The Journal of Modern Craft » USA

Journal of Modern Craft 4.3

Convenor — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 08:05:50 +0000

The final issue of 2011 continues to look at craft and industrialisation, with a particular emphasis on denim.

Articles

Craft, Class, and Acculturation at the Greenwich House Settlement by Sarah Archer

None of Us Is Sentimental About the Hand: Dorothy Liebes, Handweaving, and Design for Industry by Alexa Griffith Winton

Architectonic: Thought on the Loom by T’ai Smith

Bridging the Design Gap: The Case of the Nepali Clothing Industry by Mallika Shakya

Telling a Story: The Art and Craft of Denim by Alejandra Echeverria

Made in North Carolina: Skill Versus Scale in a Modern Jeans Workshop by Victor Lytvinenko

Primary text

The Variable Man by Philip K. Dick

Exhibition reviews

Raw Goods: The Transformation of Materials by Local Industries by Sarah Johnson
Making Is Thinking by Joana Ozorio de Almeida Meroz
The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft by Kate Smith

Introduction to 4.2

Convenor — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 05:39:10 +0000

One of the consistent preoccupations of this journal, over the course of its first ten issues, has been the politics of production. One of our guiding principles has been that the frictional qualities of craft – the difficulties that arise in acquiring and applying skill in labor – are an explosive and unpredictable issue within modernity. An important corollary to this idea is that the way skill is represented and discussed can itself be a political question. Much is at stake in the discourse surrounding craft, and one index of this fact is the many conflicting claims that have been made on its behalf.

This issue features three articles that address this theme. Together they tell an interesting story of continuity through the twentieth century. At the early end of the chronological spectrum we have Adam Trexler’s in-depth study of A. R. Orage, a figure who ought to be as well-known as Ruskin and Morris, but who has remained somewhat obscure. It is easy to understand why. Not only did he go in for currently unfashionable theories like Theosophy and Nietzsche’s principle of the superhuman, but his writings depart from (and sometimes attack) the hallowed principles of the Arts and Crafts Movement. To make matters worse, as Trexler writes, his ideas are hard to situate along a familiar left-right political spectrum. Orage’s emphasis on guild structures and higher consciousness can seem bewildering: simultaneously radical and reactionary. Yet precisely because of this unfamiliarity, his ideas feel surprisingly relevant today. To help readers come to grips with this important figure in craft’s historiography, in addition to Trexler’s examination of his intellectual trajectory we offer a reprinted text by Orage, entitled ‘Politics for Craftsmen.’

Ezra Shales’ study of the Empire State Building carries us a few decades on, to the interwar period (often thought of as a depopulated valley in craft historical terms, caught between the twin peaks of the Arts and Crafts Movement and the post-1945 Studio Craft movement). It may be surprising to consider a skyscraper as a handmade object, but as Shales demonstrates, that is exactly how it was presented at the time. A rhetorical appeal to artisanal values was crucially important to the triumphal rhetoric of the Empire State Building’s financial backers and key spokesman, including bricklayer-turned-master-politician Alfred E. Smith.

If Orage were alive today, he might very well love steampunk – not only because that subculture refers back to his own Victorian and Edwardian moment, but also because this contemporary DIY-based subculture operates through precisely the combination of collectivity and hyper-individualism that he favored. Up-and-coming craft theorist Ele Carpenter gives us a report from the front lines of steampunk, showing how artists use its apparently eccentric, science fiction-derived imagery to create persuasively critical works at the intersection of the physical and the digital.

Finally, in this issue we are pleased and honored to feature a Statement of Practice by Robin Wood, the chair of the Heritage Crafts Association. Devoted to the preservation of threatened artisanal skills in Britain, the HCA is politically active in a way that, again, cannot be easily located on a left-right spectrum. It is equally ecumenical in its self-imposed mandate. Wood wants to celebrate the full range of skilled labor: not just pastoral crafts like pole lathe turning (his own craft) but also light industrial trades like blade-making. Though his viewpoint is perhaps closest to Morris’s, one suspects that he would have found much to discuss with Orage, and it is certain that he would have been fascinated by the plumbers, hoist operators, and asbestos handlers who helped erect the Empire State Building. It is just such unexpected discursive connections, over space and time, that this journal aims to foster.

