Ny Cares Creative Expressions With Visions Arts and Crafts
Confession: When I tell people I write for American Craft – something I've done for 35 years at present – I brace for what I know is coming. If they're not really familiar with our magazine, the reaction is almost always the aforementioned: a pleasant look of recognition and genuine interest, tinged with vague puzzlement. "Oh, yep," they say, "I call up I know it."
Typically, they've dislocated it with a how-to or traditional handicrafts publication – not that there's anything wrong with either assumption. And so I ever feel obliged to explain our field of study thing. But I'grand never entirely comfortable or satisfied with my answer.
You lot're holding this magazine, or looking at it online. How would you describe, to the average person, what it covers?
Well, information technology's handmade work today, I say. Ceramics and glass, quilts and weavings and furniture and jewelry, all kinds of beautiful objects. High quality, things you'd see in galleries and museums and blueprint shops. Expressive, like painting or sculpture. Or but great everyday items to live with and use. Oh, some of it is a little out there – offbeat materials, giant installations, conceptual – stuff you lot might not think of every bit arts and crafts at all. Plus some traditional work, mayhap with a twist. And there'southward a whole history and philosophy in the field; a lot of the work now is socially conscious.
In other words, I struggle, I ramble. Somehow a single, concise, all-purpose definition of "craft"" eludes me. In the end, I just proselytize. Our mag celebrates a world of amazing creation and inspiration, I tell people, and you should really cheque information technology out. When they do, they're blown away past the work they encounter.
Let'south face it, "craft" is a curious word. Nosotros think we know information technology, but do we? Richly evocative of tradition, history, and a standard of quality, the word tin can connote many things: skill, fine art form, antidote to the machine, hobby, therapy, counterculture, deception. In the past decade solitary, with the rise of a new generation, we've seen the field expand to include DIY, craftivism, and maker culture. Some artists and art institutions avoid the give-and-take – that'south zero new – but other voices and audiences accept stepped upwardly to embrace and merits information technology.
It feels like a adept fourth dimension to get a sense of what craft means now. So nosotros've asked around, seeking cursory answers to 2 questions: "What is craft?" and "What person, object, upshot, or work of fine art epitomizes your view of craft?" We sought perspectives from dozens of artists, thinkers, and leaders in our own field and others.
The responses were thoughtful, heartfelt, provocative, some times vexed. While no consensus emerged, a few themes did.
CRAFT IS UNIVERSAL
This is a large one: craft as a value that can apply to any attempt, be it music, gardening, food, film, even lifestyle. Certainly it's proved a marketable notion (arts and crafts beer, anyone?). Some might argue the tendency jumped the shark once big consumer brands started advertising "signature crafted" fast-food burgers and "curated" salads. (Quilted Northern spoofed the aesthetic on April Fool's Day by touting its fictitious "rustic weave artisanal" toilet paper.) Still, there's magic in handling materials with idea and care, an ideal all of u.s.a. can understand, capeesh, and pursue.
"Craft is the dovetailing of discipline and imagination, dedication and inspiration. When those spiral around each other, and serious attending is given over to that alchemy, then one's craft can be realized. My item craft uses notes and words, and sometimes they are difficult to wrangle into a pleasing shape, but no more hard than thread and fabric, wood and knife, canvas and paint, flour and butter." ~ Rosanne Greenbacks, singer, songwriter, author
"Craft is practical creativity. Information technology's the process of turning the spark of an idea into something tangible and cute using your own hands, skills, artful, and vision. It could be a poem, a bowl, a pair of shoes, a plate of food, a sculpture, a building, a song. Marlee Grace embodies my view of craft today. Whether she'due south writing, dancing, sewing, teaching, workshopping, or just living her life, it'southward all a personal practice that's very fluid and intentional." ~ Susannah Daly, founder and creative manager, Renegade Arts and crafts fairs
"Craft, to me, is the skill developed, applied, and made manifest through exercise and subject field in the fabrication of a work of fine art. Could be a chair, a lasagna, a painting, a symphony, or a monologue." ~ Nick Offerman, co-host, NBC's Making It; woodworker
"Craft is the universal language of the paw, a language that needs no words. It is a language steeped in the power of personal creativity and expression. The belatedly Anthony Bourdain's CNN series about food, travel, and culture, Parts Unknown, fully fits my view of arts and crafts." ~ Ivan Barnett, artist; director, Patina Gallery, Santa Fe
