FS After Hours

Some observations on the recently concluded 2009 conference in Boone, NC. Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are my own. I urge you to add your own comments freely.

1. There weren’t as many people as usual.

I didn’t hear the final numbers, but attendance was ssomewhat lower than most years. How come? The economy, certainly. A lot of us are busy folks with lots of other things to do — teaching, learning, working, travelling — and every year the FS conference vies for priority in our schedules. Perhaps there was a perception that this conference was going to be more about industrial design and production methods than one-off studio furniture. The conference theme and the reputation of the host institution played into that, as did perhaps the selection of the keynote speaker and the Award of Distinction recipient — both major players in a world very different from that of the individual maker or artist.

Than again, maybe this is over-thinking it. Most of us are intruigued by similar but different worlds, and anxious to learn what about that other world can be applied to our own. In that respect, this conference paid off in spades. Mitchell Gold, the keynote speaker, gave an illuminating and compelling talk about how his business evolved, and how his and his partner Bob Williams’ insistence on ethical and honest business practices and customer satisfaction have resulted both in financial success and personal satisfaction. His principles apply whether you’re a one-man operation or a large design and manufacturing concern.

By the same token, Vladimir Kagan — the 2009 Award of Distinction honoree — has found success and satisfaction by following his muse and taking opportunities as they come. Although a prolific designer, he cleverly builds on his body of work when faced with new challenges, rather than reinventing the wheel each time. Today his client list would be the envy of anyone who makes stuff and the phone, I am certain, rings pretty regularly. Like Mitchell Gold, Kagan is involved enough in the manufacture of his designs to insure the stuff is well-made, and he takes a personal interest in the satisfaction of his customers.

I had no idea who these people were when I first saw their names, and I wasn’t at all sure that they would have anything to say that would be of interest or relevance to me and what I do. I was very wrong about that.

2. Things went very smoothly.
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David Richardson, Six Views of the Hozu River, detail

As the Furniture Society conference in Boone, NC gets underway, I want to wish all my friends well, although I must send my regrets. I hope to see you all next year in Boston. The rest of this post has little to do with furniture, but is really just about the water, as in the stuff we are all swimming in. Water is my favorite subject and metaphor. John Maeda, RISD’s new president, recently said in an interview, “people don’t want technology now. They want humanity.” Here are some links and comments culled from hunting and gathering on the web.

This Is Water

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” -David Foster Wallace, commencement address, Kenyon College, 2005

Evidently this commencement address by David Foster Wallace has been around the internet for a while, but I just discovered it via Design Observer, through a link to a post by Marie Mundaca who designed several of Wallace’s books, including an elegant version of this address. It’s kind of a plea for compassion, a call for “changing your default setting.” “It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

This is water.

This is water.”

Donald Vaccino

My friend Donald just sent me photos of new work. Here’s a beauty:

Art Doctor

Because I’m a furniture restorer, I can’t resist sharing this New Yorker article on a conservator of contemporary art. He describes carving dung and installing a Gordon Matta-Clark, throwing left over bits from the bottom of the packing crates artfully here and there. Registration required to view articles.

Creating a New Craft Culture

The American Craft Council has a blog for the upcoming conference “Creating a New Craft Culture.”

Posts by Bruce Metcalf and Glenn Adamson are featured. Bruce’s post is a repost from his own blog, Craft Gadfly – a review of the book Handmade Nation. This was my comment in response:

Thinking about today’s DIY craft, I’m reminded of an earlier thought. The great arts writer and critic John Russell once wrote about Alberto Giacometti’s work and Paris in the post WW2 years and described it as a time when life had a hand made quality. I’ve always remembered that comment. I believe he was referring to a time when scarcity and deprivation forced people to live carefully and purposefully. He wrote this against the background of a heated up art world and the general corporatism of the 80’s. But the rise of the DIY impulse shows that people are still looking for those qualities that Russell observed in Giacometti’s Paris. The phrase “a hand made life” also makes me think of the culture of workrooms and studios that I’ve been around all my life. The brothers Giacometti – Alberto and Diego – were both trained as sculptors, but they worked on commissions for the top French decorators like Jean Michel Frank, for high end Parisian clients. I’m thinking of a culture where the fine arts and decorative arts (as they were once called) brushed up against each other. Politically, DIY and high end art/craft/design are at opposite poles, but it seems inevitable that they should meet somewhere. William Morris somewhat bitterly complained that he had made “bibelots for the rich”, but there must be a better way to think about good work. David McFadden has said of work being done today that mixes between craft, art and design “we don’t know what to call it yet.” I like that statement. It makes me feel like there is something to be discovered.

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Do you know the work of Reuben Margolin? – Bay area visionary and maker of kinetic sculptures.

