Engaging with craft

A few issues back, we ran a story called “Craft in Unexpected Places.” The places where craft would not be expected are, it seems, shrinking in number all the time. One of the places in that story, the Huntington Library in California, now has a curator for American decorative arts: Hal Nelson, who is known for his 1989-2006 tenure as director at the Long Beach Museum of Art, where he organized many important craft shows.

The term “craft” has come up in architectural contexts with increasing frequency recently. Some observers have joked that it‘s the second trendiest word in that field, following only “green.” In this issue, a young architect, Joshua Stein, says that for him, the turn to craft was a reaction to the digital emphasis of his training. He explains the value of craft‘s material directness as opposed to architecture‘s projective thinking, which can easily lead to forgetting the importance of substance and detail. Exploring the craft sensibility introduces new options in architecture, he believes.

Certainly that‘s also the case in art. Vast numbers of artists without any particularly training in craft have nevertheless been attracted to it for reasons of social meaning or for the implications of process. Art critic Eleanor Heartney in this issue looks at three artists who engage with craft due to quite different ideological orientations and cultural backgrounds.

Craft, of course, has also been taken up by young makers, some of them now marketing good-natured, simple works that used to be called hobby crafts. The marvel of it is that young people in the digital age are embracing craft so enthusiastically, not just their iPods and phone apps. We're lucky to live in a time when engagement with the practice of craft is expanding.