arts and crafts

Mr Finch

Since I was little I always thought of these things as the same. To me they were the domain of the creatives. Somewhere along the line it became popular to separate the two and I find it a little bit disturbing. To me, personally, the application of the 'Craft' into individual creative expressions makes the 'Art'. Personally I find no difference between painting with oil and knitting, if it is purposed into the creation of an expressive and original piece of 'Art'. There is just as much technique in using needle and thread, clay, bits of paper, oil paint... ad infinitum to create. Kids understand it, give them a stick and they draw in the sand, a handful of seashells, and they arrange them in pleasing patterns.
At some point, as is the way with adult humans, they have compartmentalised creativity into neat little packages of 'fine art' and 'craft'. I have seen a lot of crappy 'fine art' and some incredibly inspirational 'craft'. Ok, so there is some questions about longevity and archival materials, blah, blah, blah, but lets look at history: just for interest...check out what some of the post modernists used as solvents and mediums when money was tight (I am not mentioning any names here).  My mediums of choice (pastel/acrylic mixed media) are well accepted, however there is still some bias against pastel, many see it as a drawing medium only. Also, acrylic took a long time to be taken seriously. Really, it is a mystery to me where this snobbery came from...I always thought of the creative community to be one that had no boundaries and embraced new ideas, without bias. To me, I still love the Impressionists, the post modernists, the old masters, the Romanticists, the  neoclassicists, the luminists , AND the knitters, scrapbookers, stampers, sketchers, collage artists, fimo modellers nananananannaa. I heard this somewhere (and if I hadn't just had 4 glasses of red wine I could tell you where)  IF IT LOOKS GOOD IT IS GOOD :) Happy creating, and have a look at Mr Finch