Janelle Gramling of Fasten Collective

This week, Milwaukee fashion designer Janelle Gramling of Bay View’s Fasten Collective offers her ringing endorsement of the city’s hippest market for handmade goods, Art Vs. Craft, coming up Saturday at Humphrey Scottish Rite Masonic Center (790 N Van Buren St.).

Art Vs. Craft is a craft fair unlike any craft fair I’ve ever been to in Milwaukee. It features artists—mostly local, though some come from out of state—who mostly work with untraditional materials and methods. They come up with really new and fresh crafts and gifts. Like, you’ll see necklaces made out of bike parts. You’ll see clothing that has been rehabbed from existing fabrics and recycled things. Art Vs. Craft is an alternative way to go shopping. Everything you see there is new and fresh and awesome. It’s stuff Urban Outfitters is probably going to copy. It’s what our generation is really into. There are a lot of inventive things, and things that are really off the beaten path but also well-made. They always have it in November, right before Christmas shopping. I have this big pool of money and I really want to spend it there, and buy as many Christmas and birthday gifts as I can there because I’m supporting local designers directly and I’m buying things no one is going to find anywhere else.