Craft Theory

Paper: Birth, Death, and Rebirth: Reconstruction of Architecture in Ruskin’s Writings

by Anuradha Chatterjee

Habitual creativity: Revising habit, reconceptualising creativity

by Vlad Glaveanu

Review of General Psychology, Vol 16(1), Mar 2012, 78-92

Current psychological scholarship is based on a dichotomy between habit, associated with automatic reflex behaviour,... more Current psychological scholarship is based on a dichotomy between habit, associated with automatic reflex behaviour, and creativity, which involves deliberation, purpose and heuristic procedures. However, this account is problematic and contradicts everyday experience where mastery, for instance, is one of the highest levels of creative performance achieved within a habitual practice. This article argues that such a separation misrepresents both habit and creativity with important theoretical and practical consequences. A first step towards reconciling the two terms is made by revisiting a series of foundational strands of theory from psychology and related disciplines. In light of these sources, habit is reformulated as a social, situated and open system and habitual creativity defined as the intrinsically creative nature of customary action, reflected in the way habits adjust to dynamic contexts, the way they are used, combined and ultimately perfected. Further distinctions are then made between habit, improvisation and innovation. Both improvisational and innovative creativity are embedded in habitual forms and this is well illustrated by craftwork: a practiced type of activity on the basis of which artisans improvise, whenever obstacles or difficulties are encountered, and even get to innovate, when their intention is to generate novel artefacts or work techniques.

Keywords: creativity, habit, improvisation, innovation, pragmatism, folk art.

Abstract - Birth, Death, and Rebirth Reconstruction of Architecture in Ruskin’s Writings

by Anuradha Chatterjee

Also, on http://intersticesjournal.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/interstices-2011-abstracts.pdf

Abstract for Interstices Under Construction Symposium: Technics, Memory and the Architecture of History, Friday 25... more Abstract for Interstices Under Construction Symposium: Technics, Memory and the Architecture of History, Friday 25 November-Sunday 27 November 2011, School of Architecture & Design, University of Tasmania

Gas Stations, Trees, and Rockets Wrapped in Weavings and Ideals: The International Fiber Collaborative and Provocations for Social Change

by Courtney Weida

With Jennifer Marsh, published in Creative Arts in Research for Community and Cultural Change, 2011, Editor Cheryl L. McLean, Associate Editor Robert Kelly Ph.D., University of Calgary, publisher Detselig Temeron Press
http://creativecommunitychange.blogspot.com/2011/01/about-creative-arts-in-research-for.html

This chapter examines the merging of art and activism within the International Fiber Collaborative (IFC), founded by... more This chapter examines the merging of art and activism within the International Fiber Collaborative (IFC), founded by Jennifer Marsh. As a fellow artist and educator, I have participated in and researched multiple collaborative projects with Marsh and the IFC over the past few years.  The large-scale, cozy-like creations of the IFC might be compared to the ephemeral wrapped works of Jeanne-Claude and Christo, yet they also seem to have a craft affinity with products of knitting circles.  Marsh and other IFC volunteers connect the individual fiber panels into vast coverings to wrap a gas station, a gigantic tree, and a NASA rocket. IFC’s community casts a similarly wide net: extending to artists, craftspeople, school children, college groups, and other makers working collaboratively or individually. Even while drawing upon the very tactile and hand-made traditions of fiber, knitting, weaving, and knotting; the IFC haptically utilizes blogging, email, and other digital networking to connect its global communities.  Online dialogues, exchanges, and collaborations offer alternative spaces of education and cultural production, even while providing participants with opportunities to (re)define artistic identities and conceptions of past and present craft communities. Parallel to this repurposing process is the utilization of a range of recycled materials within IFC fiber work.  This chapter will explore contemporary themes and approaches to globalization and activism in community art as they interweave with traditional craft processes with yarn, thread, and fabric.  As an arts researcher, I will draw upon portraiture methodology to describe the IFC’s unique artistic and social relevance for pedagogy.

The individual and communal themes explored in each participant’s contribution to the Gas Station Project, the Tree Project, and the most recent Rocket Project are myriad, yet share an interest in social change. While the Fiber Collaborative projects are intentionally open-ended and include many diverse political and ideological responses; the shared message of community and activism proves a common thread.  Further, the digital interplay of weblogging, linking, and online commentary allows a range of overlapping and divergent voices to coalesce in ways that transcend traditional, individual art-making and critical discourse. Though the original function of craft objects have utilitarian meanings, (such as a potholder or quilt), the purpose of an individual artist’s panel is often a uniquely personal and/or political expression.  In this way, contemporary craft projects like the IFC engender social change while building layers of multifaceted community space and artistic dialogue.

'"But something betwixt and between": *Roger Fry* and the contradictions of biography' (forthcoming)

by Amber Regis

Forthcoming in *Contradictory Woolf*, ed. by Derek Ryan and Stella Bolaki (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press, 2012).

Sentencing as craftwork and the binary epistemologies of the discretionary decision process

by Cyrus Tata

Social & Legal Studies Vol 16: 425-447

Subversively Discursive Digital Communities of Contemporary Craft

by Courtney Weida

Published in 2009 National Art Education Association best-seller: Globalization.

How do online networking sites for craft define themselves, and how do they compare to physical communities of... more How do online networking sites for craft define themselves, and how do they compare to physical communities of contemporary craft? This chapter examines the construction of subversive speech and counter-discourses within digital forums for ceramics, fiber art, and other studio crafts. Communities of people working within traditional craft media might seem unlikely netizens; however, Internet forums for craftspeople have become particularly robust and global communities. Web forums such as message boards and tutorials offer alternative social and teaching spaces. These online dialogues and collaborations offer opportunities to reclaim and/ or revise artistic identities and conceptions of past and present craft communities.

Dangerous Liaisons: Relationships Between Design, Craft and Art

by Grace Lees-Maffei

Co-authored with Linda Sandino, in 'Dangerous Liaisons: Relationships Between Design, Craft and Art', ed. Grace Lees-Maffei and Linda Sandino, a special issue of The Journal of Design History, vol. 17, no. 3 (2004), pp. 207-219.

The title for this special issue takes its starting point from Choderlos de Laclos’ novel depicting the machinations,... more The title for this special issue takes its starting point from Choderlos de Laclos’ novel depicting the machinations, seduction and jealousies of a ménage a trois, a fitting analogy for the complex matrices of the affinities between design, craft and art over the last two hundred years. Drawing on our analogy, design, craft and art can be seen to occupy an unstable territory of permanently shifting allegiances and this is true of both the histories of these three sets of practices and the three families of discourses surrounding them. The evolving nature of design practice on the part of some leading exponents defies categorisation: the designed goods of groups such as Droog and manufacturers such as Alessi demonstrate a concern for allusive and narrative qualities beyond functionalism. The claim to art status by some craft practitioners of this century and the last is more vociferous than ever and recent fine art practice has increasingly looked outside of the armoury of fine art techniques to employ strategies previously considered to fall into the domain of material culture, architecture and design, and processes more traditionally associated with the crafts. The rich and deepening liaison of textiles and fine art exemplifies this dynamic;  Dale Chihuly's work provides another example of such convergence. Existing debates have centred on liaisons between these practices and their objects as subject to a conventional hierarchy of the visual arts with fine art as the dominant partner. More recently, however, questions of status are seen as no longer relevant, and understanding of the development of these cultural strains has been seen in terms of parallel development, or convergence, rather than hierarchy. Where design, art and craft can be seen to have existed distinctly, it is important to consider the extent to which these practices have developed internal principles or characteristics or whether those principles have been forged solely in contradistinction from one another. To appreciate the significance of liaisons between design, craft, and art it is necessary to interrogate the mutually informative relationship between practice and discourse. The principles that define the differences and relations between design, art and craft are subject to historical change and vary regionally and culturally. This introduction proposes what the following articles demonstrate: namely that the interplay between design, craft and art are a compelling and revealing focal point for analysis. The articles demonstrate, in addition, the inadequacy of normative or unchanging usage of the terms design, craft and art, which are mutable in relation to both time and space. This introduction reviews some salient instances in the development of discourses about the interplay of design, art and craft while the following articles identify case studies of visual and material practice which mobilise, or confound, normative categories in a manner which invalidates or at least complicates discourses dependent upon conventionally discrete definitions.

