Top Jocelyn Kolb, Temple University; Naomi Landig, University of Washington; Masako Onodero, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Barb Smith, Purdue University Row 2 Kristi Rae Wilson, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Sean Scully, Kent State University; Aimee Howard, University of Kansas; Sung Yeoul Lee, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Row 3 Stacey Van Waldrick, Syracuse University; Sun Kyoung Kim University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Bottom Sarah Abramson, University of New York New Paltz; Daniel Warlop, Pittsburg State University; Anne Hiddema, Kendall College of Art and Design; Lisa Johnson, University of Indiana

The Class of 2008

Summer Greetings! For students summer means graduating and moving forward, so this month we feature images from graduates and students from metals programs around the country.

See more …

Eun Yeong Jeong, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Susanne Osborn, University of Washington

The Art Jewelry Forum offers grant awards up to $2,000 to museums, universities and other nonprofit exhibition spaces and organizations for projects that heighten awareness and appreciation of art jewelry, such as publications and critical writing, exhibitions and conferences. The program details are posted below.

Our Emerging Artist Award of $5,000 will be announced at SOFA Chicago, Nov. 7-9, 2008, where the artist’s work will be exhibited at one of the AJF member galleries. The artist’s work will also be featured in the AJF ad for the SOFA catalogs the following year, in New York and Chicago.

“Half of the pieces will be on view in cases,” she describes, “and the rest in drawers allowing viewers to find unexpected treasures in the country’s only gallery dedicated solely to contemporary jewelry.

“The gallery also features a stimulating interactive computer screen with highlights of the collection juxtaposed with works in the collection including other media,” she adds. “We plan to work on this interactive project steadily, increasing the range of thematic propositions.”

Ursula looks forward to “working with well-known exhibition designers, artists, and other innovators to install meaningful exhibitions that will promote this highly innovative art form.”

“We have received many outright gifts as well as promised gifts, including entire collections, which we will present in their entirety with their respective catalogues in due time,” she says.

“We are also looking into the parallels (at least formal ones) of a collection of ethnic silver jewelry from around the world,” she notes, “which is a very exciting prospect. Since we already have a solid foundation in our jewelry collection, these new additions contribute to our goal of collecting the best in contemporary art jewelry from all over the globe.”

Planning exciting future exhibitions

Asked about future exhibitions, Ursula says she’s especially enthusiastic about “a collaborative project with the Oakland Museum to create a Margaret de Patta retrospective, working with the previously unpublished material from the de Patta Estate near San Francisco.”

She’s also “planning an intriguing exhibition on the use of photography in jewelry, within an historical background of l9th century photo-jewelry and even earlier portrait miniatures.”

With ties to Munich and New York City

Born and raised in Southern Germany, in and around Munich, Ursula points out that Munich is a city with a long jewelry tradition including Bavarian folk jewelry, which she finds particularly interesting.

She studied Art History both in Germany and in the United States, with graduate studies at the Institute of Fine Art and at the Cooper-Hewitt/Parson’s program where she earned her MA in Decorative Arts. She has also finished course work for a PhD at the Bard Graduate Center in New York.

When asked about her special interests, Ursula replies, “Contemporary art and craft – and, of course, contemporary art jewelry – in Germany we call it Autorenschmuck.”

After almost 17 years as a curator in all media, Ursula was named the Jewelry Curator at MAD just over a year ago. She works a three-day work week in the office, “but a curator’s work is never done!” Ursula laughs.

More than 10 years ago, Ursula began working with the museum’s jewelry collection under the directorship of Janet Kardon.

“I fell in love with this jewelry,” she admits, “and I included it in many non-jewelry exhibitions, including the Garry Knox Bennett retrospective, highlighting his work as a metal sculptor.”

“I also featured cutting-edge jewelry in Corporal Identity: Body Language: 9th Triennial Exhibition, which we presented jointly with the Museum of Applied Arts in Frankfurt, Germany.”

Radiant Geometries, Zero Karats, Treasures from the Vault

The jewelry exhibitions Ursula has curated include Radiant Geometries, where she featured 16 international jewelry artists, including Eva Eisler, Thomas Gentille, Helfried Kodre, and Peter Skubic, in an exhibition that explored the geometric/minimalist approach employed by these and other prominent artists.

