Crafting for a craft

24 May 2010 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

I mentioned the wife’s participation in Yarn School a few posts back. Since then she’s been spending a lot of time spinning yarn.

She takes pride in her yarn for the yarn’s sake, without necessarily thinking ahead to what she might make out of it. In fact she often doesn’t like me asking her what she’ll make out of it. That’s not the point. The process of taking fiber to yarn is thrilling enough in and of itself.

She is crafting for a craft, something I only realized last week. The same thing happens in other media as well when a guy thinks about it though. A ceramic artist can make tiles for someone laying tile or creating a mosaic, for instance.

It’s a new thought — I like new thoughts — and I don’t entirely know what to make of yet, but I like having the knowledge regardless.

Filed under Art for art's sake, Craft, Fiber, Handmade

Beer as indicator of quality over quantity

20 March 2010 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

Another interesting piece from The Curator, written by Brian Watkins, talking about one of my favorite subjects, quality versus quantity. Excerpting from his post Good Work and Beer Culture:

    Beer has always been popular in our country, but always in different ways. It’s an old story to discuss the recent dominance of microbreweries over macrobreweries. The shift that we’ve seen in the last few years has gone even further. Now, even microbreweries are giving way to smaller craft breweries, and because of this trend, never in the history of our country has beer been more of an artisanal practice. This is quite an occasion.

    Quite an occasion, because this example provides us with an excellent gauge for how our culture now approaches work. We can all see consumers trying to shift from quantity to quality. Toyota’s CEO recently said that their failure in manufacturing was because they had become more concerned with profit margin than with creating a quality product — ironic, since the highest quality products are starting to take in the most profit. We are becoming (we hope) more intelligent consumers who buy less crap and look for more efficient products.

How astonishingly refreshing that the CEO of a giant company would admit that they were more concerned with profit than their product — and express a (hopefully honest) desire to do something to change that. We’ve all known this was the common corporate modus operandi for years now. Watkins goes on to quote Dorothy Sayers talking about work (in the context of WWII, but very applicable to modern day):

    The habit of thinking about work as something one does to make money is so ingrained in us that we can scarcely imagine what a revolutionary change it would be to think about it instead in terms of the work done. To do so would mean taking the attitude of mind we reserve for our unpaid work — our hobbies, our leisure interests, the things we make and do for pleasure — and making that the standard of all our judgments about things and people. We should ask of an enterprise, not “will it pay?” but “is it good?” . . . not merely where the profits go or what dividends are to be paid, not even merely whether the workers’ wages are sufficient and the conditions of labor satisfactory, but loudly and with a proper sense of personal responsibility: “What goes into the beer?”

Filed under Basis for designing well, Craft, Disposable culture, Handmade, Modern culture

The importance, and trap, of artistic freedom

17 December 2009 by pcNielsen 3 Comments

My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful
the more narrowly I limit my field of action
and the more I surround myself with obstacles.
Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength.
The more constraints one imposes,
the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.

Artistic freedom is important, and tricky. From it comes both great and enduring artwork as well as works that are easy to deride. Artists themselves will mostly poo-poo any kind of limitations, crying foul, claiming the great scapegoat of censorship. Their peers who willingly work within certain limiting factors (i.e. a commissioned work) are often branded as sell-outs.

The importance of artistic freedom
From the Herva blog, a post titled Artistic freedom and the trap of success:

    Most of my adult life I’ve been trying to figure out where my creative output “fit.” This is bull kaka. At least for me it is. If I wanted to be a craftsman, worker for hire, to create towards someone else’s need this would be fine. But I don’t. I want to express my vision, to create out of my soul and to make exist things that I would like to see/hear/read. So why bother trying to fit in anywhere?

    . . . Forget “fitting in.” AND, just as importantly, forget success. For now, I just want to create with as few constraints as I am mentally and physically able. I want to make music with my heart and my hands, to paint or write (or whatever) with my insides (intelligence, spirit, guts, soul) guiding my choices. Will anyone pay for it? I have no idea. Will anyone other than me think it’s good? No clue. But I have to allow myself not to care or worry about that right now. Every creator I’m a fan of creates things oozing in singularity, works that rise out of the sludge due to their originality, clarity, and vision. I don’t see the words acceptance or money in that last sentence at all. Do I hope that in doing this some “success” will come eventually? Sure. But in the making of it, in the actual creation, I want freedom.

Allowing artists this kind of freedom is important, it’s important in relationship to the cultural implications of art. Artists are observers. Their paintings and sculptures are responses to their environments: Built environs, social environs, relationships and so on. These responses create a cultural and historical record in a way no textbook will ever be able to.

Further, art should challenge us from time to time — as a culture and as individuals. For this to happen, an artist needs the freedom to venture outside of our expectations, outside of our comfort zones (and often their own). Paintings aren’t just for looking pretty and coordinating with the new couch. Remember the dangers of sentimental creativity.

The trap of artistic freedom
Artistic freedom is also tricky. It’s easy to abuse the responsibility inherent in that freedom, to adopt an anything goes mentality and create to simply push the limits, sensationalize. Attempt to gain attention, fame. To go after success and money (which is valid to a point). The trouble is the only guidelines for artistic freedom are vague, unwritten social cues. They’re not something a person can put down in black and white.

But they are still there.

Such freedom can also distract an artist; artists need some focus with their freedom. At the same time they need, for instance, the ability to explore a wide range of media and push those media to their limits, an artist needs to develop their craft. Whether they like to admit it or not, craft is an inherent part of every artwork. To become proficient — and (in theory anyway) gain respect and a voice — in a craft takes discipline. Discipline is, in essence, a set of rules, whether imposed by self or others.

Rules that will at first guide will then grow with the potential to be broken.

Process
Says Sarah Jane of the Faith and Foolishness blog, “The artistic process feels at times like a many-layered friend, whose complexities I have come to understand through long acquaintance, and who occasionally still manages to surprise me. I have great trust in this faithful and mysterious companion.”

Process will be different for every individual artist. Some will work better with more structure, such as Stravinsky. Others will create their best work with a lot of freedom, like Herva. Finding a balance, personally, is always more difficult than picking one or the other, but it must be done.

Filed under Art, Business of art, Censorship, Craft, Imagination

Clay sculpturing

28 August 2009 by pcNielsen Leave a Comment

In this installment of just for fun Friday, we watch a healthy young girl become a meth addict.

From sculptor Phillipe Faraut’s website:

    This 4 minute 54 second video clip started out as a family project intended to show the artist’s two young daughters the potential effects that drugs, particularly methamphetamines, can have on the human face. Faraut concentrated on the emaciation that occurs from the loss of appetite that all addicts of meth suffer. One of the challenges was to represent the mental state associated with drug addiction; mostly emptiness and lack of stamina. Both the original sculpture of the young mother and the final version are discussed in Faraut’s book Mastering Portraiture: Advanced Analyses of the Face Sculpted in Clay. Music by William Boutwell.

The music doesn’t suit the subject matter very well in my opinion, but it’s a very nice five minute demonstration of how to sculpt in clay, especially for people who aren’t accustomed to the medium.

Via CeramicErin on Twitter.

Filed under Art, Ceramics, Craft, Sculpture

How to become a [magical] potter

24 August 2009 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

Via the Slipcast blog, where Matthew Katz says of the video “I have some questions, but for now I am just going to assume that apparently the world views ceramicists as friendly, mystical monsters.”

Filed under Art, Art education, Ceramics, Craft

Playing around with clay

14 August 2009 by pcNielsen Leave a Comment

I often wonder if artists who work with clay possess a greater tendency to embrace happy accidents than those working with other media. I’ve nothing to back up this timid assertion other than my own cursory observations, but a spot in yesterday’s Japan Times on artist Kosho Ito brought it to mind again.

The article points out that not all ceramic artists are eager to push the limits of their materials, but Ito certainly does:

    For potters in Japan who work through the winter months, keeping their studios warm so that their clay doesn’t freeze is a little-known challenge of the trade. Once frozen, the composition of clay changes and it becomes essentially useless for shaping. Ito found this property fascinating, and did what any curious artist might do; he started sticking large clay blocks in the freezer and then fired them to high temperatures. The resulting earthen chunks with cracked, fissured surfaces make for superb organic eye candy and form the gritty building blocks of the colossal installation, “Fired Frozen Clay Dancing.”

It seems to me something about the firing process inherent in crafting ceramics results in artisans eager to play around outside of expectations. We put all kinds of things in kilns with our wares just to see what happens, see what kind of interesting and beautiful finishes arrive.

