On the need to make things with my hands

In preparation for my move to Somerset (see previous post) I have resigned from my 'day job', and I am putting together extensive handover notes for my successor.  As I work on my own, and as this was a new post when I took it on, the majority of what it's necessary to know to do the job resides only in my head, so it is vitally important that I pass it on in some tangible way.  As I have been spending the last couple of weeks (in stray moments between frantically trying to tie up the loose ends and finish off all projects before I leave) thinking about the job in more detail than usual, I have been musing on how I have felt about this kind of work, and why I am so anxious to move on to other things.

It is no secret to those who know me that I have been increasingly unhappy in my 'day job'.  Some of the reasons for this are structural - frustrations about the systems, ethos and resourcing of the organisation  - and to do with my reaction to those structures; and also the way the workload has expanded to fill my entire week when what I thought I was taking on was a small part time job which would enable me to finish my art course and work as an artist.  But for the last eighteen months or so, there has been the realisation of a deeper issue.  Looking within myself to find out what makes me tick has been an uncomfortable, disruptive but enlightening experience.

I have come to the conclusion that I have a profound need to make things with my hands.  I need to be working in a way that combines the intellectual, the artistic and the practical, and not over-emphasizing any one of them.  In learning styles analysis, my preferred learning style is Visual, but with Kinaesthetic coming a strong second - not the profile one would expect for someone with my academic background.  My 'day job' has tended not only to be entirely conceptual and abstract, but also to take up so much time and energy that I have been less able to make things.  I think it is significant that at times when the job has been particularly stressful, I have felt a particularly strong need to do practical things such as knitting or painting furniture.  For me, making has become therapy, healing and wholeness.

Fundamentally, if I am not making things (whether that be art or 'things') I am unhappy.  This has been the case since I was a small child.  Acknowledging this has been difficult, because in our culture, being educated away from the practical and towards the cerebral is more highly valued, and having achieved that, why on earth would I want to 'go back' to the lowly business of making things?!  But however great the satisfaction from being good at my job (and there have been things I have been very proud of doing well in this role), what has been lacking is balance - and until recently enough self-awareness!  I cannot know how things will turn out in the next stage of my life, but I must make sure that I do not let any one aspect - academic, artistic, kinaesthetic - take over.  Brain, eye and hand must ALL be exercised.  Already I am finding that much of my art involves research and historical investigation.  When I train as a traditional upholsterer, one element of the assessment will be a paper on the history of furniture design.  The freelance work I am hoping to do will be more conceptual and abstract, but should be balanced by more time and energy for the artistic and practical.

I am reading a lot at present about the idea of craftsmanship, critiques of the ideas of the Arts & Crafts movement, Bauhaus etc.  When I have a clearer idea of where my thinking fits into all this, I will post further musing.  These may of course have some bearing on the contemporary debate about the future of 'vocational' versus 'academic' education, which is again looking to be come a contentious issue.

Art or Craft? - lengthy musings

I have recently been working on my submission for an award for emerging artists and crafts people.  This turned out to be much more traumatic that the ‘write up to 500 words and send up to 3 images’ brief would have led me to expect.  The problem was about categorising myself and my work – art or craft?  This is hardly a new dilemma - has been much discussion of it, especially with the recent revival in interest in 'craftsmanship'.  It was clear from the blurb that they were expecting painters or photographers in the art category, and textiles people in craft.  However, the craft category’s entry brief was about giving instructions for making the things you make.  The artist brief was to describe your work and inspiration.  This set me thinking.

I describe myself on my website and business cards as ‘textile artist and maker’.  My real interest is in textile art.  However, because the medium I mostly use (felt) also lends itself to making things like corsages, lavender hearts and other homewares and accessories, I do make some of these as well because they sell.  And because of the media I use, my art does involve making – I make the felt, often having first worked through a whole lot of processes from fleece to felt.  This is even more true of weaving, where I may have processed the wool and spun it before weaving with it.  And for me, as an artist, the process is part of the art – the meaning is, to some extent, in the making.  I am excited about the medium, about the provenance of the materials (especially if it’s rare breed wool – I may even have met the sheep!), and the processes involved, many of which have been part of human history for millennia. 

Good craftsmanship (I’m happier with 'craftspersonship', especially as many of the skills I am using have traditionally been practiced by women, but it doesn’t seem to have reached the lexicon yet) is key to the integrity of what I do, and indeed I think it is key to our economic sustainability as a country and as a planet.  I’m not in any way denigrating that sense of the word ‘craft’ – in fact I am celebrating it.  I am just uncomfortable when one of my pieces (say, a tonal abstract exploring the colours and textures of wool from several breeds of sheep) is described as ‘craft’.  I have no issues with describing my beautiful felt lavender hearts as craft – I am using craft skills, and craftsmanship honed over the years, to produce and attractive and functional object.

It’s all very nebulous and difficult.  I know some feltmakers who describe what they make as ‘wearable art’.  This confuses me, and analysing my confusion takes me towards a possible definition for me (I wouldn’t presume to impose my definition on anyone else) of art as non-functional.  Its function is to make us step back from the everyday, to look at life in a slightly different way.  I produce beautiful craft objects which have a practical function of some sort (even if that function is simply embellishment, as with my corsages) and are aesthetically pleasing, but do not point beyond themselves as objects.  I also produce art, which instead of paint uses textiles, created using craft skills, to take the viewer beyond the immediate usefulness of the object (a framed picture, for example, has limited practical usefulness).  These works inspire reflection, evoke responses beyond the aesthetic, they challenge or intrigue or move.  Some works tell a story – a story not limited to the narrative of their production.

If I never made another corsage or felt heart, I might be worse off financially, but it would not grieve me unduly – and I could teach someone else to make them.  But if I never created another piece of art, part of me would have died.  And although I could teach someone the skills, no one else can see the world quite how I see it, or be inspired to create this particular piece of work.  I must therefore conclude that what matters to me is the art, and that my identity is fundamentally as an artist.

If you’ve followed me this far (in which case, thank you for your persistence! - I don't often venture into navel-gazing of this sort, as I am always worried I will descend into pomposity), you will not be surprised to learn that it took me nearly three weeks to get the submission written – for the artist category!