Listening to craft in dialogue

Jenni Sorkin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:07:47 +0000

I would like to thank everyone on Facebook’s Critical Craft Forum for so many thoughtful, useful contributions on my last set of, and expand upon some of my remarks.

My concerns have to do with the fact that craft and material culture histories have only VERY recently (last ten years or so) been taken up by critically-oriented scholars and curators. Much of our field’s history is mired in a half-century of connoisseurship and object-driven analysis. Now, I may get people jumping down my throat regarding this last—object-driven analysis, but I would like to point out that singular objects—seemingly the raison-d’etre for craft history—are no longer driving the field.

Wendell Castle Music Rack, 1964, photo: John Ferrari

Let’s take, for example, a classic object like Wendell Castle’s music stand, or even Garth’s rhapsodic commentary on a singular Peter Voulkos stack. I too could go on and on about the significance of the music stand, its biomorphic punning, its significant melding of form and function, etc etc., what I would be missing is the object’s circulation in the wider world of ideas. How, for instance, the music stand is made of stack-laminated wood, circa 1964. Castle’s essential plasticking of wood and his later coated fiberglass pieces are sculptural, exploratory, and reject traditional techniques, opting for new and clever materialities alongside a more well-known and more lavishly celebrated, but lesser craftsman, Donald Judd. As an art historian, it is this comparison that is much more important to make, than a stand-alone interpretation. Further, Castle’s music stands have never been put in dialogue with the avant-garde or experiments in electronica, atonality, and avant-garde music that was so prominent throughout the 1960s in the Northeast (where Castle was located) and Western Europe, ie, John Cage, Pierre Boulez, David Tudor, Morton Feldman, Alvin Lucier.

What I am getting at, is that Castle’s music stand reconsidered within this context is so much more interesting than its hand feel and its shape alone. Castle—and a host of other craftspeople-have never been complexly or richly re-situated in their own place and time. This is the work to which I am referring—the serious, scholarly pursuit of relational situations, ideas, zeitgeists, and circles of influence. This is the kind of work I mean, when I say that the writing in our field has not yet caught up to the sophisticated conceptual work being made now, in 2011.

More than ever, I believe, artists are invested in their current conception of place and time, because they continually evolve forward in their own trajectories and oeuvres. But good scholarship and brave writing traces a path less backward than sideways, making multiple footpaths alongside each other, so that there isn’t just one path with two directions, but infinite concurrent and disparate routes—some more direct, others more circuitous, and still others dead-end. But this is the spirit of research—process. Who but an artist could relate?

Making things–beyond the art/craft wedge

Jenni Sorkin — Mon, 23 May 2011 08:23:53 +0000

Reading Glenn Adamson’s and Tanya Harrod’s joint interview with novelist A.S. Byatt (or Dame Antonia Byatt, as she is known in her home context—to my American tastebuds, Dame, I must confess, feels funny on the tongue), I was struck by the nationalism of her project, and the utter Englishness with which she is grappling: the difficulties and aftereffects of modernization, and the audiences, personalities, and social roles made manifest in the material culture in fin de siècle British culture. Put another way, Byatt’s book magnifies the twin ideologies of modernism and capitalism. The myriad descriptions of paintings, pots, glazes, wrought iron, skirted sewing tables, and whale-bone corseted women offer a stupefying collection of stuff: the Edwardian domestic possessions that have now become coveted antiques and collectibles, their well-conceived forms, colors and intensities spawning an assortment of Victoriana kitsch that continues to proliferate well into the present day—just attend any Victorian Studies Association conference, or save yourself the trouble and invest in a pair of patent leather granny boots, dye your hair black (with a center part), and knit yourself a tea cozy (or cell phone cozy).

