This is a post about art, because I’ve been an artist a lot longer than I’ve been a writer.
Playing with useless objects and patterns seems not only to be a primate penchant, but one found in upper avian species as well. Smart creatures may not be able to eat shiny, pretty things – but we are drawn to them, impelled to collect and often arrange them in meaningful order.
Humans and their ancestors apparently beautified their tools, their surroundings, and themselves for hundreds of thousands of years. As archaeological evidence, we have embellished tools, cave paintings, bead jewelry, and even cosmetic pigments mixed in seashells. We do not know how much of this decoration held ritual meaning, and how much was someone just playing for the sheer joy of making something beautiful. We also don’t how much this early pattern-making contributed to our ability to perform abstract mathematical and geometric calculations, though the connection seems logical.
Fine art (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.) split off from fine craft fairly recently in our history. As the need for fine craft skills was taken over by machine production, many of those disciplines were relegated to the status of ‘hobby crafts’ or ‘women’s work’. They were put down as unskilled noodling by suburban dilettantes or country hicks, or as the physical trappings of cultures that sidelined women as merely domestic servants or trophies. In the avant-garde art world of the late 20th Century, I noticed an almost vicious backlash against craft, technical skill, and beauty among my fellow artists. Craft and technical skill were considered inferior to the conceptual underpinnings of art. Beauty was suspect, an illusion unworthy of artists who challenged the world on supposedly deeper levels of philosophy and creation.
This may have been the reason why I abandoned a BA in Fine Art in the late 1980s – I wasn’t comfortable in that postmodern world of shock artists and their later evolution, the oh-so-serious socially-conscious artists. Commercial art let me play with conventional and unconventional ideals of beauty without feeling guilty. And it paid bills.
But along the way, some incredible artists never gave up on their ideas of beauty. Jewelry, wood, glass, and ceramics artists seduced scholars and collectors into accepting those disciplines as legitimate cousins of sculpture. Fiber, basketry, and book artists followed.
Now craft museums showcase the best examples. These modern artifacts are traded with as much joy and greed as any Renaissance masterwork. International exhibitions like SOFA (http://www.sofaexpo.com/) draw millions of dollars in sales, even in this recession. Regional art fairs like the Tempe Festival of the Arts (http://www.tempefestivalofthearts.com/) and Madison’s Art Fair On the Square (http://www.mmoca.org/programs-events/events/art-fair-square) may be mocked by some conceptual artistes, but these shows and others like them attract huge crowds, spectacular sales, and lots of tourist spending in the surrounding communities. Art is Big Business, and not all of it happens in the ultra-rich and exclusive frenzies of Art Basel or the Venice Biennale.
These are some of the artists I follow:
Amy Brier makes, among other gorgeous things, rolling sculptures that leave impressions in sand. (http://www.roliquery.com/index.php)
Cal Lane welds and pierces ordinary steel objects until they become metallic lace: (http://www.callane.com/)
Paul Stankard (http://www.paulstankard.com/works.php) and Josh Simpson (http://www.joshsimpson.com/site/gallery.html) create some of the most amazing glass objects I’ve ever seen. I was recently fortunate enough to see some of Stankard and Simpson’s work up close at a museum show, after following them in magazines and online. Hint: do this, please, if you ever have the chance to see this stuff up-close and personal. You’ll never look at a paperweight the same way again.
The entire roster of the Jane Sauer Gallery in Santa Fe, NM (http://jsauergallery.com/) reads like a who’s who of ceramics, glass, fiber, collage, and other formerly disregarded craft forms. The works are often lovely and always thought-provoking. Getting artwork into this gallery is one of my personal windmills – it’s never going to happen, but the quest forces me to make better and better art.
In the UK, Europe, and the US, instruction in arts and crafts has never been more attainable for the average citizen. If you want to learn something, and you live in a reasonably large population center, you can find someone to teach you. Stores like Make Meaning (http://www.makemeaning.com) and any number of wine bars, community centers, and museums offer hands-on classes for beginners. If a local hobby shop or Big-Box store doesn’t have decent art supplies, the internet has everything. Art is now so cheap to make that we have whole side-economies (www.etsy.com) based off selling it, or the materials to create it (www.ebay.com).
Art is so cheap that, like self-published writing, most of what is actually produced is as banal and unskilled as the shock artists once warned. The socially-conscious vibe still elevates intent over result: when art becomes therapy, it doesn’t automatically follow that it becomes real art, too. Don’t believe me? Go have a sad laugh at Regretsy (http://www.regretsy.com/) for a tour of art that must look better to its smitten makers than to any objective viewer.
But if you’re beyond the cringeworthy level of Regretsy, and if you can afford travel, the world of master-class instruction opens up. I joke that if I won a lottery I wouldn’t bother with a fancy house or car. I’d enroll in workshops at recognized fine craft schools, and attend conventions like the annual Bead & Button Show in Milwaukee (http://www.beadandbuttonshow.com/en.aspx). Think beads are hippie leftovers? Not so much – they’re big business, too, for both hot-glass artists and the artisans who string and weave handmade and commercial glass beads in astounding ways.
And here is where the ‘mindful’ part of this digression comes in: someone has to make all the art supplies now available in staggering variety.
Sometimes they come from responsible suppliers who use good materials, offer good wages to their workers, and pay attention to waste disposal and pollution issues.
Often, these supplies are made in developing nations, in sweatshop or worse situations. Real Venetian glass millefiori beads are more expensive than their recent Chinese competitors – for good reason. As dysfunctional as it is, the Italian economy can still pay more to its workers than a Chinese factory or re-education camp. The glass, metal, and gemstone beads that come out of India can create local economies encouraging development and social justice – or enforce the ancient social codes that still routinely victimize women and lower-caste citizens.
Nearly every craft component maker in the developing world uses the same resources sucked up by their mega-industrial cousins: coal, oil, natural gas, charcoal, clean water, and raw materials often sourced without thought for the ecological consequences. The fuel to expand those smaller industries is the same stuff we really shouldn’t take out of the ground, because of the looming and very real threat of global climate change.
We’re getting better. With many products, it’s now possible to trace them back to their sources with a little research. The ‘Reuse and Recycle’ art movement is in a rebirth somewhat more sophisticated than its 1970’s precursor. Developed-world hobbyists and professional artists are – most of us – more aware of the global ties between us and our suppliers. This awareness needs to grow beyond a vague New-Age nod toward ‘tribal’ values and cultures, if all of humanity can share the chance to create sustainable, lasting beauty.
Why bother, if we’re going to use everything up anyway, if entropy is slated to win the championship?
Why not? If humans succeed in getting off this planet, we’re going to take our pathological need to make stuff with us. The more humans = the more collectors of art. If we ever run into a different, more advanced species, our best trading commodities will be our philosophies and our artforms. Even if we don’t get off the planet in time to avoid a massive asteroid strike, climate destabilization, the next Ice Age, or a lethal pandemic, we have left our artifacts all over this world. Someone else, someday, might find them and wonder about us.
We’ll leave enough trash behind us. It might be good to leave something beautiful, too.