She also curated the exhibition celebrating Donna Schneier’s gift of jewelry in non-precious materials, Zero Karat: Jewelry from the Donna Schneier Collection as well as Treasures from the Vault, with pieces from the permanent collection.

GlassWear will come to MAD in 2009

Her most recent jewelry exhibition, GlassWear, was created in collaboration with the Pforzheim Jewelry Museum in Germany.

“The exhibition opened in the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art, traveled to Germany and Belgium, and will be shown at MAD in summer 2009,” Ursula comments. “Both the catalogue and show have been extremely well received.”

When asked about her personal preferences in jewelry, Ursula replies, “It depends on my daily mood, but aside from a few family pieces dating back to my great-great grandmother’s time, I prefer contemporary works where I connect with the artistic statement. I also appreciate excellent workmanship, which allows the artistic ideas to ‘shine through’.”

SOFA Chicago
Nov. 6 – Nov. 9 2008, Navy Pier Hall, Chicago, See www.sofaexpo.com

AUCTIONS

On June 19th there was an auction in Brussels at the Pierre Berge & Associes of 20th Century modern and contemporary jewelry. If you want to see the results just click here.

American Craft Council library
Summer in the City Salon Series: Connect / (Dis)Connect
Jul. 24 — Jul. 24 2008, New York, New York http://www.craftcouncil.org

Explore the complicated relationships among the broad spectrum of craft makers today in this dialogue between jeweler, educator and writer Bruce Metcalf and Chanel Kennebrew of Junkprints, an indie craft artist, graphic designer and Etsy seller. July 24, 6-7 p.m., reception to follow. The Summer in the City Salon Series is made possible by the support of Leatrice S. Eagle, with additional support from Etsy.

EXHIBITIONS

Heard Museum
Young Jewelers
Dec. 13 — Sep. 7 2008, Phoenix, Arizona http://www.heard.org

Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection
Mar. 14 — Jul. 6 2008, Washington D.C. http://www.americanart.si.edu

Neue Galerie
Wiener Werkstatte Jewelry
Mar. 27 — Sep. 1 2008, New York, New York http://www.neuegalerie.org

Racine Art Museum
Earl Pardon: Palette Maestro
Apr. 3 — Aug. 10 2008, Racine, Wisconsin http://www.ramart.org

Fort Wayne Museum of Art
American Modernist Jewelry, 1940-1970
May. 3 — Aug. 24 2008, Fort Wayne, Indiana http://www.fwmoa.org

Fuller Craft Museum
Sculpture Transformed: The Work of Marjorie Schick
May 17 — Sep. 14 2008, Brockton, Massachusetts http://www.fullercraft.org

Figge Art Museum
When Gold Blossoms: Indian Jewelry from the Susan L. Beningson Collection
May 31 — Aug. 24 2008, Davenport, Iowa http://www.figgeartmuseum.org

Museum of Wisconsin
Art Frippery: Peculiar Bijoutery or Curiously Adorned?
June 4 - July 13, 2008, west Bend, Wisconson http://www.wisconsinart.org/Exhibitions/MainGallery.aspx

Design Gallery in the International Design Center
The Pioneers of Art Jewellery from America
Jul. 2 — Jul. 7 2008, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan

Philadelphia Museum of Art
Calder Jewelry
Jul. 12 — Nov. 2 2008, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania http://www.philamuseum.org

Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston Imperishable Beauty: Art Nouveau Jewelry Jul. 23 — Nov. 9 2008, Boston, Massachusetts http://www.mfa.org

AWARDS

Windgate 2008 Fellowship Awards

The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design invited 64 universities across the country, in fall 2007, to each nominate two students for the 2008 Windgate Fellowship Awards. The panel met for the final deliberations the first week of April 2008 and selected ten graduating seniors to each receive a $15,000 Fellowship including 2 metalsmiths.

The panel for the 2008 Windgate Fellowship Awards included Kelly H. L’Ecuyer, Ellyn McColgan, Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Michael Sherrill, sculptor (clay, glass, metal); Grace Cochrane, author and past director of the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia; andAlan C. Elder, Curator of Canadian Crafts, Decorative Arts and Design, Canadian Museum of Civilization. Have a look at the results at http://www.craftcreativitydesign.org/research/windgate2008.php

Library Society Honors Cindi Strauss and Helen Drutt

Museum of Fine Art Houston´s Ornament as Art Exhibition Catalogue Receives Prestigious George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award from the Art Libraries Society of North America. http://www.mfah.org/info.asp? Learn more.

Mary Lee Hu Wins the Twining Humber Award

The Twining Humber Award is an unrestricted award of $10,000 given annually to a Washington state female artist, age 60 or over, who has dedicated a significant portion of her life to her art practice. The award recognizes creative excellence, professional accomplishment and dedication to the visual arts. See more.

Mary’s work is also present in a show at the Cooper Hewitt called “Rococo: The Continuing Curve, 1730- 2008.” Have a look.

• Curator of Jewelry Ursula Neuman leads us on a tour through the newly opened Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) See the accompanying interview
• Visit Susan Grant Lewin’s house and collection. She is the author of “One of a Kind; American Art Jewelry Today”
• Charon Kransen welcomes us to the International Arts + Design Fair where author Toni Greenbaum takes us on a special jewelry tour,
• Patricia Faber treats us to cocktails and the Michael Zobel retrospective at Aaron Faber Gallery
• We view “From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith” at the Brooklyn Museum
• Loupe Gallery sponsors a special artist presentation by Kathleen Browne
• We visit the Metropolitan Museum to go behind the exhibits and see some of the jewelry collection recently given by Donna Schneier

And even more—we’re still finalizing special visits to collectors’ homes, and artists’ studios.

http://www.imogene.org/blog/2008/03/09/confessions/#comment-30488

http://www.conceptualmetalsmithing.com/

http://meganauman.blogspot.com/

http://www.murketing.com/journal/?p=1105

http://www.psfk.com/2008/03/craft-elitism.html

Bruce was kind enough to send AJF a print version of the SNAG presentation.

“DIY, Websites and Energy: The New Alternative Crafts,”

Bruce Metcalf, 2008 SNAG conference Presentation

About 18 months ago, I attended the American Craft Council’s big conference in Houston. The agenda was heavily skewed towards a view that the future of craft lies in installation art that employs bits of craft mediums here and there. I didn’t find this vision futuristic at all, but merely a description of a 20-year trend that is currently reaching its peak. (Onscreen image: Renée Lotenero, “La Casa da Signora Fendi e I Giardini #5,” 2004.)

Around the edges, however, there was modest talk about grass-roots craft that was altogether different in character. Populist, upbeat and almost completely foreign to the conventional institutions of craft like the ACC and the established craft fairs, this stuff interested me. I’ve spent the last year-and-a-half poking around that world–or more properly, those worlds–and this presentation is one of my reports.

For convenience, I have called it alternative craft, underlining its alternative status when compared to the craft mainstream of medium groups, craft galleries, craft museums and so on. There are several overlapping manifestations. One is DIY (do-it-yourself) the phenomenon of ordinary people (mostly young) taking up crafts to make useful and decorative objects. (Onscreen image: two projects from Greg Der Ananian’s DIY book, Bazaar Bizarre.) As I understand it, DIY craft is rooted in punk, indie music and street culture, but it has lately been appropriated as a hip thing to do.

DIY shades rather quickly into new marketplaces of websites and small craft fairs–fairs like the Renegade Craft Fair or Bazaar Bizarre and websites like Etsy.com. Exhibitors and sellers are mostly young and often untrained, and they’re mostly looking to make some money. They’re also looking for a sense of community. And then there’s activist craft (“craftivism”) which shares attributes with both DIY and the new marketplaces, but is primarily motivated by radical social and political critique. (Onscreen image: “Peace Knits” demonstration by the Revolutionary Knitting Circle, March 2004.) In general, craftivism is anti-globalist, anti-corporate, green, enthusiastic about any attempts to get off the grid, and deeply sympathetic to populations who feel marginalized from the mainstream. There’s even an active homocraft scene.

These diverse tendencies may or may not sit well with each other. Some craftivists criticize some of the market-based outfits for being insufficiently radical, for instance. But I’ll overlook the differences for the moment, and put them all under the umbrella of alternative craft.

In my conversations with academic types, students, and even some seasoned craft fair exhibitors, I find there is a considerable amount of resistance to alternative craft. This resistance seems to be pervasive in the established craft community: the worlds of academia and high-end craft fairs and galleries. My friends say they’re so tired of all that knitting (Onscreen image: Cat Mazza’s knitting website.) or they think most of the work is dreadful. Students object to the taint of hipsterism, of hyper-trendy urban cool.

My opinion is that there’s tremendous energy and optimism in alternative craft. I think the established craft community–in which I include SNAG and myself–would do well to look at this phenomenon with an open mind. So I want to talk about alt-craft today in terms of its parallels to the history of modern craft–of which there are many–as well as its differences. I hope that these similarities and differences will help us all better understand what’s going on here.

I’m going to speak about four basic attributes I see in alt-craft, each with a specific relation to craft history. They are: community; commerce; opposition and changing taste.

The idea of community pervades the history off studio craft. William Morris hoped to create a brotherhood of designers and makers who would all pursue the ideal of bringing beauty into ordinary life. His first communal project was the decoration of his new home in the countryside, Red House, built in 1860. (Onscreen image: William Morris and collaborators, “St. George’s Cabinet,” made for Red House about 1861.) He invited his friends up from London to paint furniture and to embroider hangings. It was a noble experiment but a short one: Morris moved back to London five years later. Even his interior decorating firm, Morris and Company, was initially conceived as a co-op.

This pattern of organizing communities around the production of craft objects has been repeated many times since. (Onscreen image: Guild of Handicraft, silver and glass decanter, 1904.) The dozens of Arts & Crafts societies in England and America, Utopian communities like Charles Robert Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft and Elbert Hubbard’s Roycrofters; 1970s co-ops like the Baulines Craft Guild in California (Onscreen image: group photo of the Baulines Craft Guild about 1972.) and even medium groups like SNAG, NCECA and GAS– all of them followed the same impulse.

(Onscreen image: Etsy.com’s website community page.) So, when Etsy’s website supports forums, a chatroom, virtual and live classes, teams and a list of resources, the pattern is familiar even if the technology is new. The Etsy website is an online community based on communication, sharing and mutual support. Participation is quite active, and the range of topics is broad. It appears to be grassroots democracy in action.

(Onscreen image: Etsy.com’s website homepage.) Despite the glow of participatory democracy, I should point out that there’s also a bit of elitism at Etsy–just as there is in almost every craft organization. Etsy’s homepage always features a few “hand-picked items” selected out of the thousands of Etsy listings by a staff member or sometimes an Etsy user. Either way, questions of choice and taste emerge, even causing a little friction in the community. As one said, “And why isn’t it me?”

(Onscreen image: exhibitor at Bazaar Bizarre.) One of the things that fascinates me about alt-craft is that it is so thoroughly involved in commerce. A few artists and craftivists shun the sales opportunities, but money-making seems to predominate everywhere else. Alternative craft fairs a full of cheerful young entrepreneurs eager to make a buck, and the basic raison d’etre for Etsy is selling. Again, this is a familiar pattern in the history of craft.

(Onscreen image: Roycrofters “Morris Chair” advertisement, about 1905.) Elbert Hubbard’s Roycrofters existed only because a market developed for objects originally intended to furnish the inn Hubbard built to accommodate curious visitors. Rookwood Pottery was a business from the get-go, as were the vast majority of the Arts & Crafts potteries. Even the ACC was founded in part to develop an urban market for rural crafts. The studio craft movement and the marketplace have been conjoined from the beginning.

