my current projects include:
the stanford daily
i currently write a column titled “The Culture of Craft,” where i muse about what crafting/craftsmanship is, means, and can do. read my articles here.
health bites
i occasionally write for my own blog, healthbites.blog, about topics related to healthcare systems, equity, and policy.
leatherworking
writer’s bag
most of my current leatherworking bandwidth is taken up by a personal project to create what i have called my “writer’s bag,” a wide, flat bag meant to accommodate as many books as i care to read at once, alongside pens and notebooks. notably, there is no provision for laptops or devices of any sort.
attached above is my rapid design sketching/braindump, from which my project derives. my current iteration of designs barely resembles these initial sketches (and they continue to evolve as i work) but they give a good idea of where i’m going with it.
much to my roommate’s chagrin, i began work in my dorm room recently.
bone needles
as a part of a class i’m taking (archeology of craft), i made bone needles for my final project. i made a few items (e.g. a moccasin) with them, to test various shapes/designs/techniques, but want to continue playing around with them on various projects to get a better idea of how they constrain/inform design, material choice, and techniques.
a book?
i have a harebrained idea to write a novel.
the idea is to follow a young man who meets a charismatic character, who espouses neoliberal ideology and becomes the (figure)head of a political movement/government. it is meant to track the slow degradation of the main character’s personal relationship as it devolves into a kafkaesque navigation of bureaucracy. somehow, the “bureaucracy” itself doesn’t formally exist, yet is strictly ordered and administered (if only by sheer charisma and “market forces”).
i intend it as a sort of critique of neoliberal thinking and routinization. i’m inspired by: weber, kafka, gramsci, camus, nietzsche, foucault, dostoevsky, orwell, and a slate of neoliberal thinkers like von mises, hayek, and friedman.
it will be a miracle if pen ever touches page in service of this half-baked, mostly derivative idea, though.
Quinn Cook 