Nationalism seems to be a consistent issue in craft practices, one we can’t really easily get away from. Why is this? Because craft processes are not only linked with “tradition,” but also, intertwined with production: labor practice, economic recovery, and collective pride. No matter that craft is still, more often than not, inefficient and expensive, and a touch utopian. Hand-dyed, hand-spun cotton and wool from a knitting store—you know, those lovely ones, independently owned and run—often go for $9 or $11 a skein, versus the yucky acrylic stuff sold at chain craft stores that sell for $3 or so. Much like farmer’s market produce versus the conventional supermarket, there is no comparison, of course, in terms of quality, but the small, independent stores more often than not end up belly-up. The intent is there: to ignite a revival, a community of like-minded souls who turn up for knit class, or collective quilting sessions altogether, but such publics are usually made, and not found.

Adamson asks pointed questions about whether or not there is a utopian imperative inherent in craft. Byatt redirects her answer, positing that utopianism is “…actually dangerous. Certainly in the 1960s it was. I decided that a kind of rather flat skepticism, and making things, making things well, is better than a utopian attempt to reform society.” I found Byatt’s statement a very useful correlative in re-thinking the de-skilled artistic practice that exists broadly throughout visual art training—the idea that one acquires skill based upon the sorts of projects one decides to execute. This is an anathema to traditional craft practice, of course, but now that the two are mostly merged—I don’t really make a distinction between contemporary art, per say, and contemporary craft, they are one and the same—that is, both camps are working conceptually. Furthermore, craft-based processes have been co-opted by visual artists of all stripes invested in issues of design, labor, and community. Yet, when Byatt says, “I believe in making things,” she hits on a tender nerve in our community, the seeming wedge between conceptual art and craft practices, which no longer exists. All artists believe in making things, it is just that the definition of “thing” is imprecise, and always in flux. That is also the beauty of artistic practice, in that there are so many kinds of “things” to make, be it a book, a tea cozy, an installation, or a You Tube video.

Craftivism: A Special Issue of Utopian Studies

Convenor — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 11:30:29 +0000

Guest editors, Maria Elena Buszek (University of Colorado Denver)
and Kirsty Robertson (University of Western Ontario)

Coined by artists and collectives in the wake of the September 11^th, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, the term “craftivism” relates to creative, traditional handcraft (often, assisted by high-tech means of community-building, skill-sharing, and action) directed toward political and social causes. For this special issue of Utopian Studies, we invite practitioners, scholars, and curators to submit work related to the history, criticism, and myriad practices of craftivism. Subjects and strategies might include: historical or present examples of activist practice that uses craft; issues of production, manufacture or use that might intersect with craftivism; discussions of the successes or limits of craftivist practice; considerations of feminist craft practice that traverse (or are collapsed into) wider social issues and movements. Papers might also take a wider frame, looking at craft and economic globalization, NGO work or the use of craft in cultural brokering. Please note that this issue’s editors are interested in praxis as well as scholarship, and encourage makers to submit statements, manifestos, and/or imagery for consideration.

Utopian Studies is a biannual, peer-reviewed journal publishing scholarly articles on a wide range of subjects related to utopias, utopianism, utopian literature, utopian theory, and intentional communities. All submissions must be sent by JANUARY 17^TH 2011 via the journal’s online editorial manager at: http://www.editorialmanager.com/uts/ Utopian Studies’ submission guidelines are also available online: http://www.utoronto.ca/utopia/journal/guidelines.html

Queries concerning the issue’s theme and guidelines may be directed to the guest editors via e-mail: Maria Elena Buszek: maria.buszek@ucdenver.edu and Kirsty Robertson: kirsty.robertson@uwo.ca

Snow Furniture by Ethan W. Lasser

Convenor — Sun, 02 May 2010 05:36:21 +0000

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Spring has finally come to the upper Midwest, and with its arrival Hongtao Zhou’s installation Snow Furniture is an increasingly distant memory (fig. 1). Over three intensive days in late January, Zhou, a woodworker and sculptor based in Madison, Wisconsin, used snow, ice and sticks to create a set of chairs outside the East Galleria of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Part performance piece and part political statement, the installation was one of the more unusual and provocative works in an exhibition of “green furniture” Zhou and I curated at the MAM.

