I’ve been thinking a lot about craft. About the extraordinary beauty, skill, and experimentation in the work of Gertrude and Otto Natzler (currently on show at the Museum of Contemporary Craft) as well as the bolts of rough, rust-colored wool cloth with two burnt mustard stripes down the center woven by my German great-grandmother and the turned teak candlesticks that remind me of my Scandinavian grandmother. I’ve been thinking about the Weiner Werkstatte, the Bauhaus school, and Anni Albers at Black Mountain College. I’ve also been thinking, for some years now, why certain artists I know exhibit in a craft museums or institutions who might just as well show their work in visual art galleries and institutions. And vice versa, I wonder (at length, as I wrote previously) why I recently found a visual art installation in a crafts museum. There’s plenty more going on here, as some institutions move away from the word craft, at the other end of the democratic spectrum, crafts have not been this popular since the 70s, and I do use the word “crafts” in plural to denote craftsy crafts (involving pinking shears, felt, and Fimo) as opposed to high craft or fine craft.
So I am very excited about Garth Clark’s lecture tonight October 16 at 6:30 PM at The Swigert Commons at PNCA (1241 NW Johnson Street), “How Envy Killed the Crafts Movement: An Autopsy in Two Parts.”
I have always thought popularity (or maybe populism) killed the crafts movement in the 70s. Because there’s no accounting for taste (of the maker that is) and the more makers there are, the more ugly output there will be until one can’t see the tree for the forest.
“In this two-part program, Clark will analyze the current state of American Craft, then invite the audience to join him in an examination of how aesthetics, economics and art-envy have “killed” this 20th century movement.”
The Museum of Contemporary Craft, Oregon College of Art and Craft Jamison Lecture Series, and Pacific Northwest College of Art partner to make this happen.
Tags: art