But if craft and capitalism have always been in bed together, I should note that Craft has always advocated capitalism on a very small scale, with modest investments and face-to-face marketplaces. This is small-money, small footprint, intimate capitalism, designed to solve one of the most urgent questions posed by industrial society: How does one find dignified labor? (Onscreen image: workers at the Guild of Handicraft, about 1905.) This was a question posed by Ruskin in 1853, and its still relevant today. At its best, craft is work with dignity, work that allows the worker to call the shots. In that sense, craft is inherently anti-corporate, as craftivists have recognized. Craft capitalism encourages self-determination and a degree of self-reliance. It also suggests a partial divorce from consumerism, at least the kind practiced by Wal-Mart and Target. I’m not sure about the claims that studio craft short-circuits the global system of sweated labor: many craftspeople still barely break the minimum wage, and I suspect that the majority of people on Etsy do not make a living wage at their craft. But at least the potential remains for persistent and talented young makers to quit their day jobs and achieve economic self-sufficiency.

(Onscreen image: “Peace Knits” demonstration by the Revolutionary Knitting Circle, March 2004) I’m also fascinated by the reappearance of craft that is oppositional in nature: opposition to injustice, to global corporatism, to social prejudice, and even to war. Politicized craft was not unusual in the 60s–take Fred Woell’s subtle commenatray on the connection between pop culture and violence. (Onscreen image: J. Fred Woell, “Pepsi Generation,” c. 1965.) But political craft seemed to die down during the 80s and 90s, and at upscale craft events like SOFA on might conclude that the craft world has gone completely apolitical.

However, there’s a good number of craftivists out there. They don’t necessarily repeat the old Marxist slogans about the evils of capitalism, the inherent corruption of the bourgeoisie, or the superiority of socialism. The new generation seems too smart to replay those old tapes. Instead, they tend to focus on the problems of unchecked global capitalism: sweated labor and the loss of local jobs. They also critique militarism, often making jabs at the American war machine. (Onscreen image: Marianne Jørgensen and collaborators, “Pink,” 2005) That strikes me as the agenda behind Marianne Jørgensen’s wonderful tank cozy, a collective project that transforms an old American tank into something warm, fuzzy, and exceptionally silly.

Craftivists, like local food advocates, think about shifting production back into the hands of ordinary people. They promote the same ideals of self-empowerment that motivated both Ruskin and Morris. (Onscreen image: Revolutionary Knitting Circle storefront with sign promoting free knitting lessons.) By getting people to make useful objects for themselves, they hope to decrease complicity in modern consumer culture. Handmade objects could last longer, or be used longer, than their mass-marketed equivalents. Handmade things could have a smaller carbon footprint. They could reduce the need for income, and if pursued in the community setting I mentioned before, they could become agents in social bonding and mutual help networks. The point, I think, is that if craft is practiced on a massive scale, the world would be better off for it.

Craftivist opposition to consumerism and corporatism can take many forms, but I’ll just show two examples. (Onscreen image: microRevolt, Nike swoosh blanket.) One is a pieced-together crocheted image of the Nike swoosh by microRevolt. The intention is to deliver the swoosh blanket to the Chairman of the Board of Nike as a protest against labor exploitation. (Onscreen image: Allyson Mitchell, “Lady Sasquatch” installation) Another, by Canadian artist Allyson Mitchell, is an installation that features, among other things, two large fake-fur female sasquatches. Besides being a lot of fun, Mitchell’s sasquatches are intended to protest consumerist ideals of feminine beauty, asserting that big, hairy and lesbian is every bit as valid as pretty, petite and smoothly shaven.

The oppositional impulses behind craftivism go way before the 1960s. William Morris was one of England’s leading Socialists in the 1880s, and he was a very early opponent of industrial pollution. (Onscreen image: William Morris tapestry, 1879.) While his craft work was a tangible protest only against shoddy goods and tasteless design, he set the tone for much of the best Arts & Crafts production that was to follow. (Onscreen image: Ernest Gimson, sideboard, c. 1915) A particularly English form of craft-as-protest was a movement to make furniture without the aid of any machines in the studio. (Morris himself never avoided machine fabrication, but his followers did.) Another form of opposition was the way early Arts & Crafts jewelers avoided precious metals and gemstones. For instance, take Madelaine Yale Wynne, one of the first recorded American studio jewelers. (Onscreen image: Madelaine Yale Wynne, silver belt buckle, c. 1900.) She used mainly copper, silver and roughly-cut stones, as in this belt buckle from around 1900. Clearly, the relaxed craftsmanship is a visible protest against trade standards of both skill and design. In her own day, a critic called Wynne’s jewelry “barbaric.”

