Reading 1

Selvage, Nancy. "Art Versus Craft: The Issue of Craftsmanship in Twentieth-Century Art." Ceramic Millennium:             Critical Writings on Ceramic History, Theory and Art. Halifax, N.S.: Press of the Nova Scotia College of  Art and Design, Garth Clark ed. 2006.

Yanagi, Soetsu, Bernard Leach, and Shōji Hamada. The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1989. Print.

Pottery As Personal Lifestyle and Cultural Tradition

            “The contemporary American potter, like all fellow artists, is an educated individual, self-conscious of personal identity and capable of certain choices of lifestyle. Being a potter, as does being an artist, involves aesthetic choices, commitment, and risk.”    –Nancy Selvage

           As an Independent Study student, dreaming big dreams of future plans while still trying to hold onto the reality of the decisions and choices I continue to make in my artistic pursuit, I was very moved by this concise statement made by Selvage. She presents the idea that to make art is to not just learn aesthetics, skills, or what makes things work, but to adopt art as a personal lifestyle. Although art is a mode by which we learn important personal things (such as what time of day we work best, how we research, and how our ideas develop), it requires a full-time desire to not only hone the skills that we have so greedily collected but to transcend beyond our own wishes and ideas. To commit to embracing who we are, sharing a piece of that with others, and always looking over and beyond what we know. It poses the question: who do we make art for? Is art the constant pursuit of beauty? Is it more of a hobby or practice? Selvage then closes with the notion of our society as “an accessible cultural sandwich,” hinting to the bigger overlying structure presented by culture that we are then called to find our place in, no matter how “diverse [the] visual imagery” has become. The personal enters the public through art. Our adopted lifestyle is reflected onto the society we live in through the things we create and share.

           This is a nice leeway into the Yanagi article, which is a loud call for the reclaiming of the “age of the hand” in craft and cultural tradition. It interests me that at times when there existed higher social regulation tradition was easier to follow. There was such clear focus. How does tradition link us to truth in art?  I also enjoy the idea of bringing craft into our daily job/work. What would life look life if we treated everything as craft?  It seems that although open-mindedness is an important tool for expanding art, we have become too accepting of non-beautiful things. Now, I am not saying that we need to go out and destroy all “ugly” things, but rather that we need to re-evaluate and cultivate the terms we use to translate and therefore experience art. Perhaps this is what Yanagi sees as embracing religion or a type of artistic belief system. This leads back to the Selvage article, calling us to endless hours of education, self-pursuit and more time spend experiencing and contemplating great historical works of art.  We must pursue pottery and work to understand its relationship with tradition. And yet, while there is a certain romance to that of the “hand-made” there still remains satisfaction and beauty in the efficiency of the machine. To be able to participate in the act of creation through art is a beautiful process, but so is embracing technology and the brilliance of the human mind to think, problem solve, and create machines/systems that advance beyond what the human hand is capable of. 

Molly Post