On Arts and Crafts: Is art just craft on a bender?

Hi Laurie,

In your opinion, is there a line between fine arts and craft? How do you categorize or situate your own work within the art world/market? Is there a difference for you between making functional pots and narrative-driven sculptural work? I know there is a lot to unpack in my multi-layered question, but I would love to hear your thoughts on any of these points!

Karen

Dear Karen,

Perhaps there is less of a line between arts and crafts than a line connecting them. I think great art often steps off the edge of great craft. In my opinion the two are conjoined twins and are rarely separated without death. 

It may be most sincere to try to define where the line sits for me personally. I think about craft in terms of lineage, techniques and tradition. Craft is remaking to an established standard and art aspires to travel beyond that standard. But it's a chicken and egg argument because craft often has an element of art in it and vice versa. So craft is not a guaranteed launching pad and all aspirations are not successful. Some art jumps off craft and immediately falls to its death on the pavement below. Half of my brain broadly agrees with this initial assessment and the other half wants me to eat a grenade and call it weaving. Maybe art is just craft on a bender? Maybe if I keep writing, an answer will emerge? 

I identify as a Potter because that's where I feel most at home. I like the studio pottery lifestyle and the people. I prefer beer to wine, steak to salmon. I’d rather eat a cheeseburger than a canape. What the Art World elicits in pretension and coldness pottery gives freely in inclusivity and warmth. You’ll notice that the clay community is never referred to as a ‘world’. There is no Clay World. It’s not that pompous and needy. But I am often referred to as an artist, and that's largely because some of my pots are a bit weird or allegedly non-functional, a claim which I deny! I believe that all my pots are functional, some hold water, others hold ideas. In my own practice I usually start by making recognisable standards and pride myself (slightly embarrassingly) on my own technical competency. But as soon as I’ve made an honest, quality reproduction the mischief creeps in. My wife refers to this as “the moment when he ruins a perfectly good pot” or as I call it… Art. 

I can’t recognise a difference between making domestic pots and sculptural work. My approach is identical. They are all the same thing. Whether an audience defines them as art or craft is a decision that sits beyond me. I can’t get behind hierarchies of material, function or category. Some of the best sculptures I have ever made are mugs. The only real difference is the price point which is largely applied by others from their own fortified categories. I make pots not price points. When people buy my work - thank you - they are buying little pieces of me and that is how they should be measured. I’ve given up trying to make sense of the irrational difference in prices between ceramic objects. I exist within a capitalist system and unfortunately, outside my studio, the sad general rule is - take as much as you can. And yes, I must sell the things I make to pay the bills so I guess my pots are also situated as ‘For Sale’. 

I do feel like categories are ultimately a fiction and matter more to retailers, curators and academics than to makers. Makers just make stuff. Our job is not to obey arbitrary boundaries designed to suppress creativity and maximise the production of recognisable products for sale (gulp). Whether I’m patching my pants or throwing a pot there’s no real difference if you remove commerce. It’s not art or craft, it's cellular compulsion. 

The market complicates this further by assigning different monetary values to art and crafts, with art usually being more expensive. But is it more valuable? Sorry Karen, I’m asking more than I’m answering. My gut feeling is that an imbalance in commerce drives most art vs craft conversations.  For dedicated artists and craftspeople making money is a real problem and I’m not supportive of the starving artist trope. It’s not romantic, it’s just shit. I’m a champion of the happy, healthy artist-craftsperson. In truth, selling my work is the only part of my practice that I think of as a job. The passion for me is all in the making and until I tried to answer your question I’d never stopped to consider whether I was making Art or making Craft. I had hoped to be more helpful but the more I try to define a binary the less I’m interested. Perhaps it's best for makers not to dwell on arbitrary definitions and to just make things.  

I make pots like I drink beer and sell them like I’m taking out the bottle bin, so I don’t have to live with the shame of my own debauchery. 

XL