Art vs Craft

The Art vs Craft issue is a complex question and one that has bedeviled creators a great deal in the last fifty years or so.

I once heard a gallery owner say that the difference between an art object and a craft object is $3000. The American Craft Council's director Carmine Branagan says that the discussion is unimportant, that the craft/art debate is one of craftspeople talking to themselves, about issues that do not matter at all to the general public - they do not care about this particular debate. She holds that if we are educating the culture as makers then the real issue is getting the work and what it means out and before the public, especially through galleries, museums and publications, the validators in society.

I personally see art and craft as a very similar activity, that both involve creating, problem solving, composition and design decisions, pattern recognition, intuition, etc. I consider things a spectrum of kinds of work, no boundaries or strict edges to things, more of a blur. It has to do with intent perhaps, what is the intent of the object. That and the form of the object, the choice to work in a form or within the restrictions of a form. Examples of forms include a ring, a teapot, a wall mounted painting, a chair. By choosing an object type (or aesthetic or media restrictions) one defines the skeleton against which one makes art. Some of these contexts and restrictions are cultural as well as functional, and here is where we may wander into objects that can clearly be called craft ones.

The Canadian Professional Relations tribunal, after spending months on the question decided that 'artists self-designate', that for legal purposes you are an artist if you say you are or a craftsperson if you say you are. I am both, and some of my objects are both at one time. I see it as a long spectrum where the maker defines what object type it is or what mode (art/craft) one works in. The issue for me comes in hierarchy, in situations where people are told, or taught that one thing is better than another (usually art more 'fine', 'high', 'valued') than craft. And that, I think is where the rub lies, with some people discriminating against practitioners and objects made in a craft context, and as a someone who willingly chooses that context now and then, it feels bad. The issue of Design is a large one, and while I think both art and craft objects are designed, to work in the mode of design is to work in a mode that emphasizes service, function and the user. In the design world though changes have occurred so that a single object in a 'craft' media can be shown in a catalog or magazine as a designed object, and the maker has, more or less, made it in service to their own (artistic) needs rather than to an external problem.

Art and craft are differentiated by customs and border control laws by practical function. If you can wear it or put peanuts into it is craft. Or if there are more than 49 of them - prints, both photographic and other done in editions magically turn from fine art into product if there are 50 or more of them.

Once upon a time (pre-NAFTA) craft work going to the US had a 50% duty on it which made it just about impossible to think of selling in the states. Fine art however traveled duty free. You could however, prove you were an artist to the United States government, which I went through in the hope of being able to circumvent the duty if I was recognized as a fine artist. This process was complex and circuitous. And you can only apply once in your life. If they decide you are not an artist you can NEVER apply again. That's it. A one time decision.

It is administered by the US department of Justice, and one had to submit all the proofs you could find, posters you were called an artist on, published 'artist's statements' that used the work artist, and so on. In fact I have made a point of ensuring that the word 'artist' appears in connection with my name in print since this experience. You then documented a piece of work at all stages, photographs of all the stages in its development and described and listed all the decision points there were. In my case there were some 28 distinct aesthetic decisions made while making the sample piece. You proved that there were numerous aesthetic decision points in the work, (not just technical ones). This, with every other proof you could think of was installed in a large binder. Then you submitted the whole pile to the Department of Justice. Some time later they get back to you.

They said I was an Artist. Definitely. For sure. But it didn't make any difference, I still had to pay the duty on my work because it was still functional, you could still wear it or use it for things other than just looking at.

So, for me its a spectrum, and intent, the object, the mode and me determine what it is, how much art content it may have. Most of the time elements of both, sometimes tilted more one way than another.

The only problem with the debate is unfair hierarchy which seems to exist in the arts field and in the culture and the results of discrimination based on such hierarchy, its effects on fees paid to teachers, salary expectations, grants, university budgets for craft areas and so on. In Australia I read a theory that these issues are all gender based and link with gender politices. I would tend to agree, from what I have seen.