"I believe the way a cook handles ingredients, especially vegetables – like working with clay or forest or metal or paper – is the craft of the thing. The visual and tactile possibilities of each leafage, world, tuber, bunch, pod, sprout, seed, stalk, and sprig enhances the medium. Makes usa look once again. Appreciate. Salivate." ~ Dorothy Kalins, founding editor, Saveur and Metropolitan Dwelling house magazines
"The idea of arts and crafts every bit we fundamentally understand it – equally an arroyo to production and a category of object – was invented in the 19th century by the British Arts and crafts movement. It was a counter-industrial credo meant to eliminate the harmful atmospheric condition of factory labor and elevate the spiritual well-being of the consumer. The craftsman was a skilled tradesman who was employed to build someone else's designs for useful, beautiful objects, from starting time to end, in healthful surroundings. The 20th-century studio arts and crafts movement layered new meanings onto craft to plough it into a counter-corporate ideology – a rebellion against the facelessness and conformity of white-neckband piece of work. The craftsperson was a self-employed individual who sought fulfillment from within past creating precious objects that could just come from one person's rarefied skills and singular artful vision. The craft object expanded beyond the traditional sphere of the decorative arts to encompass related work that could be conceptual or sculptural in intent, although still fabricated from traditional materials and techniques. In our 21st century, craft has taken on a new life every bit a counter-virtual ideology, a counterweight to the insipidness of lives spent looking at screens and tapping on keyboards. In one case again, people are turning to the demanding work of bringing new things into the world with imagination and skill as a way to forge ameliorate lives. Only this time, the category of arts and crafts has expanded to betoken the presence of private agency in the cosmos of anything, regardless of material or technique, from custom-made chairs to craft beers to software to 'hand-curated playlists' on Spotify." ~ Peter Korn, manager, Centre for Article of furniture Craftsmanship, Rockport, Maine; author, Why We Make Things and Why It Matters
"Arts and crafts is a wide and slippery word. Information technology can refer to types of objects – 'contemporary craft' – especially those made of ceramics, cobweb, glass, metal, or woods. These can exist functional, sculptural, or conceptual. Craft can also refer to how someone practices a trade, whether an artisan, actor, playwright, or auditor. Someone in one case told me, 'If you give a darn virtually how something is made, and so it's craft!'" ~ Fabio Fernández, artist; past executive director, Society of Arts + Crafts, Boston
"I think it tin best be summarized as a body of noesis and hand skill that'south passed downwardly from generation to generation. Who or what epitomizes it? Information technology'south like nutrient: It's all around u.s., we need it, and at that place are space variations on it. And whether people are versed in its history and technique or non, they know what they like." ~ Sarah Archer, arts and culture writer, independent curator
"Craft to me is a item skill combined with artistic integrity, created and developed into something that is appreciated by people. This can be applied to physical materials – wood, clay, stone – or aviation, music, visual art, etc. In music, guitarist Pat Metheny combines his compositional skills, soloing, and playing to accomplish the prototype of what arts and crafts sounds like to my ears. Of grade, whatever Frank Lloyd Wright structure or work of art by Picasso ultimately epitomizes craft." ~ Nathan Due east, musician, recording artist, longtime bassist for Eric Clapton
"In architecture, craft is the intelligent utilize of materials that unites beauty with role. Delivering that along with economy of cost is the holy grail for experienced architects. It's understandable that architects ofttimes don't master that challenge until late in their careers. Equally a young architect, I was in awe of what Louis Kahn did tardily in his career at the Salk Found, where he raised the use of exposed concrete to the level of an fine art form. The quality of the concrete piece of work in that location has often been emulated simply rarely duplicated in the decades since it was built." ~ J. Peter Devereaux, chairman and CEO, Harley Ellis Devereaux
"I believe craft is annihilation yous want it to be. Information technology'due south malleable, wild, and undefinable. Craft is fluid and queer. It wields the power to be all things at once, with no rules." ~ Faythe Levine, author and filmmaker, Handmade Nation; assistant curator, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin
Craft IS A DISCIPLINE
This view emphasizes craft as an earned skill in the service of creativity, a way of doing things exceptionally well through written report, practice, and dedication. It'southward craft as a commitment, a form of expression, a fashion of life.
"Craft exists at the intersection of skill and creativity. Judith Schaechter embodies craft, in my opinion, because she creates art that is simultaneously incredibly original, skillfully made, and inspired by the cloth itself." ~ Jennifer Zwilling, curator of creative programs, the Clay Studio, Philadelphia
"Craft is the mastery of fabric and technique. Epitome: Lino Tagliapietra. ~ Erik Demaine, origami artist, professor of informatics at MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Martin Demaine, mathematician, glassblower, MIT artist-in-residence.
"Information technology's impossible to define arts and crafts in a sentence or two. Sometimes in the U.s.a., people view arts and crafts equally a laborer's job, just in reality, craft is much more than that. In Europe, craft is an important and honored part of culture that is learned and dates dorsum thousands of years. In Italian, the word for craftsman is artigiano, which means creating fine art with culture in mind." ~ Lino Tagliapietra, main glassblower, Murano, Italy, and Seattle
"I believe craft is the outcome of numerous small actions, carried out endlessly and sometimes repetitively. Just after a while, something emerges which is substantial and has its own unique grapheme, nonetheless commonplace the activity that produced information technology. Equally a producer of musical craft, I call back above all of the composer J.S. Bach, working ceaselessly in apprehensive contexts such as didactics, but somehow managing to produce wonderful art." ~ Judith Weir, CBE, Master of the Queen's Music (official composer to Elizabeth II)
"What is craft? Broadly speaking, I follow the Richard Sennett line that craft is about someone doing a chore well for its own sake. It's important to stress that a sense of craft is present throughout all walks of life, from manufacturing industry to fine art, via technology and medicine." ~ Grant Gibson, immediate past editor, Crafts mag, Crafts Quango, UK
"Craft is a way of doing things involving deliberateness and attending to item and representing the accumulation of skill over fourth dimension. Craft invites a life in which the objects that surroundings us speak to us of what is of import. For me, craft tin exist embodied in things as disparate as Cherokee baskets, a Sam Maloof chair, or – I detest to say it – an iPhone." ~ Miguel Gómez-Ibáñez, president, North Bennet Street School, Boston
"I view the notion of arts and crafts non as limited by materials, but as a process. I frequently utilise the term 'skilled making"' when discussing arts and crafts, which can encompass most materials. Craft to me is often an integral role of the process when making artwork. Craft, still, always exists as a concrete artifact; it cannot subsist as concept alone." ~ Mia Hall, executive director, Penland School of Crafts, Penland, North Carolina
"Craft is a delivery to a lifelong conversation with material and procedure. While style and technique evolve over the course of a maker'south career, craft is that most key desire to feel, articulate, and sympathise the complexity of your own piece of work. The potter Byron Temple not only had an effortless and graceful touch with his material, but he also demonstrated that same level of finesse in his ability to contextualize, document, and market his ain work. His beautifully designed catalogues showcased his work in such an elegant manner and educated his customers on how simple, humble stoneware pots can be elevated to exquisite objects through the mastery of both making and contextualization." ~ Brian Giniewski, ceramist
"To me, craft is expressed past work that reads of the materials and process of its making and the purpose for which information technology was fabricated – by hand or motorcar. Favorite makers: Wharton Esherick, Toshiko Takaezu, Lenore Tawney, Ed Rossbach, and Anni Albers." ~ Jack Lenor Larsen, weaver, textile designer, craft collector, and advocate
"We call up of arts and crafts every bit the overlap of science, the technical aspects and boundaries of the medium; art, one's personal touch and lens; and tradition, the time-tested vocabulary of movements and ideas that are shared generationally. At our distillery, [master blender] David Stewart relies on different makers and craftspeople to orchestrate the liquid as he imagines information technology. For example, our coopers dedicate their fourth dimension to the casks for quality and flavor render, whereas our malters work to stimulate the best potential yield from the barley seed." ~ Jonathan Wingo, brand administrator, The Balvenie scotch whisky, Dufftown, Scotland
"Craft is the intentional expression by hands of what is in the mind, melding respect for materials with mastery and purposeful apply of technique. Three exquisite examples of craft: Soundsuits past Nick Cave, cloisonné jewelry by Aurélie Guillaume, and the Crochet Coral Reef, created and curated past Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim of the Constitute For Figuring." ~ Lisa Bayne, CEO, Aesthetic Dwelling, Madison, Wisconsin
"Arts and crafts is the quintessential conjoining of a strong point of view, appropriate materials, and a maker or makers. A dandy example is the work of David Pye, who approached craftsmanship and perception as a kind of spiritual personal growth delivery. Another example is the piece of work of Tanya Aguiñiga, who uses arts and crafts equally a form of political community edifice and communication." ~ Rosanne Somerson, president, Rhode Island School of Design; article of furniture maker
"1. No one thinks the word 'arts and crafts' is obsolete!! two. Every artist has 'craft.' 3. Every artist's so-called 'craft' is simply to *re-ascertain skill.* 4. At present do you see? XO" ~ Jerry Saltz, senior fine art critic, New York magazine
"At its best, craft exhibits technical brilliance and innovative techniques and materials; most important, it relays an artist's passion and ideas." ~ JoAnne Cooper, Mobilia Gallery
"Craft refers to works washed where the imagination and the hand of the maker are evident. Frequently the value of a piece is in the workmanship of the creative person rather than what information technology's made of. Examples: Harvey Ellis of Stickley Furniture, Greene & Greene architects, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Dan Dailey, a glass creative person with imagination and humor." ~ Collector Marian Burke, who with her married man, Russell, endowed the new Burke Prize, awarded past the Museum of Arts and Pattern
"We similar our art well-crafted. Dale Chihuly crafts blown glass elements in the service of creating works of art. Sandy Skoglund crafts installations that she photographs. The photographs are the works of art simply the craftsmanship of the installations makes them possible. Another instance: sculptor Tip Toland." ~ Dale and Doug Anderson, collectors; co-founders, Association of Israel's Decorative Arts
"At a gathering a few years agone, I noticed that Stoney Lamar called himself a sculptor and a maker merely never used the terms 'creative person,' 'artisan,' or 'craftsman.' The distinction is not about the object. Rather information technology is a commemoration of and commitment to the process." ~ Carissa Hussong, executive director, Metal Museum
"What epitomizes craft? Two works come up to my mind most immediately: Joy, a brooch by Sharon Church of meticulously carved wood and fabricated silver; and Wayne Higby's majestic wall mural Earthcloud, of manus-carved, glazed porcelain tiles, commissioned for Alfred University. Both combine technical skill and understanding of material with a unique creative vision. These, for me, fulfill the concept of craft." ~ Helen Drutt English language, sometime gallerist, collector, scholar
Craft IS Activeness
Craft is a verb – an active, activist i, evolving and involving. Whether information technology'southward an artist pursuing a personal vision or technical innovation, a community project to teach children the joy of handwork, a public performance or happening, or thousands knitting pink hats, arts and crafts is a moving vehicle.
"Craft grows from everyday human experience, which makes it inherently social and political. Information technology elevates the role that technique, method, materials, and customs play in artmaking. The art of handcrafting imprints a piece with power – the power to educate, to challenge, to captivate, to provoke." ~ Suzanne Isken, executive manager, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles
"I find it helpful to think near craft as a verb – an action, a community, something with agency – rather than but a noun, an object. The upcoming 2018 Renwick Invitational ("Disrupting Craft," November 9 – May v, 2019) includes four artists – Tanya Aguiñiga, Stephanie Syjuco, Sharif Bey, and Dustin Farnsworth – who exemplify these ideas, working outside the conventional definitions of the arts and crafts world but using the conceptual toolkits of arts and crafts to create communities and dialogue, to be agents of social change. Using the strong combination of social practice and arts and crafts, they interrogate pressing gimmicky issues of cultural identity and social injustice, and question established historical narratives." ~ Abraham Thomas, curator-in-charge, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
"The pushing and pulling of materials and processes in social club to test their physical limits and perceptual boundaries. A cultural and critical response to the entire history of making 'things.' A verb. Exemplars include Sonya Clark'due south work Unraveled, in which she picked apart a Confederate flag, thread by thread. Besides, Jeffrey Gibson's ecstatic and admittedly gorgeous panels and objects that place at the forefront a Native critique of gimmicky visual civilisation." ~ Stephanie Syjuco, artist; assistant professor in sculpture, Academy of California, Berkeley
"Craft is a verb, an action, meaning to brand or to process. I do not believe in arts and crafts as a noun, a affair, every bit in 'I make craft.' My all-time example is Chris Wight, who used a calculator, a water saw, and a special gift of jasper clay from Wedgwood to make a futuristic homage to the Portland Vase [an ancient Roman cameo glass vessel]. The meticulous planning and mitt associates to brand these works is monumental. No, they practice not just popular out of machines; they require superb crafting. Nada in the word 'arts and crafts' suggests that it must be by hand, be absent of machinery, require virtuosity, or have medieval roots. And Wight's vases are breathtakingly haptic and beautiful." ~ Garth Clark, ceramics critic and historian; editor-in-principal, CFile.org
"Arts and crafts is a verb rather than a substantive. Information technology is a particular, sustained approach to making. In my 20 years at the California College of the Arts, I've seen craft applied to digital and analog tools across disciplines. What's mutual is a sustained relationship with materials and a focused, iterative procedure. We recently awarded an honorary doctorate to Lia Cook, who epitomizes craft today. Her work celebrates fabric and process while exploring retentiveness and the power of imagery" ~ Stephen Beal, president, California Higher of the Arts
"The word 'arts and crafts' signifies refined idea and execution. Every bit an agile verb, craft is used to denote the marker of the hand, technique, and the making of piece of work, and therefore represents a hyper-awareness of execution aslope class, medium, and concept." ~ Donna Davies, vice president, Urban Expositions Fine art Group, producer of SOFA Chicago
CRAFT IS HERITAGE
Skills and heirlooms are preserved and handed downward over generations, within families. In the bigger picture, the drive to create is part of who we are, in our very DNA.
"Craft in the truest, most bones sense is about the human demand to make and connect; to bring the root of tradition and the power of the homo hand on cloth and class together; with exploration, and without limitation, to connect the states all to the world we live in. I'm a fabric artisan who specialized in reproduction 17th-century wearable and textiles, and I've likewise done conservation piece of work on originals. Coming from that traditional background, I'm moved and intrigued to witness simultaneously both the evolution and common thread that remains at the heart of craft." ~ Denise Lebica, director, Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts
"I believe the words 'craft' and 'craftsmanship' take important meaning in the 21st century. The instinct to make objects by hand is as old every bit civilization and is identified with every civilisation in the world. In the United States, it was challenged in the 19th century, survived and blossomed in the 20th, and persists today. [ACC founder] Aileen Osborn Webb's work in cultivating the studio [arts and crafts] movement was very of import. While many programs and activities occurred in different parts of the land, Mrs. Webb's vision and patronage get-go in the 1930s were pivotal in nurturing a pocket-sized activity to get a significant area of the arts today." ~ Paul J. Smith, curator, author; director emeritus, American Craft Museum
"Craft for me is a connectedness to our body retention, an acknowledgment of labor and all of the inherent context of materials, and the active continuation of tradition while in conversation with it. The works of Roberto Lugo and Teresa Margolles are perfect examples of my personal estimation of craft – a constant dialogue between personal histories and material, opening up contextual ways that functional objects can communicate electric current issues, and ways that the histories of marginalized communities can be integrated into American history." ~ Tanya Aguiñiga, artist and designer
"For me, craft defies binary traditions and subsequent categorizations of 'either/or.' It is an idea, practice, or approach that is inherently humanistic. We are makers – builders of skyscrapers, technological marvels, fast cars, and objects of communal significance. Craft is an extension of what it means to exist man in this electric current fourth dimension and place of history." ~ Elizabeth Kozlowski, editor, Surface Design Journal
"People everywhere are makers – no thing how good they are or [whether they're] recognized. It is a human demand. In 1995, a keynote talk I gave was published in American Craft every bit 'The Pleasure and Significant of Making.' The essay has garnered nearly 2,000 hits from 64 countries on my academia.com site. These amazing numbers tell me that making is universally practiced, not just the province of a few 'masters.'" ~ Ellen Dissanayake, author, What Is Art For? and Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why
Arts and crafts IS ALL Effectually The states
Outside the globe of white walls, pedestals, and academia, arts and crafts is, of course, a huge industry. We love our hobbies – the knitting and sewing and woodworking, things our ancestors did out of necessity. It may non exist the about rarefied view of craft, but for many, it's where meaning and retention live.
