Sunday, August 22, 2010

I am delinquent and tardy, but know that I have been writing and thinking.

There has not been a followup post about my experience at the American Craft Council conference or much else because I have not been able to make much sense of that experience, or of craft and art in my daily life after that.

Pardon my cursing - but it was really fucked up, antagonistic and weird.

It was also AMAZING and I met really inspiring people, all of us weary of the anger that a small portion of the conference was exhibiting.

There was a lot of anxiety at that event, a perverse current through both the art and craft worlds about dilutions of quality, and who the qualitymasters should be and are, and who has the final say on the definition of what a thing is.

Hierarchical, and not democratic at all. Truely focused on craft as commodity. (which maybe, in our current economics, is the only place for it as an object. I choose to try to imagine something more interesting than that.)

Considering my dayjob working for The Very Wealthy, commissioning just that high craft that only our clients can afford. Knowing that the only way those types of high craft traditions can live and survive is through a system of Patronage, in which I am an agent. I feel both attracted and repelled by it - alienated might be a better way of describing it. Because I will probably never make the Fine Craft that I would present to clients. (Maybe artwork. I have sold some of my photographs in the past to collectors - but now there's that pesky Art/Craft problem. Later.)

And Fine/High Craft is a lot of the time the opposite of the type of Craft that gets me really excited, makes me happy, gets me thinking about the potential and amazement of human creation. And hopefully this bubbly, energetic form is the one that will last, as a kind of a virus through the "little people." (ref: BP)

This is the work of Craft is that one done in concert with each other. Where you research, teach and then learn from each other, and make your daily life a little more meaningful by using your hands. You make something and that is time you have given as a sort of prayer to this object that will hopefully serve its use well, and beautifully. And you share it as a communication to another, or you make something that someone else transforms with their hands into another thing. The transformative art of material.

Dont get me wrong, a chair by the beloved (by me too) Sam Maloof is a thing of wonder - it makes you think to aspire to work harder at the thing that you do with your hands. The chair makes you see the possibility of human creativity to transcend effort. Effortlessly perfect, with the most intense amount of work and skill behind it.

And, for example, embroidery by the Miao/Hmong people. I lose my mind when I see these pieces, and they absolutely sing to me with their intricacy and improbable detail.

I am so not going to sing a romance about the fact that this work was probably done by the light of a single light bulb, after a day of work that's harder than anything I have ever done. I am humbled by their work, and it too inspires me to work harder, to seek more challenges, never keeping out of sight or take for granted the privilege it really is for me to have the luxury to work with my hands.


You only live this life once, and to increase its density of experience by making things by hand and engaging in processes and stepping head-on into discussion -


Consider DIY-MFA-N-CRAFT re-opened for business, after a little thought remodeling.