1: The Hunt
2: New Moon
3: Freak
A question arises among potters that always is divisive and can rend friendships. Are we making craft or art? What is the difference? Are artists better than potters? Are potters more down to earth and reality based? How does a craftsman elevate his work to the level of art?
Quality art is an expression of an individual that uses good base design and then enhances or alters it with a personal point of view that will reach a broad base of viewers and draw them into the universal experience.
There is no reason to copy the past to do this. Our current experience is sufficient to make new art meaningful and relevant to the future.
We have access to modern ideas that were simply not part of the visual and expressive vernacular of the past and artists who use these elements are what people mean when they talk about current or relevant art.
The idea that there is nothing new under the sun is usually coming from someone who doesn't like the modern age or who rejects change out of habit. I don't want to be that person. Exploiting modern materials and doing things in new ways is part of my experience as a modern person and so it will naturally occur in my work as well.
I don't make shock art but I have never seen the unique combination of firing, color, and form that is essential to my work and I had to take 5 semesters of history of art to get my degree. My work and style is unique among potters and brush painters alike, as potters usually don't paint like this and painters usually don't paint on pots. Even within the china painting lexicon, I am unique in that I do not work at those temperatures. I use modern ceramic grade pigments that fire to 2300 degrees, 1000 degrees hotter than most china paint decoration.
I have used modern technology to make my work more permanent and with an increased functionality that enhances it for me, perhaps only me. It is an esoteric quality of the work that is not even important in the greater scheme of a thing hung on the wall, but its quality and character will make it last forever, and that is a mighty long time!
There is plenty new under the sun, but it is up to you to make it. Instead of trotting out old ideas that have been fully explored already, adding nothing new of significance, and calling yourself a traditionalist, you have to risk failure to be an artist. That is the main difference between fine craft and art, fine craft is virtually fail-proof as it is essentially working from templates already proven. Art is new and a little dangerous if you are counting on paying the mortgage with it. But some people do not feel whole when they do not make it, and that is a drive you cannot dismiss or diminish.
(works shown are cone 7 stoneware slab ceramic tile formed by hand and individually painted with high fired pigments in a chinese brushpainting style called xie-yi)
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fingerlakeswanderer
zanelle
Are You Talking French?
Greer McVay
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Brent Troth
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Comments
Thank you, and thank you for noticing that making it functional makes it that much harder to get it right and still give it the extra push it needs to retain expression and relevance.
AWS,
Your blog is a very dense package that interests me and leads me astray when I try to find things! I love that, but can you give me a hint on where to find that part?
craft: constructing a product with the intention of pleasing someone else weather for judgment or sale.
no matter if I hand build it or throw it people usually persieve it as a mistake. I love George Orr and original Pewabic Pottery
I have no ability to produce visual art, but I look at writing as both art and craft. I don't think the concepts have to be mutually exclusive.
Is it really argued?
Many of us are drawn to functional art, and I think my fave museum in the whole world is the V&A in London, just chockablock with great crafts.
I am friends with an artist you may be familiar with, Michele Oka Doner. We grew up on the same block and recently took a walk in the old neighborhood, and I saw how she uses natural things to design great lamps, chairs and those magnificent floors in the Miami airport and many other places. Art, for sure. But functional.
People perceiving work genuinely engaged in..."mistakes" are probably user error!
Craft and art don't have to be mutually exclusive, but a lot of times they are. Many artists don't work as hard on craftsmanship as their ideas and many craftsmen do not try to introduce new concepts. "Crafty" is rarely a compliment and "Well, isn't that artistic!" is usually a slur cast at an unworthy object.
I started my career as an industrial designer and the functionality is part of my whole zeitgist as an artist. It makes it difficult for me to just make a painting.
They argue it to death about every three months or so on Clayart, a listserv for potters. There is a jealousy among some potters who want to be artists, and a scorn among some artists for people who make simple pots. As a person who made simple pots (nice ones!) for the first 15 years of my pottery life and who can still crank out a full service for 8 in one week when I need to, I have resolved the conflict by being able to do both activities on the same piece of work. It may be WHY I wound up going that route. I didn't want to be scorned by either side.
I HAVE seen those floors! Pottery is a small world. She may have seen my tile stuff, too, but probably less likely. Tell her I did the brushpainting article in Pottery Making Illustrated. She may remember it. The second image above was the title piece for the article.
The painted Rookwood pottery and the Batchelder tiles are my favorite works in the crafts movement. In art pottery, my favorite is Beth Cavener Strichter, whose work, while kind of disturbing, is kind of awesome, too. http://www.followtheblackrabbit.com/
Her images are kind of creepy, which is particularly startling with respect to clay, which is not really that kind of medium on the whole.
My strongest influence is in Chinese brush painting and the American pottery workshop traditions. The painting is easy to see, but the process of how I work in series and the way I work as I physically generate pieces is harder for a viewer to get without actually seeing it happen.
I learned to wood fire and that is where I get my Japanese wood fire jollies!
I think pattern and pure design is best seen in African and South American work. The pottery traditions there are extremely coherent and sophisticated as the medium, clay, was kept in play for a lot longer and much more in the forefront of artists' lives.
I am a potter, a mug and bowl maker, I do not want to be considered an “artist”
Why?
Well, along with claiming to be an “artist” comes some heavy responsibility to art, its history and traditions.
I don’t wish to assume that responsibility.
I find it challenging enough to craft a fine handle on a mug, or throw, on the potter’s wheel, a well proportioned bowl.
It is easy to make bad art.
It is a challenge to fit a lid to a casserole.
Make art?
Naaaa. That is a heavy burden disrespected by too many who claim to be artists.
BTW. Simply drawing or painting on clay does not make the clay art. Anything can be a “canvass” for an image, even the sidewalk.
(and yeah, congrats on the ep, EP!)
I think roots, eggs and women have a lot in common!
Art and craft together either make fine craft or fine art and sometimes the same thing...
I vary the shapes slightly to make each piece unique. When I make casseroles and such, I make them fit tight. This is craftsmanship. About a half days throwing work. I turned about 300 pots that week for an upcoming show.
http://open.salon.com/blog/epriddy/2008/08/23/potz
I saw art being made, when craft was featured. I think the two cross boundaries constantly. And what is an art, really? The art of listening is truly genius in its scope.
Fine art is a mystery. That's why we are thankful to have artists here on Earth.
Rated
I like your logo and banner, too!
Go you.
In my own mind I use clay to make art. Being an accomplished craftsman is only one thing that determines whether or not I am successful. Using the essentials of design, light, color and texture also play a role.
I have met potters who pride themselves in making dozens of functional pieces of pottery that are indistinguishable from one another. They are at one end of the craft - art continuum. At the other end are people who make beautiful things that are totally without function other than as something to delight.
The debate seems to exist within the pottery community as strongly as between painters and potters. My wife and I both work with clay and we have collected other people's pottery when we have been struck by a piece's beauty. The collection ranges from a, nearly, complete set of dinnerware (it has been used with joy) and pieces that can only be called sculpture.
BTW, I really like the pieces you showed. Rated for "art".
of course, we think potters are just glassblowers who couldn't stand the heat. :)