"To me, craft is combining creativity and process, using what we can do with our hands to brand something with which to connect to others, our surroundings, or ourselves. My maternal grandmother's work won't be in museums or galleries but exists in memories and in the many items she made to keep people warm, just like the work of millions before her, made from love and skill and care." ~ Betsy Greer, author, Craftivism: The Art of Arts and crafts and Activism
"For me, craft involves an awareness of a human having been responsible for an object's creation, as if the maker'southward presence never entirely leaves the object. This presence could come from an element such as visible stitching, or just in witnessing the thoughtfulness that was needed to bring the piece to life. The objects that most epitomize arts and crafts to me are quilts. There is so much fourth dimension, stitching, and care involved in their cosmos. Particularly, I'1000 drawn to quilts that have been created from used textiles. Non simply exercise these materials take then much inherent character, only they besides stand as a challenge (both functionally and aesthetically) to what i might consider waste material." ~ Kat Roberts, author, Crafting for Cat Ladies and other DIY handbooks
Arts and crafts IS COMPLICATED
Here's where it gets prickly. The sometime art-versus-craft argue lives on, accompanied now by conversations virtually race, course, gender, and culture. People accept questions: Does craft accept an identity problem? Is openness to interpretation a weakness or a strength? Is craft, without exception, a noble pursuit? Why are we even talking virtually this?
"Arts and crafts is making something skillfully; information technology's just that elementary. But from that basic definition, infinite complexities arise." ~ Glenn Adamson, curator and historian; author, Thinking Through Arts and crafts
"Craft is art." ~ Ballad Sauvion, creator, executive producer and manager, Arts and crafts in America films; owner, Freehand Gallery, Los Angeles
"Plenty of cultural structures ensure that arts and crafts is utilitarian and defined by the history of techniques and materials. 'Fine art' prefers a hierarchy, ensuring its superiority; past that definition, craft is the lesser of the two. To me, craft is art that results from indistinguishable melding of process, materials, and concept." ~ Judith Schaechter, artist working in stained drinking glass
"Craft is divers by a series of attributes. None are necessary, just the more you detect in an object, the more than craft it is. In that location is a center of arts and crafts, and a periphery. Both are valid. Craft tin be handmade but does not accept to be. Craft can be made of traditional craft materials, such as clay or wood, but does not have to be. Arts and crafts can exist fabricated using traditional craft techniques, such as weaving or glassblowing, but does not have to be. Arts and crafts can apply a traditional craft context, such as the vessel or the garment, simply does not have to. Craft can address the history of craft itself simply does not have to. Role is not a defining attribute of arts and crafts." ~ Bruce Metcalf, studio jeweler; co-author, Makers: A History of American Studio Arts and crafts
"Ah, such a dangerous word. It can go from the high (collectable, applied/decorative arts, pattern-driven craft, etc.) to the low (the sidewalk ceramist) and everything in between. If information technology ways dissimilar things to everyone, does it hateful anything? That'south a question I wrestle with. I recollect a really modern definition includes the piece of work of people like Joseph Luttwak of Blackbird Guitars. He started by building cute guitars by hand using advanced carbon fiber blended, and ended up (in his search for a better, more sustainable fabric) creating a new eco-material called Ekoa that promises to supplant wood in many applications, protecting confronting overexploitation. Why practise I include this within the earth of craft? Because it's near incredible workmanship joining not simply with a mastery of material and its backdrop, but also creating a cloth that represents an innovation based on deep craft." ~ Regina Connell, founder, Handful of Common salt
"Over the last few years I've used the discussion 'craft' to designate traditionally handmade objects that have a decorative or utilitarian purpose – so more like "handicraft." This includes simple decorative embroidery, knitting, weaving, ceramics, wood carving, some forms of glasswork, and a variety of paper arts, simply the list goes on. However, in the final twenty to 30 years, I feel there's been an enormous, consistent endeavor on behalf of many artists to drag these mediums into the realm of truthful contemporary fine art. I find it increasingly problematic (and some artists are quite sensitive, others not) to label something as arts and crafts; instead we might say an artwork has been created with a 'traditional craft technique.' Sometimes it feels like a ludicrous battle of semantics." ~ Christopher Jobson, founder and editor in principal, Colossal visual culture weblog
