Som e a rtists view
cra ft p rim a rily as an
a ctivity , rather than
an object. A n d th ey ’re
ta kin g it public.
s t o r y b y
L is a 1\ a cion
W H A T IS C R A F T ? T H E U S U A L
answer describes craft as a noun:
an object made from wood, clay,
fiber, metal, glass, or paper.
But in a radical reconsideration
of the word, a number of cura-
tors and artists have recently
focused on craft as a verb, an
action, a performance.
In this view, the exhibition
of craft becomes not the display
of objects but the performance
of what would otherwise hap-
pen in the studio. For
Occupa-
tion
(2010), potter Ehren Tool,
a veteran of the First Gulf War,
threw cup after porcelain cup in
a weeklong residency at Portland,
Oregon’s Museum of Contem-
porary Craft, ultimately giving
his fired cups to museum visitors.
In the mid-20oos, Travis
Meinolf wheeled his loom to
the streets of San Francisco,
weaving a simple white cotton
cloth to begin his project,
Social
Fabric.
He invited viewers to
choose another color with
which he demonstrated a twill
weave, creating a colorful stripe
and recording their participa-
tion. In the pages of this maga-
zine (“Studio on the Street,”
Apr./May 2009), Gabriel Craig
described taking his jewelers’
bench out of the workshop and
onto the streets to make silver
rings that he then gave away.
What’s driving this focus on
process? Some say it's a rethink-
ing of how we live our lives,
after 9/11 and the political,
economic, and environmental
turmoil of the past decade.
“Among the group of artists
emerging now,” says Namita
Gupta Wiggers, Museum of
Contemporary Craft curator
and ACC trustee, “I’m seeing a
desire to return to making at a
really fundamental level.” Art-
ists are focused on “where mate-
rials come from, how they are
manipulated, how to connect
with people,” she says.
Tool’s
Occupation
was part
of the exhibition “Gestures of
Resistance,” curated by Shannon
Stratton and Judith Leemann.
“Gestures” invited a handful
of artists in turn to work in
the gallery space; Mung Lar
Lam, for example, performed
070 american craft dec/jani2
IV in d -U p
photo: Rick Gardner, courtesy of the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery
