’tis the season

to be buying, and thankfully Glasgow’s Craft Mafia and 3D/2D are coming to town. This weekend will be chockfull of handmaid goods for gifting. Glasgow Craft Mafia will be at Mono on Sunday at 1PM, and 3D/2D is teaming up with Glasgow’s Royal Concert Halls for a fair on both days (Saturday and Sunday). the 3D/2D fair costs 1.20 GBP, Mono is free.

But I’ve been fascinated by the rise of craft in the past few years, and sites like Etsy which are testament to it. More and more women I know have been picking up crochet hooks and knitting needles, and diving into book and print crafts. Shortly before coming to Glasgow I even saw a young man on the subway in NYC – knitting! Again -ON THE SUBWAY – I won’t even begin to address the risks involved in that. But props to him for having the guts. I love that knitting is beginning to cross its much stayed gender boundaries, and that all ‘craft’ – that once dirty word – is on the rise again.

Here in Glasgow I recently learned of the Burrell Collection’s tapestry project which is underway. The collection is one of the largest, and they will document the entire lot of over 200 medieval tapestries, producing the first ever exhaustive catalog. It runs concurrent with the growing interest in craft, and even weaving’s recent ascension into the, er, high(er?) art world as artists such as Grayson Perry (a recent Turner Prize recipient) take on the medium. Here’s a detail of his recently exhibited  Walthamstow Tapestry  (just came down at Victoria Miro Gallery in London).

Grayson Perry, The Walthamstow Tapestry, 2009 3 metres x 15 metres

Perry uses craft in much of his work, from ceramics to this tapestry. But I wonder if he wove it himself, or if he had the help of craftsmen from a studio. There’s that word again, ‘craftsmen’. An automatic announcement of a hierarchy. But if an artist operates as a ‘deskilled’ ideasman, then how does that affect the use of craft in the artwork? And I’m also fascinated by this quote from Perry in a Guardian review:

“In the end I will always err on the side of making something pretty and not worry about something’s being a stage set for an idea.”

I’m not sure I can take that comment at face value. If you read the materials which surround his objects, they are marketed for their ideas. They aren’t selling for hundreds of thousands of pounds at Victoria Miro for their fine craft. Here, craft seems to be used to support a larger idea, and only fractionally concerned with the skillful, decorative elements they bring.

But nonetheless, craft is making a big comeback (and a welcomed one if you ask me) even in the elitist circles of the art galleries. And here in Scotland, the Scottish Arts Council just launched a new campaign called The C Word to raise interest and dialogue about craft in Scotland.

But will the new found interest and enthusiasm last? Hard to say, but I’ll leave you with two works by a young artist who graduated from Goldsmiths just last year, Hannah Hull.

Doilies doing what they’ve always done (making whatever they cover underneath even more useless) on a grand scale.

 

Untitled (skip net) 2008 by Hannah Hull

and sand bags made out of pure silk woven by hand on a loom.

 

Sand bags 2009 by Hannah Hull; pure silk hand woven

 

 

 

 

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