So this is a bit of a rant.
Beth Cavener Stichter is a phenomenal artist who just received a Fellowship grant from Artist Trust, a Washington state organization that supports the arts.
She won in the Craft category, and I’m thinking “craft?!?!” Here are two examples of her work:
These are life-size, by the way, and from Beth’s current show in New York (info here). I want to stress: Beth is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Her work is exquisite, deeply evocative and she impressively pushes it further with each show. She also seems like a kind and funny person (we haven’t met). She deserves every accolade possible.
Likewise, Artist Trust is a great organization: responsive, artist focused, truly helpful. They even gave me a Project grant several years back (no categories for that one).
But still, Craft??? How is this not Visual Art (another category)?
Sour grapes? I did apply for this Fellowship too and didn’t get it – not tragic. Should I apply in the future under Traditional or Folk Art instead of Craft? What is the thread connecting my work and her work – clay? only clay? kilns? Where does Craft end as a category? Does the fact that she makes it herself turn it into Craft?
What difference does it make? I think it makes a difference because when craft museums, councils, and awards support visual art in craft media there becomes no place for … what? I was going to say craft, but that word now means something else. There becomes no place for ye olde craft? Gosh darn craft?
This semantic tension is symptomatic of a cultural tension. When the Bellevue (Wa) Art Museum folded and was re-born as a craft museum they changed the name to the Bellevue Arts Museum. Isn’t that nice and inclusive? It’s like saying you’re Danish when you’re really from Greenland.
Our culture, even sensitive and aware segments of our culture, still does not know how to respond to handmade objects, least of all utilitarian ones. That anything whatever made out of clay, when it is actually made by the person whose name is on it, is designated craft is simply shortsighted.
Okay, time to make more, um…pottery.
November 5, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Sequoia, I’m with you! I hear you! I agree! I have the answe—oh wait, I don’t have the answer. It’s one of the most frustrating things about working in, and talking about working in, clay. I keep thinking about what it must have been like when art was considered a subset of craft, when craft was the big tent under which everyone made things. To call the current rift a matter of semantics is certainly too simple, and to call it cultural conspiracy is obviously too extreme, but somewhere in the middle we may find at least a place to be okay with it. I haven’t found it yet…
November 6, 2009 at 5:27 am
I was surprised when I found out that her award was in the craft category. I agree that it is a confusing thing, the art/craft delineation. Since you also applied for the fellowship, I am curious as to whether the Artist Trust gave any clear definitions of the different categories in the prospectus. If seems to me that it would make things easier if it was clear that only one category would be acceptable for each artist’s work. Even if said definitions varied between events (as surely they would), it would even the playing field in my opinion.
November 6, 2009 at 6:06 am
Interesting timing for your post, there is a list of podcasts here http://www.craftcouncil.org/conference09/?page_id=1539
re: American Craft Council Conference.
I attended a conference at Arrowmont and the guest speaker was from American Craft Magazine. Lots of heated discussions on this very topic afterward. No one seems to know where potters fit in!
November 6, 2009 at 6:53 am
Whew, where to begin? I’ve Been talking abut this art v. craft topic my entire career! Thinking it has more to do with the growth of craft, than the other way around. If it were not for the “giants” in all of the major “craft” fields, ie. clay, metal, wood, fiber, glass, this discussion would not be happening. But the crafts have evolved, some would say into art (your point about Beth exactly). As for me, I am content to persevere and just keep creating and leave the semantics to someone else- like Garth Clark and Donald Kuspit. I don’t mind the occasional confusing grant application. “Do I apply for this one or that one? It all ends up in the eyes and minds of the jury. One year there will be a potter within the selection group…the next year there will be a ceramic sculptor…such is life. Keep up the potting and writing. Your blog is an extension of your beautiful pottery! Oh, by the way, I think the same Washington state arts funding organization gave Anne Hirondelle a major cash award, as well! Think one had to be over 60 years of age to apply for the award. Congrats to Anne, as well as Beth!
November 6, 2009 at 9:25 am
hi sequoia… her work is sculpture. it’s plain to me but i’ve been listening to this “debate” since i started college in 1977. i was under the impression early on that rudy autio and peter voulkos had rescued clay from the craft genre and put is squarely in the art genre. at the time this seemed to satisfy my worries about the whole thing and allowed me to think of it as resolved and get back to work. the finer demarcations and semantic nonsense are really merely tiresome to me now. art has such a bad name with the general public with extreme examples of incomprehensible pieces being shown in the media that maybe the craft label will end up being the more esteemed and work relegated there will share the one thing that they have in common… an actual object that can be seen. who knows?
November 8, 2009 at 6:39 am
I just read some of Beth’s artist statements to see if they would shed any light on why she considered her work Craft, but the trail disappears very quickly. Perhaps, as you say, the mere fact that it is made out of clay was sufficient in both her eyes and the jurors’. And of course anything and everything painted with pigments is Art….
November 8, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Those Craft/Art lines blur. The Uber Portrait Exhibit which just came down @ the Bellevue Arts Museum, was a wonderful case in point, but one way or the other, it was an extraordinary exhibit.
If you want a real clay throw down, go to:
http://www.bellevuearts.org/exhibitions/biennial/index.htm
November 9, 2009 at 11:14 am
Thanks for the comments and links, folks. I think what’s interesting about this is that, in fact, no-one is at fault. I would have applied as craft if I made work like Beth’s. And I may have given her the fellowship if I were a juror. We have no collective definition of craft, that’s the problem.
November 12, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Just went to London and spent a lot of time in the new Ceramics Gallery, which is fantastic, and which is completely dedicated to keeping this topic difficult to resolve!
I highly recommend a visit, it’s worth it. Their website is a bit difficult to navigate (I find), but check it out at http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/ceramics/galleries/141/index.html (I’ve landed you in the Contemporary Ceramics room with my link — you can wander from there).