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As performance piece, Snow Furniture featured Zhou and a team of local school children (fig. 2). Bundled in down parkas to withstand twenty-degree temperature, these energetic assistants helped create the slushy material used to build the chairs. Zhou equipped them with an aluminium bucket, and sent them to fetch water from the shore of Lake Michigan, a few steps away from the museum. Snow was mixed in with this water, and then applied to an armature of sticks (fig 3). Within minutes, this mixture froze and the chairs took shape to the delight of the children and the audience of adults watching from inside the museum.

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This might seem like an innocuous playground exercise or a variation on a snow sculpture competition, but the political stakes of the installation became evident a few days later, after an unusual early-February thaw. As temperatures rocketed into the high-40s, the chairs started to melt, morph and lose their rigidity (fig 4). They took on a biomorphic, surrealist air. “Dancing furniture” is the way Zhou described the installation when he returned to Milwaukee to enjoy the warmer air. He argued that the change in the shape of chairs called attention to the entropic effects of global warming. For Zhou, the work specifically indexed one of they key manifestations of climate change: increased temperature variation and the shift from steady seasonal patterns to rapid freezes and thaws.

As the winter went on and temperatures continued to vary, the chairs continued to dance. To return to the installation each morning was to see a fresh and reinvented work. One morning in late-February after a snowfall, the chairs looked like fluffy, upholstered divans. After a cold snap in March, they were icy and skeletal (fig 5). These variations tracked something more than the effects of climate change. The constant evolution of Snow Furniture showcased the artistry and animism of nature, the obsessive inventiveness of her masterful hand. Like the artist David Nash, who builds wooden sculptures out of unseasoned wood that changes shape as the material dries and shrinks, the aesthetic power of Snow Furniture hinged on nature’s power and unpredictability, on changing temperatures, wind speeds, and uncertain patterns of rain and snow. What was truly green about the installation was the way it called attention to this power—to nature as agent and artist.

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Snow Furniture might seem like a good project for the Artic or some desolate tundra, rather than a factory town like Milwaukee. But the installation was closely connected to its site. Standing in front of the dancing chairs and looking south, one could see the crisp white atrium of the Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by Santiago Calatrava, and beyond it, the Milwaukee skyline (fig 6). A pair of belching smokestacks, vestiges of a once thriving industrial economy were particularly prominent. It was hard not to read the installation against these towers, and to juxtapose the pure, productive power of nature with the impure, productive power of the machine. “Nature,” Zhou explained, “was the perfect, carbon-neutral artist.”

Zhou, who is fond of such sagely pronouncements, is a fascinating character with an unusual background for an artist. Born in China, he came to the US in his mid-twenties to do a PhD in furniture engineering at Purdue. In his coursework and dissertation, he focused on the “lifecycle” of furniture. His challenge was to design a chair that would last for a definitive period. The goal was five years. Zhou mastered this challenge but wasn’t fulfilled by it. After he finished his degree, he moved from the factory to the studio to take up an MFA in woodworking under Tom Loeser at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His focus has been on sustainability and environmentally-friendly furniture.

Snow Furniture reflects Zhou’s unusual training. Like any good engineer, he harnessed a force larger than himself to craft the chairs. And like his work at Purdue, he created a set of chairs that only existed for a fixed amount of time.

But while Zhou’s earlier designs failed and then endured as a series of parts, the dancing chairs evaporated into thin air, leaving no residue.

Gone without a trace and largely crafted by the power of nature, Snow Furniture invites us to reflect on the way we value art, and the premium we place on durability, artisanal skill, and the marks of the artist’s hand. Though his installation no longer presides in front of the museum, Zhou’s other-directed, ephemeral aesthetic raises questions for every artist to think through.

Ethan W. Lasser is curator of the Chipstone Foundation

Journal of Modern Craft 2.3

Convenor — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 03:10:23 +0000

Journal of Modern Craft 2-3

Third issue of 2009

Editorial Introduction

Articles

A Ghost in the Machine Age: The Westerwald Stoneware Industry and German Design Reform, 1900–1914 by Freyja Hartzell

A Catalan Werkstätte? Arts and Crafts Schools between Modernisme and Noucentisme by Jordi Falgàs

Early Expressions of Anthroposophical Design in America: The Infuence of Rudolf Steiner and Fritz Westhoff on Wharton Esherick by Roberta A. Mayer and Mark Sfrri

Primary Text Commentary

Design in Ireland: Report of the Scandinavian Design Group in Ireland, April 1861, by Paul Caffrey

Statement of Practice

Handspring Puppet Company by Adrian Kohler, Basil Jones and Tommy Luther (pdf)

Exhibition Reviews

Craft in its Gaseous State: Wouldn’t It Be Nice … Wishful Thinking in Art and Design by Mònica Gaspar

Quiet Persuasion: Political Craft by Geraldine Craig

Book Reviews

A Theory of Craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression reviewed by Sandra Alfoldy

Designing Modern Britain reviewed by Peter Hughes

Studio craft should learn from the DIY movement

Convenor — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:20:44 +0000

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emiko oye is another blogger who has been deeply engaged with the conversations that emerged at the American Craft conference. Here she provides JMC readers with her thoughts about the relation between DIY and studio craft:

While the New Wave DIY/Alt Craft scene (as brought to light by Faythe Levine’s Handmade Nation movie) has been going strong the last 5 or 6 years, it has just recently in the last couple of years started to turn the head of the studio craft world, and as witnessed at the recent ACC conference in Minneapolis, really spun some heads Exorcist style. Myself being active in both camps, especially living in the Bay Area where Alt Craft is really prominent (and inclusivity is more the norm), was somewhat unaware of the tensions forming between. But seeing it from a different angle, especially as studio crafters are struggling to make it in this economic climate, makes me realize how all the more important it is to bring these two craft worlds together, break down the stereotypes, misconceptions, and naïveté. Help each other to progress in order to move craft forward in the 21st century.

What DIY has going for it that studio craft desperately needs is infectious enthusiasm for making, that everyone can access their inner crafter and put it out there into the world without judgement from others. The scenario of “you too can make a …”–granted not everyone will be good at it, but the fact that the average consumer is being engaged in craft and realizing that handmade has more personal value than goods Made in China. People begin to understand why handmade items are priced higher than WalMart, appreciate the skill it takes to make something special, and in turn be happy to open their wallets to purchase craft goods. As Rob Walker so succinctly stated during his marketplace presentation, “The mistake people (i.e. crafters) make is in thinking that the most important story is their story, but it isn’t…best when your story is relevant to other’s (i.e. consumer’s) lives.” Today’s consumer is more conscious of where products are made and if they are environmentally and socially responsible. This is where makers and buyers share some similar lifestyle values.

Other reasons for the success of DIY is that they align themselves with various areas of Design and fully embrace new technology. Graphic designers play a big role in marketing and promoting the fairs and events as well as selling their 2D artwork at the fairs. Fashion designers too are included in this mix, often times showcasing many designers work in onsite fashion shows. Craft shows with an entertainment aspect—music, food, and performances. And most importantly, DIY utilizes the web to its full potential, spreading buzz through social networking, blogs, websites, tweets, etc. This is where studio craft needs to catch up fast and get on the 2.0 train or be left out in the cold.

