White Diana in a white room in the Louvre. Photo Tim G.A. HurleyPeevish, prissy, controlling and pedantic. I have trouble navigating through some personalities. That personality is the hardest for me to deal with. In art and in life.
It is interesting to me that some of the most productive and successful artists I know are not like that. They are productive and generous. They produce work that is precise and careful but they allow for growth and change. Experimentation is an important part of what is needed to create work that is leading edge.
What is the difference between art and craft?
There may not be a large difference, these days, with so many artsits and crafts people blurring lines. But there are still artists who don't take time to master any technique. Those who focus on concept alone and lose capacity to communicate to others in the process. Then there are crafts people who are obsessed with traditional process and precision who communicate nothing at all but a catalogue of techniques.
I have noticed that the public is sometimes prepared to settle for little because they are mystified by process. They lack a basic education about how to interpret what they see.
They have been overexposed to the "church basement craft fair". I also see artists willing to exploit by taking advantage of that ignorance. Craftspeople who use commercial products and patterns that they parade as their own.
One of my favourite experiences was a show held at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. There was a room full of quilts that were all worked in white. The room danced with difference when the eyes adjusted. Each quilt was white cotton or linen stitched with white threads. Some were precise and some wild. Not one of them was prissy, pedantic or controlled.
Every quilt expressed personality and originality.
I want to strive for that white quilt but never the pristine.
It is interesting to me that some of the most productive and successful artists I know are not like that. They are productive and generous. They produce work that is precise and careful but they allow for growth and change. Experimentation is an important part of what is needed to create work that is leading edge.
What is the difference between art and craft?
There may not be a large difference, these days, with so many artsits and crafts people blurring lines. But there are still artists who don't take time to master any technique. Those who focus on concept alone and lose capacity to communicate to others in the process. Then there are crafts people who are obsessed with traditional process and precision who communicate nothing at all but a catalogue of techniques.
I have noticed that the public is sometimes prepared to settle for little because they are mystified by process. They lack a basic education about how to interpret what they see.
They have been overexposed to the "church basement craft fair". I also see artists willing to exploit by taking advantage of that ignorance. Craftspeople who use commercial products and patterns that they parade as their own.
One of my favourite experiences was a show held at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. There was a room full of quilts that were all worked in white. The room danced with difference when the eyes adjusted. Each quilt was white cotton or linen stitched with white threads. Some were precise and some wild. Not one of them was prissy, pedantic or controlled.
Every quilt expressed personality and originality.
I want to strive for that white quilt but never the pristine.
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