Week 8: Craft

Craft

The word, "craft," has often been diminished in importance by popular culture and reduced to being loosely associated with hobby. The stereotype regarding craft is that one passively engages their work and that it doesn't necessarily require any creativity. It is often derided as being inferior to "art." Instead of seeing craft as separate from art, I see it as a necessary preparation, the training aspect of creativity. For the visual artist, it helps to strengthen the mind, sharpen the eyes, and develop the discipline to persevere with a task until the goal has been achieved.

Many of the artists and themes that we have explored this week would be arbitrarily categorized by some as "craft." After further exploration, however, we come to recognize the artistic value the work has and that this subversive categorization could not be further from the truth.

On tuesday the class was treated to a terrific guest lecture by Anya Kivarkis, a professor from the jewelry and metalsmithing department. Prior to this lecture, my understanding of jewelry making was very limited, other than being seen as a superfluous luxury and a pleasant gesture of love. In fact, most of the work that professor Kivarkis presented was not jewelry in the traditional sense of being luxury items, but instead addresses methods of production and ideas about luxury using jewelry. It is jewelry that comments on jewelry.

Gijs Bakker created a series of work that subverts the idea of luxury. In his Real Series, he takes pieces of real jewelry and from that design creates a larger-sized replica of the piece from costume jewelry. The smaller real piece of jewelry is then placed on top of the costume jewelry. The larger piece suggests that it is more important, even though the smaller piece contains authentic gemstones. This juxtaposition of these two pieces of jewelry, one "real" and one "fake," forces the viewer to place arbitrary value on the pieces and to determine which one is the valuable one, the "real" jewelry, or the costume jewelry replica created by the artist?




This other artist doesn't necessary work in the same medium but still addresses the same idea of value in his work. Kaz Oshiro paints replicas of ordinary objects that are nearly indistinguishable from the objects being copied. These ordinary objects, often overlooked in real life, are endowed with greater value once the viewer acknowledges it as a copy. The object is made of a different material than the original and lacks functionality, yet despite this, it is more valuable than the object that it copies because of the realization that it is a work of art. The object reveals a process and the focus emphasizes the the artist more than the object. When this ordinary object is encountered again in everyday life, the viewer may observe it closer this time.






Another artist that we have observed over the last week is John Feodorov. Born of Polish and Navajo descent, Feodorov is highly influenced by his conflicting heritage and explores the idea of spirituality in his work. Much of his work takes Navajo folklore and traditions and puts a contemporary spin on it. Feodorov describes his own work as "artifacts of contemporary desperation--a search for a Something, an Other, that may or may not exist." His Totem Teddies represent this spiritual conflict. While the bear symbolizes power and dignity in many native cultures, it has been castrated of its dignity in the contemporary form of a teddy bear and has transformed into a cute and cuddly commodity. In an effort to reinstate some of its lost dignity, Feodorov instills spiritual qualities into the teddies in an attempt to regain some of their lost dignity. However, despite his attempts, the whole prospect also seems desperate and hopeless because they are still teddy bears and in that form cannot possess qualities of power and dignity.





A video work by Feodorov presents a common issue in contemporary society and attempts to rectify it through traditional spiritual means. In his video, "Office Shaman," Feodorov takes a common issue in contemporary society, workplace productivity, and attempts to find a spiritual solution to it through traditional shamanistic ritual reformatted for the work environment. The result is humorous but also desperate in that it is aware of its own desperation. This causes one to question whether by attempting to reformat these traditions for a workplace environment whether the tradition itself is undermined and ridiculed?



Observing the work from this week has proven to me that even work that may seem like craft can still be endowed with meaning. Craft is a necessary process of art and without it the artists' intent would be less effectively communicated.