Kosho Ito

Kosho Ito sitting among some of his frozen chunks of clay

Filed under Art, Ceramics, Craft

Craft brings a vision into reality

13 August 2009 by pcNielsen 3 Comments

My wife shared a link with me this morning where a fiber artist, The Knitting Linguist, elaborates on her own assessment of the art vs. craft debacle. A lengthy excerpt follows:

    When I first heard people stating their strong preference that people not refer to their work as “craft”, I was surprised, though, because my own associations are so entirely different. To me, craft is what is required to move a vision of beauty to a state of reality. It requires skill, and wisdom. Craftiness, thus, is not only the knowlege and vision needed to bring art into being, but the ability to craft the time and space in our busy lives to do so. Craft to me is the craft not in the phrase arts and crafts, but in Arts and Crafts; the acknowledgement that those things which are useful need not be utilitarian. That there is something vital and joyous and whole in creating things of beauty which are to be used. To me, the fiber arts are prime examples of such craft, color and life and sensuality and texture and beauty and function all in one object, one expression of the maker’s art.

    The Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun “craft” as (slightly edited for brevity): 1. Strength, power, might, art; 2. Intellectual power; skill; art; 3. Skill, skillfulness, art; ability in planning or performing, ingenuity in constructing, dexterity; 4. Human skill, art as opposed to nature. And it defines the verb “craft” as: 1. To make or construct skillfully; 2. To use crafty devices; 3. To exercise one’s craft.

    I certainly see within our community the exercise of strength, power, might, and art. The results of manipulating fiber strike me as definitional of art as opposed to nature. And if a spindle isn’t a crafty device, heck, I don’t know what is.

    I understand and support the reasons why it is important to insist that the public acknowledge the art in the work of our hands. I admit, though, that the part of me that loves the underdog, that is a sucker for lost causes, wants to reclaim the word “craft” in all of its deep acknowledgement of the humanness of its exercise. I want them both back, and I want them with capitals and fireworks.

    Look at what you’re making right now and see in it both the art and the craft, and be proud.

I’ll reiterate what I’ve learned while thinking about art and craft over the past few years, and that is that you can’t take the craft out of the art. If there is art, there must be craft. As much as certain movements or artists might not like it.

Filed under Art, Art vs Craft, Craft

Eva Funderburgh clay sculpture

7 August 2009 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

Just for fun on this Friday, a new time lapse video from Eva Funderburgh’s blog.

Filed under Art, Ceramics, Craft, Sculpture

Is it easier and best to just avoid the word “art?”

3 August 2009 by pcNielsen 2 Comments

Thoughts and conversations I’ve engaged in the past few years brought me to a point where I try and use the word art less and less. It’s a troublesome word. It carries a comical amount of baggage everywhere it goes. To every gallery, every studio, to every local culture and every family it brings steamer trunks full of varying vernaculars.

Instead of the word art I now employ words like craft (which is not, despite modern notions, in opposition to art), sculpture, painting, imagination, creative, etc. By no means is this glossary of more specific terms something I have worked out, but it is working at the moment.

Of course, the point is not so much to avoid the often inevitable conflicts that arise between artists, viewers, friends and family members when it comes to what is or isn’t art. Regular readers will attest to my interest in approaching these topics full-on, I think. The point is to change my, or our, vocabulary (and the assumptions behind our present art-related vocabularies) in such a way that we are better equipped to create and view the environments around us in all their craft. The natural environment, the city spaces, architectural spaces down to the details that are paintings, sculptures and the ceramic dishes we eat off of.

2 August 2009 storm

Part of the natural environment I observed last night.

Filed under Art, Art vs Craft, Craft, Criticism

Pete Pinnell on fine art that functions

26 June 2009 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

Pete Pinnell was one of my professors at the University of Nebraska, one of three very strong individuals in a fantastic ceramics program. The following video (external link) is a stellar talk about fine art and function.

Pete Pinnell on cups

Pete is a very good speaker and draws a number of simple but very powerful metaphors as he discusses cups, drinking vessels, in this video. Below I’ve paraphrased some of the portions that really caught my attention:

    Art acknowledges and actually talks about life, but there is one great taboo still in the art world, and that is that art still does not take part in life. Art thinks about life, but it does so from the role of the critic, from the observer, from the outsider. I like to joke that art will peek in our windows and rummage through our closets but it won’t sit down at the dinner table with us.

    The fine arts world has chosen to forgo touch, but it’s a very powerful means of human expression.

    Does having to deal with function limit creativity?

    A little bit of dissonance is really required to have something that will hold our attention for a longer period of time.

For the most part I think he hits the nail squarely on the head, but I’d love to hear other’s responses to this 30 minute talk.

Filed under Art, Art education, Art for art's sake, Art vs Craft, Ceramics, Craft, Handmade

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