The line between "craft" and "art"

This is a question that occurs to me all the time. Where do you all believe the line between "craft" and "art" truely lies? Do you consider yourself an "artist" or a "crafter"?

Sometimes I think the line is simply between following instructions (say, from a pattern or book) or creating your own item from scratch. But sometimes I also think it has a lot to do with whether you create something to be reproducable, or completely on-of-a-kind.

My mom, when I'm around her, always introduces me as "My daughter, the artist". And I do generally tell people that's what I am, when they ask. But really, even though I make stuff all the time, and always from my own designs rather than someone else's idea - it seems like a really special occasion when I finish a particular piece, step back, and say "Wow, now that's art!"

 

I think that art is in the eye of the beholder.

Anything that's crafted, in my mind, from a pattern or not, is art.

Even if you're using a scripted pattern to make whatever it is that you're making, the artist in you is what inspires you to make it in the first place. And we all take a certain amount of liberty in changing patterns to customize and make our own ~ even if we're just changing the colour.

That's the way I see it ~ the crafter and artist are one in the same.

 

well.. to me, the word "craftsmen" is a name for one who creates things... and that word is synonymous(oh damn... please ignore the spelling) with the word "artisan".. and "art" is in that one... so i think they are the same thing. i mean, that's not the only reason, i'm just saying, you're making something, it's art.

 

My opinion..

Art comes from within...it is a piece of yourself, of your own design.

Crafting is the act of making something...it could be a chair or a sweater, but not necessarily your own design.

 

It's rather a gray area, isn't it? To what point do we modify an original design so it no longer becomes the original design, but our own? and, then, does that define the item as art, or just craft?

I agree with the 'tracing' ~ if you follow an established pattern to the last detail, then it's nothing more than just crafting. But then are we breaking copyright violations? Not in the sense that these items are being sold, but the copyright of the original design, of the person who created it... and so the philosophy begins.

I suppose my thinking is that if a person modifies a pattern ~ even to the smallest degree ~ what that person is doing is putting their own taste to it, therefore the transformation to art begins. It may be in its most primary of stages, like simply adjusting a colour, but nonetheless.

I suppose that I see the artistic value in making even the most basic of changes to an established pattern ~ my neice, last christmas, knit me a scarf, nothing complicated or fancy, but a basic knit scarf in rather plain yarn. Her only change to the basic pattern was that she a) dyed half the ball of yarn in pink dye, which made a really interesting varigation in it, and b) she knit it together with a metallic thread to give it a shine. It's the most basic of knit scarf patterns, and the most minor of changes, but despite that, I know that I'm the only one who has exactly that scarf, and there are no two like it in the world.

To me, that's art.

 

is, then, a crafter just a crafter, and an artist just an artist, or can an artist be both a crafter AND an artist, and a crafter be both? Is each person exclusively one or the other? Does a crafter have any artistic talent? Is the artist crafty, artistic, or both?

Also, isn't it odd (or rather, IS it odd?) that Art Class in school is CALLED art class, rather than Craft Class? If the entire class is, essentially, 'tracing', rather than left to their own devices to create, then in essence, should it be called Craft Class?

Another 'also': If we take a peice of what we consider 'Art', ie the statue of David or the Mona Lisa, and we photograph it, is the replication (photograph) just a peice of Craft, or because it was taken at a particularily beautiful angle, is it art? Even though it's 'traced' or exactly replicated in a similar artform? (craftform?)

According to your definition, drummin, the revised paragraph is nothing but modified, but in my opinion, it has become your creation.

I agree with you that if there isn't any innovation to an established pattern whatsoever, than it's just crafting. But even the smallest modification to it, it becomes artistic. It may be in its most primal and basic form, but nonetheless.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing. - Salvador Dali

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art. - Paul Cezanne

You can't be at the pole and the equator at the same time. You must choose your own line, as I hope to do, and it will probably be color. - Vincent van Gogh

Art is either plagiarism or revolution. - Paul Gaugin

 

in the words of the bumper sticker~~ "everyone is an artist"

 

Its an interesting question. When it comes down to it, it is really subjective at which point something is elevated from craft to art. I am just remembering a video we watched in my ceramics class, that it took a very long time for ceramics to be concidered art and not simply a craft.

 

If your making somthing unique its art, but if your following a patern its usualy a craft. Thats how I see it. If you dont see it that way then you dont see it that way.

 

That is somthing I didn't think of.
However with those they are each, to some degree, unique and to us in the modern west, art, where it ther own cultures a craft. I guess, like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder.