Featured in CROQ # 3, the Winter Issue 2006.

Art vs. Craft: Art that functions = craft

To master a craft is to have a skill. To be crafty is to be wiley and smart. To craft is to…make a popsicle stick birdcage? Why has the public lowered its expectations so much? Where did we lose the original definition?

We could blame old school craft fairs. We’ve all been there, dragged along reluctantly by an enthusiastic aunt or a well meaning grandparent. With their cutesy folk art, fake flower wreathes, and country humour they lower our expectations for what can be done. Anybody who knows the “3 Piece Chicken Dinner” joke knows that - while it takes time, patience, and some skill to do these things - they’re not very impressive and after a while all of the tables begin to blend together. This form of art hasn’t changed very much since its inception, both its charm and its downfall. These quaint fairs are not entirely to blame, though.

We could also point a finger at summer camps or public schools for slapping the title “arts and crafts” on all creative projects. For then giving crafts the short end of the stick and making craft synonomous with laniards, popsicle sticks, construction paper, and amorphous paper mache sculptures.

Or perhaps it goes back even further than that. Since ancient times crafts - blacksmithing, basket weaving, tailoring, and the like - have all been talents of the poorer classes, while art has been for the wealthy. While the aristocracy couldn’t be bothered with such menial crafts (it would’ve been ‘below them’ to toil in such a manner), the poorer classes simply didn’t have the time for higher art.

However as the years have passed the two have merged in some ways; the working class, for many years, made their crafts their art. Pottery would be painted and formed into elegant shapes. Traditional dress would often be intricately embroidered, beaded, and layered for festivals and weddings. The wedding spoons of Norway are painstakingly carved. These crafts became the art of the poor, beauty where they could make it, their legacy to their children and their children’s children. While the richer classes slowly began adopting more craftlike arts such as needlepoint, tatting, and lacemaking, the poor began to find more time for their folk art (which can still be found, though often more generic and blended, in craft fairs today) such as the hex signs brought over by the Pennsylvania Dutch, and handmade playing cards. With the development of the middle classes and the narrowing margin of exceptionally rich and royal families, arts and crafts began to merge more and more.

Still the stigma remains. Art is high class, takes years to learn, and is only for the exceptionally talented. Crafts are for everyone, can be mastered by even the untalented, and take almost no time to learn. Even many supporters of crafts believe this to be true.

Art is equated with elegance, with fame, with extensive education. Art is shown in galleries across the world. It spans the ages. Art can cost thousands of dollars. The materials to create traditional art - canvases, brushes, paint, clay, etc… - cost a good deal of money. Even programs to create digital art are expensive. People often believe that the more money it costs to create something, or the more it costs, the more desirable it is.

There are few, if any, galleries featuring crafts in this manner. Crafts are worn, used in day to day life. It’s not reasonable for them to cost thousands of dollars. Though everyone likes them, no one is in awe of them, on a whole.

Even fashion (as hideous as it can be) is considered, by some, to be an art form. Handmade clothing can run hundreds of dollars among smaller designers and thousands among larger designers.

Another reason might be that craft is so easily accessable. Crafts are more reasonably priced. Wire, beads, yarn, fimo, sculpey, needles, pliers, hooks, thread, fabric, are available to the majority of the public, though some materials can run a hefty price, anyone above the poverty level can afford them.

You can pick up a skein of yarn, acrylic paint, and beads at any Walmart or K-mart. Most people have at least one family member who’s adept at some craft or another. Crocheting and knitting and needlepoint may not be just for grandmas anymore but, as a skill, none of them are highly regarded. Where as when you think of an artist you think of Leonardo, Rapheal, Waterhouse, Van Gogh. When you think of crafts…you think of grandmas.

“Well, anybody can do that stuff,” says Joe Anybody.

That’s true. It’s not hard to tie a knot or mix together some paper, water, and glue. The trick is to do those things well, to make a sculpture so beautiful that the material it’s made out of becomes a moot point. Almost anyone can crochet or knit with enough practice but to create a wrought iron gate, or to knit a shawl, or to sew a dress, or hew a chair so lovely that it’s art takes a great amount of skill and creative vision.

To craft is to construct, with skill, with pinasche. To make something that’s not only creative but also functional.

Sometimes craft is art.