Open access link to pdf: http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/17/3/207
Open access link to pre-print text: http://hdl.handle.net/2299/741

UK DIY: CRAFT RESEARCH REPORT

by Sally Fort

Naff? An Exploration of Value.

by Kathryn Lichti-Harriman

Lichti-Harriman, K. (2007) ‘Naff? An Exploration of Value’, 15 October 2007 – 24 January 2008, temporary installation, Marischal Museum, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland

PowerPoint upload pending.

Understanding the Individual Craftsperson: Creativity in North-East Scotland

by Kathryn Lichti-Harriman

Harriman, K. (2007) ‘Understanding the Individual Craftsperson: Creativity in North-East Scotland’ in New Craft Future Voices, eds. Follett & Valentine, Dundee, Scotland: Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design

This paper draws on my own situation as a visual anthropologist doing doctoral research on craft as material culture.... more This paper draws on my own situation as a visual anthropologist doing doctoral research on craft as material culture. My work in the North East of Scotland, based on fieldwork undertaken in 2005-2006, combines art and documentary photography with traditional participant observation. The resulting research approaches craft from theoretical and methodological perspectives situated slightly outside those of trained crafts practitioners. The interesting questions for me do not involve debating categories, but understanding how they work; they’re not about judging the value of Art or Craft, but understanding the social mechanisms that drive their makers.

I ask questions about the role of creativity in vernacular craft, by looking how people synthesize different modes of creative agency, balancing the paradoxes that arise. Then I examine discourses of Art and Craft, femininity, and individualism as cultural categories that pervade Euro-American understandings of the individual craftsperson. The main findings of these questions that there are two modes of creativity operating within Craft, which are embraced differently in the realms of fine and hobby craft. This impacts widely held views of the individual, non-professional craftsperson by informing discourses of femininity and individualism.

In order to explore this topic, I rely on visual based, ethnographic research on skilled people who live with and make craft as part of their daily lives. And, in order to explore my results further, I am planning an exhibition for June - August 2007 in order to share these findings with the communities in which I undertook my research. The goal is to encourage community participation and critique of academic research. Additionally, I have produced a set of art/documentary photographs that I use in my fieldwork as the basis for photo elicitation interviews. A selection of them appears in the paper below.

Women, Work and the Imagination of Craft In South Asia

by Clare Wilkinson-Weber

Contemporary South Asia, 13(3): 287-306. 2004

GENDER, HANDICRAFTS, AND DEVELOPMENT IN PAKISTAN: A Critical Review

by Clare Wilkinson-Weber

Pakistan Journal of Women’s Studies, 8(2), December: 91-104. 2001

Handicrafts in Pakistan are rich and diverse. Descriptions of the social organization of craft production are rare in... more Handicrafts in Pakistan are rich and diverse. Descriptions of the social organization of craft production are rare in the available literature, where ideal portrayals of artisans tend to predominate. Women's handicrafts are covered least of all, and in those accounts that do exist, women's labor tends to be minimized by describing it as either leisure-time work, or a form of assistance to the main, male worker in the household. There are several reasons why the prospects of handicrafts as a form of income generation and economic development for women need to be viewed circumspectly. Only more research on the economic and cultural aspects of women's handicraft production can reveal the truth about women's work in this sphere, and form the basis for sound development policy.

'Primary Text: An Enquiry on Handicrafts Zodiac no. 4/5, 1959'

by Catharine Rossi

The Journal of Modern Craft, vol. 3, no. 2, 2010