my words.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started embroidery because of an estate sale.
I’d wanted to try embroidery for a while but was too overwhelmed by getting all the tools and learned stitches. But then I went to an estate sale of a woman that was clearly very into embroidery. Her garage was full of boxes of hoops and fabric and thread. While I poked through the boxes, agonizing over which size of hoop was best and which thread colors I liked, the organizer of the sale came in and offered me $5 to take all of it.
And just like that I started embroidering.
Since then I have sourced 99% of my supplies from second hand sources. It’s important to show that we can create art from supplies that already exist out in the world.
One of my biggest accomplishments is a fundraising effort I put together during covid lockdown. I gathered gifts from a bunch of my favorite local artists and organized a raffle to benefit a local trans resource group. We were able to raise $1200 during a time when people didn’t have much to spare.
I’m utilizing this same community building enthusiasm to help a local queer musician fund her independent record.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think we often see the creative journey portrayed as this painful process. But I don’t really think that’s true for many creatives. Our chosen mediums bring us so much joy. Having an idea occur to you. Putting it in paper. Fleshing it out. Executing it as best we can.
There are definitely frustrations and compromises but it comes from a place of joy.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Pay them.
Most other countries have systems of grants to encourage creative people to give their full time to creating. But in the US we have undervalued art so much that most artists have to struggle to get by. Being is a survival state doesn’t exactly cultivate creativity.
Find ways to monetarily support artists you love. Whether that’s buying a musician’s album on bandcamp because they only get fractions of pennies on streaming. Or valuing handmade clothing/ fiber arts as a true piece of art, rather than just a piece of clothing.

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