Yellow Wiggle

I saw this profile of Reuben on Make TV

Magic Wave

I’d like to welcome Wendy Maruyama to FS After Hours for our first online exhibit, and to thank her for sharing this powerful work. All text and images courtesy of Wendy Maruyama. – David Richardson

“Executive Order 9066″ Solo Exhibition

Wendy Maruyama’s solo exhibition at the Richard and Dolly Maas Gallery at SUNY Purchase will open on January 12, 2009. The reception will be held on January 29th, with an opening lecture entitled “Japanese Roots, American Soil” by Mira Nakashima, furniture designer, and daughter of George Nakashima.

“Jichan”, 2008, image transfers, encaustic, 48″ x 48″ x 3″

Dorothea Lange’s photographs documenting the internment of the Japanese Americans in 1942 “shows us ourselves in the throes of history, buffeted by forces we can’t control and confronting stark realities.” It is through her lens that we are able to revisit the experience.

“ID”, 2008, sitka spruce, image transfers, paper, 38″ x 12″ x 6″

In an atmosphere of World War II hysteria, President Roosevelt, encouraged by officials at all levels of the federal government, authorized the internment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, dated February 19, 1942, gave the military broad powers to ban any citizen from a fifty- to sixty-mile-wide coastal area stretching from Washington state to California and extending inland into southern Arizona. The order also authorized transporting these citizens to assembly centers hastily set up and governed by the military in California, Arizona, Washington state, and Oregon.

My first visual experience of this event was initially through the images of documentary photographers Dorothea Lange and Toyo Miyatake. My family was directly affected by the evacuation: but little was mentioned of this by my mother, or grandparents. This chapter in my family history was heavily veiled: because of this, I avoided any association with this connection: partially out of suppressed anger, partially out of just wanting to move forward.

I was awarded an artist-in-residency opportunity at SUNY Purchase in Fall 2008 – and decided to immerse myself in research and investigation of Executive Order 9066 and its effect on the Japanese American psyche as I know it now. This is just the beginning and it is a point of departure.

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 Outside the Campana Brothers‘ studio in Sao Paulo, Brazil, photo courtesy of Andrew Wagner

 

 Andrew Wagner posted his thoughts about “Design Loves a Depression”, the Times article, and the discussions this article generated.

“The public demands the newest, the latest, the slickest and the shiniest—and the media delivers. Or could it be the other way around? The media chooses to write about the newest, the latest, the slickest and the shiniest in order to cater to parties other than their readers (e.g. their advertisers) and therefore that is what you’re fed as a reader whether you like it or not. Regardless, If you’re looking for a well thought-out, thoroughly researched article about design/art’s role in curing society’s ills you’re going to have to look long and hard. But lack of media attention doesn’t mean that solid, lasting, deeply transformative design/art/craft/architecture is not happening.”

 

-a mea culpa of sorts from the editor of the venerable crafts magazine on behalf of his profession. There are so many intersecting worlds of enterprise and endeavor that come under “arts”, “design” and “craft”, and following some of the links mentioned in Andrew’s post and comments proves this. One of the links was to a discussion from last March at I.D. online – a 4 way discussion about American furniture design which includes RISD’s Roseanne Somerson, along with another prominent designer, a representative of a large American manufacturer, and the owner of a design store in Brooklyn. The discussion is mainly about government and cultural support for innovative designers, and the lack thereof, and may seem far from our old friend “craft”, but Roseanne argues for craft and the importance of the knowledge of making. The point is made that it may be marginally easier for designers in Europe because there is a larger appreciation for contemporary design among the broad public. As for integrated cultural support, the Dutch seem to do it best right now, starting with free education and an excellent design school at Eindoven, but also including advocacy groups along the way and a more nimble industry. At the end of the discussion, Roseanne has some clear suggestions for improving the American climate for designers. These include well funded national design competitions, organizations to promote furniture design to the media, and a lobbying effort to improve the protection of intellectual property rights. Done properly, these kinds of efforts could improve the climate for all furniture makers and designers, not just those in academia or those who wish to design for the mass market. The gulf between industrial design and craft is not really so great. Garth Clark called craft and design natural allies in his recent talk “How Envy Killed the Crafts”. I encourage the Furniture Society as an organization to think about these things. The next Furniture Society conference in Boone, NC, will be an excellent place to explore these issues – “Industrious – the Design, Craft, and Culture of Furniture making”, June 10t to 13th.

David Richardson “Rain 2, Hokusai” 24 x 32, oil

Andrew Wagner, the editor of American Craft Magazine, sent me a note about a conversation he thought would interest me. It did, and I’d like to pass it on to our readers. Michael Cannel wrote a piece in last Sunday’s Times titled “Design Loves a Depression”. Murray Moss, proprietor of Moss, the high end design shop in Soho, responded on the Design Observer blog that “Design Hates a Depression”.

