Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Heather Van Winckle. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Heather , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I went to school for sculpture, which always seemed like a catch all art discipline that could include just about any medium in a broad sense. I was drawn to that limitlessness. I experimented with lots of materials from molding latex rubber to casting aluminum, from welding steel to hand sewing silk. Sometimes those skills were applied and turned into art pieces, and sometimes I failed or didn’t achieve what I was hoping for at all. I’ve become used to failure and because of that I am adept at learning new skills for potentially little outcome. Working with leather was just born out of that discipline. I had a strong background in sewing on machines, and one day I decided to try hand stitching some pigskin to make some Christmas gifts for friends. From there, I just kept trying new techniques, reading books and watching tutorials, and making lots and lots of things.

I’ve never seen learning a new skill as a barrier. It’s always just an opportunity to expand my tool belt and open me up to new ideas and experiences. The biggest challenge for me is instead investing my time or money into myself to accelerate or enrich my learning. Buying quality tools and materials always feels like a huge splurge, and I usually opt for the cheaper option or a work around when I can. Though cost is a factor, the biggest obstacle is actually trusting that I deserve to be set up for success, and believing that I can succeed. To illustrate my point, I ran normal Behaviour for 6 years before I finally bought my own industrial machine, choosing instead to rent use of one that wasn’t quite right for my needs. Once I got that machine, I was quickly able to execute designs that eluded me for years and were holding me back from pushing beyond some mental barriers. Now I can quickly prototype things and move through ideas with agility without getting caught up on superfluous issues that never needed to be included in my making process. It’s a lesson that I continue to relearn over and over again; believe in yourself and your ability to succeed. That is the best way to learn.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m the founder of the lifestyle brand normal Behaviour. normal Behaviour makes personal accessories, home goods, and letterpress prints. I love learning how to make things, and mastering materials, systems and machines. The business developed out of a desire to both solve real world problems, and create physical things. It is a synthesis of my core strengths – creative critical thinking and practical design.

The business runs antithetical, in a lot of ways, to The Fashion Industry. Through adopting a slow fashion model, we focus on constructing goods that will last for years rather than a single season, and we make our products with ethical, in-house labor, rather than outsourcing abroad. In our own small way, we aim to redefine what are considered ‘industry norms’ and posit an alternative. Furthermore, our goods are designed to be versatile staples, with a minimal aesthetic that pairs well with a broad range of styles, even more eclectic pieces. In that way, we aim to be the ‘normal’ in your extraordinary life.

Learning new things and pushing my creativity keeps me curious and it’s the most fulfilling aspect of my work. Lately, I’ve found myself working with many amazing individuals on an array of unique custom projects with particular and intricate concerns. I’m a firm believer that creativity is generative – the more you practice it, the more creative you get, and this has become a very rewarding arm of the business as I continue to personally redefine normal Behaviour for myself.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think ultimately what we all want is that people with money and power value art and creativity and become patrons. But simply hoping that people just find their own way there typically doesn’t yield the best results. They have to be taught to care, and feel like they are a part of the creative world in order to engage with it.

This is something I think about a lot as an artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are so many non-profit arts organizations that are showing interesting, relevant work and fighting for grants, who inevitably find themselves regularly fundraising on the backs of the artists they purport to support. That has always felt cannibalistic to me. If an organization require artists to fund the space with their free skilled labor and products, then how will the venue ever grow out of that and instead help artists find audience and patronage? The model of the gallery is to be a place to platform artists, not take advantage of them for its mere existence. But, the reason they do that is they see the artists as their base, because they are the bulk of the shows’ attendants. In a thriving system, their base should be art patrons, not artists themselves.

And the Bay Area is actually rich with so many incredibly curious, educated and affluent people, that this all just seems like a marketing problem. Future patrons are all over the place, but they need an invitation. Art spaces can feel very insular even as someone that is relatively on the inside. Couple that with the fact that art in general can be seen as elitist and inaccessible to the non-MFA, and the public/outsiders can find it difficult to see their way in. Society in general needs to have their curiosity sparked, and they need to feel comfortable and welcomed in creative spaces. They will derive their own value out of it when they feel included.

It sounds like I’m being harsh on the arts organizations and small creatives that are often just trying to stay afloat and don’t have the budget to completely shift societal thinking, but an arts community can only thrive by catering to all the members of the community that are helping to shape culture, and that includes, in a major way, non-creatives.

For these reasons, individuals that care about art need to seek out these spaces in their communities. If they feel awkward, I’d recommend going during regular hours when there’s no event happening. There’ll be someone there that can provide more context and tell you more about the space and the artists. And, if you express curiosity, they might even shepherd you into the greater arts community. You just need to break the seal.

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

For creatives, experimentation is paramount to learning and growth, and speaking for myself, that has left my past experiences looking a bit chaotic and lacking a clear linear track. That is often hard to quantify and qualify to others. What can be essential and relevant experiences in my journey may look like tiny inconsequential blips, because my career doesn’t fit the normal trajectory of starting down a path more generally and specializing as you go further. But dates and data are easier points to consume and assess a person’s position, so in the interest of brevity, we learn to hone our stories down to 3 main bullet points. My journey has always felt like there’s any number of projects co-currently developing, and some take longer than others to mature, but they are all enmeshed and all hold value in exercising my creativity.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://normalbehaviour.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/normalbehaviour
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/normalbehaviour
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/heather-van-winckle
• Other: https://heathervanwinckle.com

Image Credits

Heather Van Winckle