Janet H Walker on tue 13 may 97
Mel Jacobson mused:
do you know what? artists are all alone. they cannot
have history. that is cheating for an artist. and artists
have a lot of secrets. they like that.
So sad that art education should have derailed into such a
self-limiting dead end. (OK, so this description is a bit of a
caricature but it has the gist of the issue in it.)
Building on the work of others, on the other hand, is an essential
component of a DESIGN education. Anyone on the list who is or knows
an architect will be aware of this.
I've been thinking about this art/craft thing for a long time from a
somewhat different perspective and maybe this will help some of you
find a new way to think about how to cut through the fog. It
relates to Mel's comment above. The art/craft dichotomy reminds me
of the research/practice distinction in my previous field of
computer user interface design. Both kinds of work (research and
actual hands-on design & implementation) were important but the two
sides started out not understanding each other's priorities and
perspectives. Researchers had to think of something new, whether or
not it could ever work; practitioners had to work within constraints
and standards to turn out something that the users would accept.
So it may be with art and craft.
People doing Art in a university setting, faculty or for an MFA
thesis, or those very self-consciously "Doing Art" in the NY gallery
setting are involved in research. It is their job to do something
that they can define and describe in minute detail as being in some
way different from anything that has gone before. The job of
research is to keep expanding the boundaries even if the vast mass
of consumers is not interested in the territory.
People practicing art, us crafts folks, are not so constrained. We
can do what we like and what our customers like. We don't have a
faculty committee or a gallery curator breathing down our necks and
deciding whether we are derivative. We have the freedom to build on
the past, take direction from glorious earlier work and make it with
our modern voice and hands. I'm comfortable with making lovely
things for the home and I don't care that this choice will not
propel me into stardom in the art research community or onto the
pages of Ceramics Monthly.
The thing that bothers me is when people get tangled up in
"Art Good; ; Craft Bad"
It is just "Research Fine; ; Practice Sure". They are different.
My approach? "I'm an artist but I don't do art with a capital A".
Iconoclastically yours,
Jan Walker
Cambridge MA USA
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