Which leads nicely to my last topic: changing tastes. It seems to me that mainstream craft has become institutionalized over the past 30 years, with the (perhaps) unintended consequence that a certain taste has become enshrined within the culture. (Onscreen image: advertisements for ACC Baltimore exhibitors, Ornament magazine, 2007.) When you go to a major craft show, for instance, there’s a glossy professionalism about everything. Designs are consistent, craftsmanship is uniformly good, displays are neat. And how could it be otherwise, since jurying standards have become so uniform? There’s nothing messy, nothing contradictory, nothing off-the-cuff. There’s no high-jinks, no rank amateurism, no cluttered card tables. And to my mind, all that slick professionalism has become dry, airless, and boring. The same with SOFA, the same with a lot of craft galleries. And frankly, the audience tends to agree. I have talked to a number of people who don’t bother to go to the Philadelphia Craft Show anymore. Everything looks the same as it did last year, they say, and nothing excites them anymore. No wonder attendance at most craft fairs is flat or declining.

(Onscreen image: Bazaar Bizarre homepage.) Not at alt-craft fairs, though. I went to the Brooklyn Renegade Fair last summer and it was packed, even though it was held in an empty outdoor swimming pool and it was broiling in there. Why the difference? The alt-craft fairs represent a relatively new taste: ironic, kitschy, trendy and relatively free of both hierarchies and standards of professionalism. And this taste speaks to urban under-35 types. These are exactly the people who will be the next big audience for craft–and they definitely aren’t going mainstream.

In the alt-craft fairs, the differences in both taste and standards are easy to spot. (Onscreen image: exhibitor’s booth from a Bazaar Bizarre fair.) About two-thirds of the booths in Brooklyn had T-shirts for sale; a solid majority had some other kinds of silk-screened products. Most booths had work at a wide variety of price points, which gave any given booth a pretty inconsistent look. Furthermore, most crafters were wholly unconcerned about the preciousness of handwork. Low-end products were usually printed or silk-screened. Nobody cared, and the young hip audience seemed to eat it up. The average level of craftsmanship was low, but again, nobody seemed to care. I’ll say this: the level of energy was high.

Some of my acquaintances can’t stomach alt-craft, finding much of it crude and unsophisticated. But the Renegade Craft Fair reminded me of nothing so much as the 60s–and the people who were young back then are now the craft establishment. They should remember that 60s craft was often crude and irredeemably ugly. Remember all those hideous brown pots? (Onscreen image: Rita Schumaker, macramé halter top, c. 1972.) Remember macramé? Baby boomers who look askance at alt-craft should recall our roots before we pass any judgments.

(Onscreen image: cover of Readymade magazine, December 2006.) So here’s a cover of Readymade magazine. While some crafters might disavow this publication as altogether too trendy and slick, I think the image summarizes many aspects of alt-craft taste that I find most interesting. I can see four interconnected concepts at work here, all of which divide the new taste from the old. They are semiotics, irony, kitsch and play.

Semiotics is the business of interpreting social systems. From clothing, cars or jewelry all the way to categories of kinship–semiotics sees them all as languages. You learn to read and speak and decode all these different signs. The under-35 generation is much more adept at reading visual languages than any prior generation. They’re like fish swimming in a sea of signs. They’re the children of channel-surfing and the internet, and they’re comfortable with sensory overload. What this means is that under-35s often regard meaning as endlessly mutable: an enormous kit of parts that can be recombined at will. Furthermore, many of these people are comfortable with the constant flood of signs that emerge from American consumerism–all that hype and advertising is actually a vast pile of raw material to them. My generation eyes consumerism with deep suspicion, but to the under-35s, it’s just another language, another resource.

But they don’t necessarily take it seriously, and that’s where irony comes into play. Irony is distance. It clears a space for the individual to watch the chaos of modern life with some detachment. (Onscreen image: Natalia Gianinazzi, “Mickey Grüsli, 2005) The icons of consumerism can be treated with utter disrespect, as with Natalia Gianinazzi’s “Mickey Grüsli” here. (This, by the way, is a one-of-a-kind handmade object.)