Some seventy comments followed, and echo many other such discussions going on around the blogosphere on a new year, a new government and a new economy. I’ve been following a few such discussions in the art blogs, like the prolific Ed Winkleman’s, and Frankln Einspruch’s excellent Artblog. A new blog that I’ve been reading is Matt Wagoner’s Drinking Upstream. Matt is a philosopher exploring a “theory of dwelling”, and he is attracting readers (well two of us anyway – that would be myself and Dennis Stevens) from the crafts community.

Cannel’s Times piece states the obvious: that we will all – artists, designers, makers – make the best of a bad economy. But he goes further and says that a depression will be good for design, citing American designers of the last depression like Russell Wright and Charles and Ray Eames, who were forced to “make good on the Modernist promise to make affordable, intelligent design for a broad audience.” Cannel says that the over-the-top design stars and their dealers, like Moss, had their moment, and suggests, without exactly saying it, that they will get their comeuppance, along with the hedge fund managers who were their clients. It’s an easy hit. We can all appreciate that a winnowing of excess, of “fabulousness,” may lead to more substantial thinking about the place of art and design in our lives and in the larger economy. No one could wish for the distress the current situation will visit on many of us – especially those who depend on a free flow of money to realize their dreams and livelihoods – that is especially the self employed artist/designer/craftsperson. Murray Moss responds intelligently that there is nothing good about a depressed economy and argues for the importance of cutting edge, boundary pushing design.

Of the seventy-two (at last count) comments that followed, I’d like to re-post two that struck especially forward looking notes to me. The first is Andrew’s, posted near the end of the discussion. The second is by Ko Nakatsu, who works as a “designer/researcher/strategist in an interdisciplinary team (mathematicians, anthropologists, writers, engineers, perception researchers and cognitive psychologists) in the Advanced Planning and Strategy group for a transportation manufacturer”. Ko and his team “develop future transportation concepts for production and inspiration for 2013 to 2023″. He lives at the Nomad Art Compound in Los Angeles California. Thanks Ko for sending your info and permission. I look forward to talking with you more. Both comments are posted with the authors’ permission.

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tea bowl by Ogata Kenzan, the Rembrandt of Japanese ceramic artists*

I was reading a discussion on Artblog that got into the difference between illustration and fine art. The discussion started with a link to some new paintings by Walter Darby Bannard, artist and writer, in the course of which the word “illustration” was used in a somewhat pejorative way. I thought to myself, “I’ve heard that argument before”. Substituting “craft” for “illustration”, it reminded me of the craft/art debate. I was primed for this after listening to Garth Clark’s  talk on “How Envy Killed the Crafts”, recently delivered at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, and also my recent discovery of Bruce Metcalf’s new blog, CraftGadfly. So this is what I posted ( comment # 160):

Some of this discussion about illustration reminds me of the “craft vs. art” debate that takes place in the contemporary craft world. That debate seems tiresome, if not specious to me, but nevertheless reflects some truths about the current art world, if not art. Sculptor Martin Puryear said that art doesn’t need craft, though an exploraton of craft is essential to his work. I think he is surely correct. When artists who come from the traditional crafts make it in the contemporary art arena – Betty Woodman and Josiah McIlheney are examples – they are often considered to have broken through to Valhala, mainly because the “rewards program” is better, as ceramics dealer Garth Clark has put it, and sometimes those who don’t cross over to Chelsea or Art Basel are seen to be existing in a kind of purgatory. Allison Elizabeth Taylor’s marquetry pictures are another example, though Allison seems to have appropriated craft technique to go directly to Chelsea. This turns some craft artists back to the defense of an idea of pure craft, and misty references to the modern craft “movement”, steeped sometimes in no small amount of nostalgia, and for some, a sense that the “art world” just doesn’t give a hoot about them anyway, which is true. The recent rise of design stars like Marc Newsom and Ron Arad only confuses the issue, although Clark points out that design and craft are natural allies, and he says that craft artists who wish to make it in the larger art world should leave the craft field.

Many of these arguments are about the art world, the art business, and don’t have much to do with art really, except in the following way: in the 60’s and 70’s, with the advent of conceptual art, contemporary art incorporated theory into its practice, “It could be argued that one of the reasons for the problem of criticism today is its redundancy when changes in art practice, notably Conceptual art, displaced criticism from its role in relation to the avant-garde by incorporating critique – including the critique of a descriptive, objectifying epistemology into the practice itself: art theory replaces art criticism as the appropriate way of mediating the practice, and is often carried out by the artists themselves” – Michael Newman from The State of Art Criticism. This refers to the notion that the contemporary work of art is supposed to incorporate a critical (theoretical) position. To this observer however, the rigors of 70’s conceptual art are often merely a holdover, a grab bag of labels almost, as generations of young artists have been spoon fed theory by their academic teachers. Some of the best artists will have absorbed those lessons and incorporated them into their objects, but it must be done with a sure touch. Like Puryear’s sculpture, the craft object must be about more than an idea. Another way of stating this might be to say that conceptual art drew attention to the fact that all art is conceptual. It seems pointless to try to divide the brain into the part that thinks and the part that sees, surely a life of looking at art teaches us that.