"'Arts and crafts' is a tricky word, often misused. Craft implies physical interest and participation by the creator. My feeling is that when the discussion 'craft' is used to draw a work of art, it is –wrongly – frequently considered lowbrow. What's an instance of craft? The Sistine Chapel comes to mind." ~ Douglas Kirkland, photographer
"I'chiliad always a lilliputian bit uncomfortable talking about craft. In graduate school 20 years ago, I was working with corn husks (a crafty material past Yale Schoolhouse of Fine art standards), and craft was identified as a debasing. At that point I started looking at models in Western art history that could help validate my material choices, which were drawn from my Seneca cultural identity. I don't see art and craft as separate. With that said, craft is a visual expression manifesting in skillfully realized commonsensical appurtenances, discrete objects, and performative works. Information technology's fun to call up that I tin can sleep with craft, wake upward, and expect at it, as well as gustatory modality, touch, and heed to it, because craft has the potential to engage all senses. Equally a maker, I appreciate that craft has a long history rooted in collaboration and cross-generational cognition sharing that connects dorsum to our ancestors just too anticipates future generations. Craft is innovative. Craft is also generous – a substantive and a verb. A few artists who epitomize what I like well-nigh craft: Shan Goshorn, Rebecca Belmore, Jeffry Mitchell, and Dan Webb." ~ Marie Watt, artist
"I find that 'craft' is a term that illuminates and obfuscates in equal measure. In speaking of process, I adopt David Pye's 'workmanship of risk' versus 'workmanship of certainty.' Simply to me, craft is a field of making that holds material, method, and meaning tightly together, no affair the finished work." ~ Perry A. Cost, executive director, Houston Centre for Gimmicky Craft
"Craft is messy and cannot exist contained; in that location is power in rough edges that cannot exist neatly categorized. Which craft is the craft to discuss hither? Baskets or Art Basel – or everything in between? Arts and crafts connects the everyday and the singular. Craft shifts with place and time; arts and crafts in the US brings the whole earth and centuries of making into the conversation. Craft is persistent; information technology does non and will non go abroad. People acquit arts and crafts knowledge with them; arts and crafts is an embodied way of passing on civilisation." ~ Namita Gupta Wiggers, educator; director and co-founder, Critical Arts and crafts Forum
"Is an atomic number 26 manacle hand-forged in 1830 for slave bondage worth calling craft? What word describes Kabiye blacksmiths Kao Kossi and Ide Essozimna upcycling flake metal from cars into ritual gongs? Scar tissue in everyday cloth civilization illuminates the ways 'mastery' is a dubious appetite in arts and crafts – and in civilization." ~ Ezra Shales, art history professor, Massachusetts College of Fine art and Design, Boston; author, The Shape of Arts and crafts
"America's poet laureate Donald Hall said writers need 2 essential qualities: imagination to see something with fresh eyes and skill to communicate that wonder to the residuum of us. That's good, but he left something out: a moral compass. Craft is neutral; Leni Riefenstahl had arts and crafts only used information technology to make movies in back up of Hitler. Craft married to moral purpose is a blessing to the world." ~ Roy Peter Clark, writing autobus; writer of more than than 10 books on writing
"Arts and crafts has historically been modified by 'studio' – as in 'studio craft' – only these terms, over the last xxx years, take become uncoupled. And rightly then. Studio arts and crafts every bit a history has privileged white, middle-course, and largely male artists. It has favored certain programs and item lineages, and sustained a genealogy of principal craftsmen (emphasis on men). American studio arts and crafts has a deep and difficult history of cultural cribbing – sustaining its own forms with traditions that are borrowed, stolen, and appropriated from the poor, the indigenous, and from people of colour whose own systems of production were destroyed or altered by colonization. Craft is a raft: Endeavour to climb aboard, but it is slippery and flips over ofttimes. It is a adept time to build the boat anew." ~ Jenni Sorkin, associate professor, history of art, UC Santa Barbara; writer, Alive Grade: Women, Ceramics and Community
CRAFT IS PROFOUND
Just when unresolved questions threaten to tie us in knots, an uplifting, fifty-fifty spiritual bulletin comes through. Above all, we're touched past the love and concern for arts and crafts expressed by all of our respondents, many of whom regard it equally essential, a means of salvation from the stress, distraction, and disconnection of modern life.