Irony also signals disbelief. An ironic stance tells like-minded observers that you don’t necessarily buy into the matter at hand. You’re just appropriating the language for your own purposes. Your reasons may point to politics or satire, respectful homage of pure fun. But the ironic distance always signifies that you don’t necessarily believe.

One of the favorite semiotic fields for appropriation is kitsch. (Onscreen image: paint-by-number clock project from Readymade magazine, December 2006.) My sense is that under-35s respond much more favorably to kitsch than to refined good taste. I think they find it more energetic and a lot more fun. Kitsch, after all, is the underbelly of consumerism, the dregs and leftovers of all that was once shiny, hopeful and new. To embrace kitsch, then, is to be an archeologist of shopping–to dig into America’s humongous junkyard of things once valued, and now thought to be in bad taste. Alt-crafters are mining the landfill of abandoned consumerism, and kitsch is their vein of pure gold. Put another way, kitsch is dead shopping brought back to life.

Which brings me to play. American craft used to be a lot of fun, with a cadre of craftsman/comedians who were always wisecracking and pulling pranks. (Onscreen image: David Gilhooly, “Merfrog and Her Pet Fish,” 1976.) Does anybody remember David Gilhooly’s world of frogs, or Clayton Bailey’s skeletons and robots? Or the brick breast Ken Cory built in somebody’s driveway while they were away on vacation? It seems that mainstream American craft, in its ambition to be respectable, has turned its back on the antic spirit of play.

But not the alt-crafters. Their manipulation of signs is, after all, a form of play. Ironic distance can be quite humorous, and kitsch is funny almost by definition. Because they are not all invested in being taken seriously, alt-crafters are free to goof on consumerism, politics, the war machine, homophobia, whatever. (Onscreen image: Allyson Mitchell: “Sassquog.”) Some of my favorite pieces of alternative craft/art are the animal familiars Allyson Mitchell makes for her Lady Sasquatches–here’s her “Sassquog” in pink fake fur. Funny on the surface, serious underneath–but not overly worried about respectability.

Craft is a complicated thing, fluid and diverse. The alt-craft sensibility I’m talking about is only part of the picture, but it’s an important part. I think the mainstream craft community must come to terms with it. Certainly, a big chunk of the craft marketplace is headed in that direction. And besides, I think there’s much of value in alt-craft, and the establishment had better pay attention.

Since the ACC meeting in October 2006, I undertook a program of self-education. As a member of the craft establishment, I thought I should learn something about it. One of my projects was to give a month-long assignment to the junior and senior jewelry majors at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, at the invitation of Sharon Church and Rod McCormick. I wanted to see what these students would do if they were asked to address the sensibility of irony, kitsch and playfulness I just talked about. Here are a few of the results.

(Onscreen images: Morgan Jameson, shower curtain made of plastic bags. Chun Chun, bling jewelry with live mouse in a treadmill. Natala Covert, T-shirts with images from American Apparel catalogue and quotes about labor exploitation from American Apparel CEO Dov Charney. Genava Gisondi, porn star enameled coasters. Carolyn Rogers, tapeworm costume for her pug dog.)

I want to close with a singular thought that occurred to me only a few days ago. At first, I decided not to say this, because I find it rather disturbing. On reflection, though, I think it needs to be said.

Almost everything about alt-craft challenges the conventional wisdom of mainstream craft. That mainstream–largely populated and guided by baby-boomers–has become totally invested in building and maintaining a set of standards, particularly of quality and professionalism. And here’s the sad truth: those standards are killing craft. Juries for craft shows, rules of what’s allowed and what’s not, principles by which teachers critique their students… all these standards make the new kind of craft look amateurish or sloppy or insufficiently aesthetic. But those old criteria are emphatically not the point. The only conclusion I can reach is that those standards must be changed or given up entirely.

Is my generation up to it? Having gained the wheel of control, are we prepared to say we represent the old guard, and we must step aside so all of craft can prosper and grow under a new regime?

I don’t know.