Or in maths-speak, which uses special characters so may not work on your browser, square|round is as art|craft.
(Generalisation warning…) I think a lot of craft makers have an underlying passion to be different from the artist in a garrett stereotype, whether it’s the ‘artist as selfish genius’ so beloved of the 1960s art schools (at least in England), or the lone, suffering genius of, say, Van Gogh or Gerald Manley Hopkins.
We want to be useful, make a difference, be relevant, through making by hand. This is counter-cultural, anti-capitalist, whether we articulate it as that or not. It could be explicit in the 70s – I remember the potter Walter Keeler, with a beard, in a boiler suit, on a 1970s cover of ,a href=”https://www.ceramicreview.com/” target=”offsite”>Ceramic Review – but it’s so deeply unfashionable now that I can’t even find a reference on a Google search. You have to search academic tomes like Glenn Adamson’s The Craft Reader to find any reference to the craft contribution to the self-sufficiency movement.
So you can see why making non-functional work feels uncomfortable to me. Of course you can look at a pot, hang a plate on the wall, but it can still be used. My early calligraphy work was, in my own mind, marketing material to use at craft fairs. So it’s a bit step to make 2-D work for it’s own sake. It’s also still early days – all the ‘square’ pieces are work in progress, not finished yet. I may look at them in six months and throw them all out!
The Dulwich Festival Artists’ Open House is coming up. I’m chuffed to bits – there’s an interview with me in the brochure! Here’s a copy FYI, the brochures aren’t available yet.
