Joie de Faire

So, this morning, as I was watching the news and eating my breakfast, Gus Gnorski (Fox 6 News all-around-fix-it-guy) introduced a craft fair going on today. Because it's morning, I rarely ever pay full attention to what's being said on screen, so I don't remember the details of where and when.

The woman that Gus spoke to was north of 60 years old, and describing the painted wooden carvings that she sells at folk fairs and craft fairs. I thought, wouldn't it be nice to go to a craft fair on this fine mid-May weekend? But I wondered what kind of crafts would be represented, and based on the age of Gus' interviewee, I assumed the crafts would be the kinds of things that 60-year-olds would make, buy, and decorate with. Which is to say, some of it could be beautiful, funky, vintage, campy and stuff I'd love to own, but I was (am) not quite sure I have the patience to look through it all in order to find those gems on my broke weekend. (What kind of crafter am I??)

It did get me thinking, however, about the nature of crafts and craft fairs. When I was in middle school, my class was taken to the annual folk fair, which was full of traditionally costumed folks, ethnic foods, and crafts for blocks. I love it, not only because of the crafts, but because of the celebration that it was of heritage. (I'm a big history and culture nerd.) But at the time, crafts seemed deligated to the middle aged moms, the retired grandparents, the old guys with a shop in their garages.

But now, in the last, I don't know, five years or so, it seems that younger and younger folks are getting into creativity, small-business ownership, networking and the like. And it's terribly exciting to see this new development of arts, crafts, and youth empowerment.

And so I got to thinking, wouldn't it be fascinating to research, not only this recent trend, but the history of crafts and craft fairs as well?

So I got to work and started my search on Wikipedia. To begin with, I love Wikipedia. I was raised by a father who enjoyed nothing more than to consult the leather-bound, gold-lined encyclopedias whenever some question was in debate, so the idea of a treasury of knowledge available at my restless fingertips makes me giddy. But it's a somewhat dubious blessing, because you can never be full certain that what you are reding is true or if it's the work of some righteous dilettante. However, in reading about the accuracy of Wikipedia, I came across the defense that because it is an online source of knowledge, the turn-over for correcting errors can be argued to be much greater than that of a traidtional encyclopedia. Because, as soon as an encyclopedia or dictionary is published, it's out of date. So, while Wikipedia may not be a valid source for the purposed of a research paper, it's my favorite way to learn at work.

Anyway, I didn't intend to go off on that pro-Wikipedia tangent...

To begin my research, here is Wikipedia's definition of craft:

"A craft is a skill, especially involving practical arts... The term is often used to describe the family of artistic practices within the decorate arts that traditionally are defined by their relationship to functional or utiliarian products."

The usefulness of crafts, and its similarity to folk art creates this rift between high art and craft. Craft, in its usefulness, is often seen as simply a skill fo rmaking things, whereas art is seen as original and creative ideas. An intellectual distinction was made at some time in history, and led to artistic snobbery that I've tried to avoid, but craft, it seems, is more democratic. (Gracious, sometimes I say things that I didn't know were possible to come out of my head.)

But many people have tried to understand art and craft as, not two sides of a coin, but rather the man-made side of the coin versus the machine-made side. (What a funny looking coin that would be.)

"Is craft, therefore, only technique, or is it the subtle amalgam of learning and skill that yields invention, fantasy and art?" (Plaut, 1974.)

The border line between the arts and crafts is, in fact, as precarious as that between madness and genius." (Hilton Simmons, 1969.)