....now, commonly, one who has finished an apprenticeship and is a competent worker in a handicraft or trade, but has not received recognition as a master; -- distinguished from apprentice and from master workman."

 

I used to be a tailor. Tailoring is beautiful. it's a craft but its better to think of it as a practice - no end, just challenges and successes and failures on a path that is personal to you. You're never done until you say you are.

While I was working in TV and Film costuming world, I held the title of journeyman, and it was the highest level that one could be classified as. As I think about the term now, how the existence of the master tailor exists on Saville Row but not in Hollywood, I'm endeared to the notion that there is always more to learn. Modern day Los Angeles is a place full of people not institutionally bestowed as masters, but described - and sometimes derided - as dreamers, weirdos, vagrants, and iconoclasts. It's a place I am very proud to be from.

So I leave tailoring to others, satisfied to have it be a guiding force in my creative pursuit for the rest of my life. But I choose to keep the personal title of Journeyman, a term I’m proud to wear as I launch this offering that is very much public and very much personal.