If studio craft can pick up and run with these points that make DIY successful, and in the meantime offer wisdom to DIY on how to be professional artists in the business world, we’d help elevate each other and craft to new heights. This realization has inspired me to attempt to bridge the gap in a symposium that I am organizing for the Metal Arts Guild in 2011 since the West Coast has such a rich history and larger population of both studio craft and DIY.

Websites:

Creating a new craft culture

Convenor — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 06:41:50 +0000

As expected, the recent American Craft Council conference Creating a new Craft Culture, generated much lively debate. This event seemed to provide a stage for the confrontation between two very different craft cultures: the older studio model of individual craftsperson contributing unique works to the field of craft, versus the new renegade model of craft collectivities engaging with the issues of the day. It may be too early to find a clear outcome for this encounter, but it sets up an important argument about contemporary craft in years to come.

The opposition between craft and DIY relates quite closely to the current issue in the Journal of Modern Craft, which considers how the current politicisation of craft engages with the history of the craft movement.

As a flavour of the new position, here’s a reflection on the conference written especially for JMC by craft blogger Harriete Estel:

The D.I.Y. movement is reinventing the American Craft scene in its approach to the marketplace. The D.I.Y. ‘ers grew up with the Internet and know how to connect with a wider audience. They engage their community and the general public with their accessibility and enthusiasm in the making of handmade objects. By empowering artists to reach out and be found by any person interested in their media or work, the Internet demolishes the monopoly of the traditional gallery and the limitation of available pedestal space. Art and craft no longer needs to be a rarified environment. All studio craft can benefit from this new dynamic and all should embrace this new potential. The Internet and the D.I.Y. movement have forever expanded the art and craft universe.

That’s quite a challenging position. It resonates well with Faythe Levine’s contributions to this site. You can read more of Harriete’s views from her blog here.

Handmade Nation: feedback & dialogue

FaytheLevine — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:26:48 +0000

Handmade Nation in Austin with covered pipe installation by Knitta' Please!

For those who may not be familiar, I started shooting Handmade Nation in June 2006, the book (based off of research from the film) was released by Princeton Architectural Press in October 2008, and the film was released in February 2009 and the DVD will be released in November. The first three screenings were Milwaukee WI (where I am based), Hamburg Germany, and New York. The immediate feedback was and continues to be very positive. The audience, regardless of location, consistently talks about how they feel inspired, ready to go home and finish a project, re-organize their studio, start a class or for those who are not of the creative breed, support more artists. A lot of people tell me they leave feeling like they were a part of something much larger then they had realized. Overall, the general feeling is of empowerment. Empowerment to me is what craft is all about. Making choices and using those choices to create something.

Handmade Nation screening at Viva La Craft hosted by Chicks On Speed at Kampnagel Theater

Since February, Handmade Nation has been shown in over 6 countries and over 20 states in America. The dialogue discussed at the Q&A’s following the film are always fairly consistent. People are very interested in how I selected who was featured (I worked with people I knew and admired for the most part). The age long debate about what is art and what is craft and more specifically, the idea that our generation is less concerned with defining ourselves and more concerned with community. Race, class and gender politics come up sporadically as does the discussion around third wave feminism. More recently discussion around the economy and how it has effected makers whose income is based on the sales of their work.

And, what has surprised me most is that more often then not, older viewers are defensive about not being represented in the film. To this I always reply in one way or another, that the whole point of this film is to show that a younger generation of makers, my generation, are here doing things different. The point is not about ignoring what came before us, but acknowledging that things move forward and grow. Handmade Nation is a single step in that direction, educating and documenting a small slice of what is happening today within the larger art, craft and design community.

Handmade Nation in Milwaukee, WI

Handmade Nation in Milwaukee, WI at the Oriental Theater