SILER CITY — The coronavirus pandemic has been anything but kind to the arts.
From large-scale music festivals to small-town theater productions, events across the country have been canceled, leaving many artists with a void in their 2020 calendars.
For Sue and Richard Szary, co-owners of Twin Birch & Teasel and Twin Birch Products, Siler City-based businesses specializing in the production of handcrafted fiber art tools, it isn’t much different.
Fiber art is created using textiles such as natural and synthetic fibers, yarn or fabric.
In a typical year, the Szarys attend between 10 and 12 fiber art shows, where they bring and sell their products to different communities, traveling as far north as Michigan and as far south as Georgia. Each of the shows they had scheduled for this year have been canceled.
“This year we decided to buy a lovely camper for when we do all of these shows, so we could have our camper and we could kind of have the whole experience instead of staying at hotels,” Sue Szary said. “Well, now we’ve got this lovely camper sitting on our property in anticipation of when the show season starts again.”
Sue has control over the company’s marketing, shipping, packaging and invoicing, while Rich is in charge of production and product development. Together, they make a team that’s established a major presence in the North Carolina fiber arts community.
Twin Birch Products also offers wholesale buying, selling its products to more than 100 businesses nationwide, along with many schools that are still teaching traditional fiber art skills.
In addition to their appearance at in-person shows, the Szarys also have a 4,000 square-foot brick-and-mortar “fiber space” called Twin Birch & Teasel, located in the downtown arts district in Siler City, which remains open with modified hours.
This location serves as a retail, studio and education space, where they place a heavy emphasis on local artists, selling products like fair-trade African baskets, yarn, spinning wheels and accessories, fiber-related jewelry and other locally sourced goods, alongside their own birchwood fiber art tools.
“What we do is try to encourage local sales, local artists,” Sue said. “Everything in our store needs to have a story. It has to have kind of a hands-on component to it. There’s a human piece, the hands-on, the actual imagination that goes into the things that we carry here.”
Twin Birch Products also works with the Siler City Merchants Association to raise awareness about the fiber arts community in Chatham County, while simultaneously using its space to give artists a place to create.
There are three resident artists at Twin Birch & Teasel’s studio, including Sue, which she refers to as their “playground” because they tend to experiment with different types of art. Rentable studio space is also available, both short- and long-term, for artists.
Education is also a major component of Twin Birch’s mission, with a few guest artists teaching in-house classes such as Saori — a Japanese weaving technique — and Tunisian crochet. However, no classes have been held in the space since late February due to the pandemic and there is no plan to teach them in the foreseeable future.
While Twin Birch & Teasel may not be hosting any physical classes — and very few virtual classes — that doesn’t mean the Szarys have stopped working to get new people involved in the community.
“We always take joy in introducing products to new knitters, to student knitters, to children that are learning at home,” Sue said. “We’re enablers here. We’re going to help people down the path, get them information, get them the materials that they need and answer as many questions as we can.”
Over the past five months, which saw the announcement of the stay-at-home order by Gov. Roy Cooper in March, many people have attempted to pick up new hobbies or relearn old skills while they have more time on their hands. Sue has gotten to see this first hand.
“Last weekend a woman bought a pair of knitting needles for her mother in Texas and her 7-year-old daughter was with her,” Sue said. “The daughter said ‘I want to learn to knit too!’ So now that she’s home with her, she bought a pair and she’ll teach her to knit.”
There have been some knitters who have come into Twin Birch & Teasel to buy more needles because they’re working on five or six projects at once since they now have the time and flexibility to choose which project they want to spend time with.
The lack of in-person fiber art shows, however, is limiting to how Twin Birch Products can branch out, grow their brand and introduce new folks to the art.
That’s where virtual shows come in.
Some of the larger fiber art shows, such as the Southeastern Animal Fiber Festival in Asheville, aren’t hosting virtual shows, but they have a spot on their website where people can view all of their would-be vendors and visit their websites to buy directly from them online.
Other shows will begin hosting virtual events where someone can set up a time slot to “visit” a specific vendor online — such as Twin Birch Products — who will have their camera on so the customer can browse the products being offered and then purchase them from the vendor’s website.
It may not be the most ideal way to spend the show season, but according to Sue, it’s better than nothing.
“You speak with your customers across hundreds and hundreds of miles and try to make that work,” Sue said. “It’s really not the same as the touchy-feely and being able to tell stories with each other. The fiber arts community shares so many stories of their experiences with the traditional craft and so it’s not quite the same, but at least we’ll still have a presence.”
Twin Birch Products aims to attend some virtual shows throughout 2020. With an already well-established website that includes an online marketplace where people can buy their products, the Szarys are ahead of the curve.
Despite all of the challenges that have emerged over the last five months, Sue remains optimistic for the future and continues to reinforce why she loves her job.
“We make tools that other people can walk around and say, ‘I made this, I made it with your needles, look at what I made because of your tools,’” Sue said. “I think my favorite part [of owning Twin Birch Products] is just the endless possibilities for ourselves, for others and the opportunity to make connections.”