"Craft is the innate bulldoze for humans to transform materials with the goal of bringing significant, value, and/or joy to existing in this earth. The builder Samuel Mockbee, of Rural Studio fame, exemplifies what it means to wait at the needs of the earth and to transform available resource and materials through thoughtful, human design-build processes. A Mockbee quote that guides me: 'Everyone, rich or poor, deserves a shelter for the soul.'" ~ Michael J. Strand, ceramist; professor and head of visual arts, Northward Dakota State University, Fargo
"Craft is designing, making, and building something that provides value to your life or someone else's. Value can mean many things: happiness, usefulness, function, self-worth. Craft is an intrinsic expression of life and cosmos." ~ Natalie Chanin, "tedious design" pioneer; founder and creative director, Alabama Chanin fashion and abode goods visitor, Florence, Alabama
"Craft is like the air nosotros exhale: ubiquitous, ever-present, and an absolute necessity. Its ubiquity tin sometimes return it invisible. Society relies on craft but sometimes does non run into information technology or its broad affect. That is, we frequently simply notice it in its absence, when the air gets thin. We long for its oxygen to fill our lungs when society is starving for a deep connexion to our humanity." ~ Sonya Clark, artist and professor
"Craft is about more than just making. It is a knowledge, a wisdom, and a power that we can use to improve our lives through a improve understanding of the properties of materials. Arts and crafts, crafting, and craftsmanship is about a state of existence and a fashion of knowing. Sometimes we talk, in a spiritual sense, about being 'awake' or 'mindful,' and I think it is entirely advisable to extend this land of awareness to craft. I guess I'thousand going to audio almost evangelical here, but I exercise believe in that location is a virtuous, even spiritual, attribute to embracing arts and crafts in your life. Robin Woods has been a real inspiration. His bowl-turning is second to none and matched by the generosity he shows to others. Robin was instrumental in setting upwardly the Heritage Crafts Clan, the advocacy body for celebrated crafts in Britain." ~ Alexander Langlands, archaeologist, historian, BBC presenter; writer, Cræft: An Research Into the Origins and Truthful Significant of Traditional Crafts
"Craft demands care, risk-taking, duration, refinement, flexibility of process, and the conscious awarding of intelligence, so stands as a crucial counterpoint to instant-answer, push-push button living. Fifty-fifty if it is at times tacit, automatic, and engineering science-infused, arts and crafts holds out the promise of remaining apart from – and gaining perspective on – the machine, and therefore arts and crafts remains a securely human attempt. In comparing arts and crafts to a 'workmanship of chance' and the machine-made to a 'workmanship of certainty,' David Pye brilliantly articulated the deeply improvisational, organic nature of craft. He taught us what it means to strive." ~ Maggie Jackson, author, Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention and a forthcoming volume on craft
"Working with materials allows united states of america to connect to ourselves in ways that are hard to reach otherwise. It allows us to tap into the long tradition and lineage of makers who paved the way for us. It builds and reinforces the importance of community and the need for pity and back up. To view craft every bit only textile mastery does not practice it justice. It is a way of thinking and expressing through a fabric, in which both the object and procedure accept tremendous potential and significance." ~ Kimberly Winkle, woodworker; director, School of Art, Craft & Design, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville
"Craft hovers in the infinite between the maker's embodiment of a process and fabric and the satisfaction that this engagement brings to the maker. An integration of the disciplined work of the manus with the development of new processes that underscore the link between skill and humanity's eternal need to create, arts and crafts is as much well-nigh the future of making as information technology is about its history." ~ Jennifer-Navva Milliken, artistic director, Center for Art in Wood, Philadelphia
"Craft is a voyage, a caravan, an trek. Information technology has the ability to transform maker and object by way of a creative continuum that transcends technology, material, and cognition. Key example: Ann Hamilton's work." ~ Michael Radyk, textile creative person; managing director of education, American Craft Council, Minneapolis
"Arts and crafts embodies commitment and community. Information technology offers a improve quality of life and a deeper connexion to one another. Craft embraces the work of various cultures in a way that is authentic and inclusive. I observe information technology empowering to recollect that, while the arts are a relatively modern invention, craft has been with us all along." ~ Stephanie Moore, executive director, Center for Craft, Creativity & Design, Asheville, N Carolina
What does "arts and crafts" mean to y'all? Ship united states a note at [email protected], or share your thoughts on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram with the hashtag #whatcraftmeans.
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Source: https://www.craftcouncil.org/magazine/article/craft-seriously-what-does-word-mean
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