A Dangling Conversation

A long time ago, in the 1970s and 80s, there developed a rather lively conversation between those who practiced art and those who practiced artisanry, or craft. The conversation talked around the boundaries of each of those disciplines. What is art? What is craft? We'd crowd around wherever we could find a flat surface and discuss this every which way over endless meals and drinks. At one point, in the field of furniture design, an informal term was coined--art-iture--to describe furniture that was considered as sculptural as it was utile. Furniture such as shown in the book below. Visionary in nature, the book didn't tell you HOW to make a piece of furniture, but how to make the design decisions needed to create what you wanted to express in the process of the making.

Yes, that is my name, pre-Holmesian, at upper right. The book was published
in 1989 by The Taunton Press, and is, sadly, long out of print. 

From the book: "All American Make Up Mirror and Dressing Table," Paul Sasso (photo by Paul Sasso)

"Roadrunner Chair," Mark Hazel (photo by Seth Stem)

From the book: Table inspired by gems and architectural buttresses, Seth Stem
(photo by Gary Gilbert)

I feel an undercurrent of a similar conversation brewing today. What is art? What is craft? This time of year, especially, you'll hear it while browsing holiday markets. Your friend the photographer carping about the number of tables containing crocheted toilet-tissue holders and such like. Still, the discussion is rather more underground than in the past. In these days of enforced inclusivity, it's not exactly polite or politic to draw perimeters around anything.

I've made no secret of my feelings that, with few exceptions, the publishers and editors of the magazines and books of mixed media have dropped the visionary ball that once they carried. I do not subscribe to Somerset Studio (I do have an extensive collection of way-back-when issues), yet I occasionally flip through the pages at my bookstore, as I did several days ago. As always, the magazine was chock-a-block full of projects that mostly looked the same to my eye, but then...an interesting twist. Not long after a project on making gift wrap from dryer sheets appeared a breathtaking selection of works by Mary Beth Shaw. These were fascinating in composition, and oh, the color!

Reading through the article, a profile piece, it was revealed that Shaw had at one time read every book on color theory she could get her hands on. Aha!

When I got home from the bookstore, I took a look at the book review (not favorable) of Shaw's recent book that I had posted here on my blog (on the Book Reviews page http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/p/book-reviews.html ) and on Amazon. “Wouldn't it have been great,” I thought to myself, “if the editorial perspective of that book had been reframed to share Shaw's knowledge of and passion about color?”

Which got me to thinking. If that first book was from the artisan's approach, how awesome would be a book from the artist's insight.

To describe itself, Somerset Studio magazine uses, on its website, promotional language thus: “Paper crafting, art stamping and the lettering arts are elevated <italics and underlining mine> to an artistic level <italics and underlining mine> in Somerset Studio!”

"Elevated.” Hmmmm. "Artistic level." Interesting word choices there. What exactly do they mean? Somewhere, perhaps, there is indeed a conversation going on, and if not, I suspect there needs to be one begun.

Thanks for listening.