By Hand

In 2000, when I was in architecture grad school at UCLA (mind you, I dropped out after a year to pursue my business), I think I was the only one in my class who truly enjoyed manual drafting. I would sit down at my table with my mayline and triangles while most folks faced their computer consumed with mastering the art of 3-D renderings. I'm certainly not alone in relishing making things slowly and by hand--and this book, "By Hand" evidences this crafting movement. The sewn artwork on the cover is really georgeous.

Though there were many, my favorite artist in the book is Kirsten Hassenfeld because her work explores her "ambivalence toward wealth and privelege." (Her sculpture below)

Reading this book made me think of Carol Sedestrom Ross, with whom I had the opportunity to speak with a couple months ago. She was instrumental in the US crafts movement in the early 70s, being the first to start large scale craft fairs (like the Rhinebeck and Baltimore shows) that catered to both wholesale and retail buyers. She did an interview with Craft Australia in 1998 and I like her explanation of the current resurgence of interest in craft:

"I think that artists are always the first to respond to social change so it doesn't surprise me that Charles Rennie Macintosh and William Morris and other artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement were the ones saying: 'Wait, wait, we can make these things, too'. But nobody was paying any attention to them, we do now but not then. That was a 'pushed movement' then, in marketing terms, the artists were trying to push their ideas onto other people. What is happening now is what is called a "pulled" movement because the public is very tired of mass produced things and prefers handmade so it is pulling the movement forward. There is now a huge appetite for craft in the US. I heard a lecture last Friday by John Naisbit who wrote Megatrends. He is most famous for his "high tech, high touch" concept, that is, the more technology we have in our lives the more things we need to touch to remind ourselves that we are human. It was the industrial revolution which started the craft movement and now it is the technological revolution 100 years later that is really pulling it forward."

Comments

[Phoebe (Silk Felt Soil)]

so interesting! i hadn't heard any theories about this but it makes a lot of sense. thanks! xp (ps- love the graphite mini-sculptures...)

[Jessica]

Everywhere I turn this book seems to be there. I have it on my holiday wish list, but I might just have to buy it sooner.

I think in this cold month of December I need some further inspiration to get out there and create!

[Danielle]

I like the ties you drew to the Arts and Crafts movement. I had always liked the fact that a group of artists felt that art should really belong to everyone. I always understood the push from Morris to be an impetus to inject art and beauty affordably into people's lives.

I like to think that this pull for handicrafts since I've fallen victim to the craft of knitting myself is similar but different. It is that desire for something aesthetically pleasing but even more so, something that is self-made. I like your conclusions about mass production and technology creating this need for simple, handmade crafts. I like to imagine it is also a desire to say that art not only belongs to everyone but can be created by everyone.