//Craft...?

"...When the art world turns its gaze on traditional craft materials, as is the case with Rebecca Warren's or Grayson Peny's ceramics, the sense is that it's not only OK but necessary fir a contemporary artist to be amateurish." (Adamson, When Craft Gets Sloppy, Page 1)

This isn't just a trend in the art world. It's hip to be grungy, to have a hangover, to wear second hand, to be a bit on the wild side – rough is the new clean, they might say. "Calculated sloppiness" can be just as valuable to the art world as precision art, and in some cases, more a necessary for a given message. Although there is a classic division between fine art and craft, the the two differ very little in commentary – take printmaking for example: a concept is represented in a bizarre, unconventional way but made into a refined-looking, clean (perhaps) final piece. On the other hand, the same concept might be discussed by a more visceral means, one rooted deeper in process than product – craft. To begin breaking down the potentially harmful barrier between art and craft, we mustn't describe construction quality absolutely, but relatively.

"The DIY movement, currently at the height of fashion, is an obvious expression of this open-source culture, and the crafters' emphasis on community and gratification often results in a casual attitude to technique. This permissiveness has deeply penetrated art-school culture, fascinatingly blurring the line between hobbyism and professional endeavor." (Adamson, When Craft Gets Sloppy, Page 2)

Suppose every grade schooler were to be taught Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator in their entirety and told to create a graphic design portfolio. Of what benefit would this be to the aspiring marine biologist? The farmer? The fireman? Little, if none! The suppose the same group is given a lump of clay and told that whatever they have made by next class will be fired and preserved as their creation. Formal training is not necessary for a child to be able to produce meaningful art. In fact, quite the opposite is true – those that go without any sort of institutional education for a career in art are frequently those who generate the most revolutionary and catchy styles. As mentioned above, this misconception is also lost in its apparent confinement to the art world when it really extends much farther, even into Silicon Valley, where some of the geniuses haven't even earned their college degrees yet.

"'What is Art?' every generation asks. 'What is Craft?' 'Is one better than the other?'" (Jensen, Investing in the Object, Page 1)

Above all other possible responses to this fundamental question is that no kind of art is 'better' than another. Each form has its trivialities, and it is left to the tuned eye of the viewer to decide what is and what is not good art within each field. One cannot say that  one of Beethoven's symphonies is a better artistic achievement than Monet's Water Lillies. Perhaps that Beethoven's work is a better representation of a composer's full spectrum of ability than The Rolling Stones, but even so, we cross boundaries between genres, which in itself is a dangerous comparison, as each genre draws from different talent groups and approaches to composition. Without trying to define either art or craft, it is still possible to offer reasons for nondiscrimination.

"I think of my own work as conceptual but not inaccessible. It's intuitive. There's an entry point, which is often the craft of it. That's my trick." (Jensen, Investing in the Object, Page 2)

Perhaps if more artists thought this way we would have a more comprehensive sketch of where we stand in our creative evolution as a society. Until more artists start creating for the masses and allowing their message to be discovered, there will be entire sections of art that have cut themselves off from the rest and from free interpretation. Jensen brings up an important (I dare not say correct) point here by saying that it is a trick to obscure but not make completely invisible the purpose of an artwork. Intuitive art is easily some of the most pleasant to view, as it rarely demands effort to appreciate and enjoy, and is never far from a sophisticated deduction about its deeper cause.

//The Curated

"What drives the expansion of this self-reflexive anxiety? By its nature, and as O'Neill's endlessly recursive Russian doll of curatorial-artistic repositioning suggests, it is not the preserve of professional or institutional curators as such, but has become a sort of critical reflex among those artists and curators for whom the traditional division of artist and curator appears suspect." (Charlesworth,Curating Doubt, Page 1)

Before making any headway on the ultimately good message of this particular sentence, one must wade through a swamp of unnecessary words and convoluted grammatical nuances. Whew. The analogy to nesting Russian dolls was especially vivid, both in a "self-reflexive" manner (as a representation of the writer's endless sentences and ridiculous flowery clarification) and as a critique of Paul O'Neill's equally obtuse comment, quoted by Charlesworth. Curators this, curators that, Charlesworth needs to get his head out of the gutter and realize that there is actually much less between the artist and the viewer than he might want to think. Whoever discovers the art, whoever is knowledgeable about the art, and whoever assumes the cost of acquiring art matter not to whoever may view the art. Perhaps there is a fantastic tale about the collection, but it has no place, nor does the role of a curator in the average viewer's experience. They will take in information as they will, and to have an order imposed on their thinking is a downfall of free interpretation.

"In each of these situations ["crowd-curating" or semi-randomness], the word curating is used to describe actions taken by members of the public who would not normally self-define as curators." (Kasprzak, For What and For Whom? Page 1)

It is no mystery why companies who listen to feedback from their customers do so well. Vigorous and exhaustive evaluation must be done before a decision is reached, and for that inquiry, there is no better group to study than the public. More and more projects are being turned into community-wide collaborative efforts, whether it be sustainable urban farming or a small piece of open source software. Not only does Kasprzak suggest with this one statement that members of a much greater expanse contribute to the curation of artwork, but that we all establish our own collections and constantly curate that evolving library of information. She goes on to point out that bloggers (like us!) even amass a collection of images and words from all corners of the bizarre art landscape. Putting a small piece of your own opinion into a showing of collected artworks can yield a far better representation of the available total than leaving it to just the "curators."

"I asked people real questions about their lives, their work, their histories, their favorite foods, etc. Sometimes this was perceived as invasive, but i tried to be very sensitive." (Fletcher, Towards a Tender Society of Thoughtful Questions and Answers, Page 1)

So few people realize the value in forging profound discussions with their frequent or infrequent company. With the sheer volume of useless "unformation" we might call it that is available on the internet about our friends, we begin to see what real interactions are simply missed as a result. I could hop on FaceBook and be alerted that it's Joe Plumber's birthday on Wednesday, but would I know from that what his most important experience was as a child, or when his first internal realizations of existence occurred? Of course not, unless he wanted to broadcast that personal information for the world to see. The author makes a good point in that the questions they asked could very well have been made to sound prying, but the reality is that we have just grown unaccustomed to these traditionally rich inquiries.

Cass Elliot - Make Your Own Kind Of Music