Anyway, the comparison with illustration isn’t perfect, but I find it interesting to consider. The mention of japanese prints earlier in the discussion ( are they illustration or art?) was also interesting to me because my perfect art object is the japanese tea bowl – a utilitarian object that, in its time and place, often contained high art – which can carry beauty, utility, ceremony, cultural history, human history. What more could you want?

*the reverse side of this remarkable bowl bears a poem:

Billowing forth, white like snow;

Then a river that flows for all eternity.

I saw my first Tadao Ando building this spring. It’s the Stone Hill Center – the first building in a two-phase expansion at the Clark Art Museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Ando has now completed four buildings in the U.S. The other three are the Pulitzer Foundation in St. Louis, the Fort Worth Museum of Art and a large private house in Chicago. Most of his buildings are in Japan. In Richard Pare’s Tadao Ando/The Colours of Light, Tom Henneghan describes Ando’s work as a counter proposal to the two traditions which have formed him: European Modernism and Japanese Sukiya (tea) style. “Against the randomness of Sukiya, he proposes order. Against the order of Modernism, he proposes randomness”

First, about the Clark: It’s extraordinary that this small regional museum in the Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts should commission one of the premier architects working today, and one who is primarily known for his work in Japan. The first photo is the front of the original gallery building built in 1953 as the Clark Institute. The neo-classical marble building was built as a public gallery to house Sterling and Francine Clark’s private art collection. The red granite administration building was completed in 1973 to house the expanded library, an auditorium, and additional galleries. An academic mission was incorporated into the Clark’s mission from its beginnings, with ties to Williams College and including a major art library, described as one of the best art historical libraries in North America. The Williamstown Art Conservation Center was founded on the Clark campus in 1977. The current expansion will include 2 buildings designed by Ando. The first, The Stone Hill Center, which houses the Conservation Center and 2 small public galleries, opened this spring. We usually visit the Clark several times a year and always look forward to their summer shows- past favorites have included Millet, Jacques Louis David, Winslow Homer and the great Late Turner Seascapes – perfect fare for a summer weekend in the Berkshires. The permanent collection is strong in French Impressionist masterpieces and related historical art from the Rennaisance to the late 19th century. The bookstore, though small, always has a well chosen and serious selection of books, including contemporary art and theory.

So, being regular visitors to the Clark, we had several years to anticipate this mysterious first view of an actual Ando building. Did I say I’ve had a rather large obsession with this architect for many years? Phillipe Stark described Ando as a “mystic in a country that is no longer mystic.” I discovered his work first through a chance encounter with a book titled “From Shinto to Ando, Studies in Architectural Anthropology in Japan” by Gunter Nitschke (1993). I discovered Ando as a modernist deeply embedded in japanese culture – for me, the ideal artist: working in the contemporary world, but thinking deeply across history. I realize now that this is exactly the appeal to me of another favorite artist, painter Cy Twombly, who also engages history through a contemporary practice. And this must also be why art that only draws on the surface of contemporary life and culture always seems shallow and incomplete to me – like Allison Elizabeth Taylor’s marquetry pieces, recently reviewed by Janet Koplos in the September Art in America. I predict Allison’s work will be mentioned repeatedly at “Future of Craft” symposia, and I enjoy what she does, but I still find it lacks something that I need from art.

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This past thursday evening, Bruce Metcalf and Chanel Kennebrew represented two different craft generations with cordial respect at the 2^nd Summer in the City event, held at the ACC library at 72 Spring St. in New York. Bruce played the accomplished “old fogey” and Chanel the DIY “renegade” as the two tried to get beyond stereotypes and inter-generational mistrust that can occasionally break out into outright fear and loathing. Audience participation, which included an online contingent thanks to a live podcast hosted by Etsy (Metcalf: “how do you find anything on Etsy?), exposed a parent/teenager miscommunication at times. But stereotypes were broken down. Bruce assured us all that he had once been a young rebel too. But we know he’s still a rebel – only with more experience now, and higher price points for his work. A baseline was established: many older craft artists working within the traditional craft establishment are deeply threatened by DIY and alt/craft makers, and young DIYers have no patience for waiting their turn for success. Chanel pointed out that she wasn’t accepted into Renegade Craft, so the laws of competition still apply no matter where you work.

The chance for mis-communication was evident when Bruce remarked on the perceived lack of training of many DIYers and an audience member took exception to being called uneducated. Metcalf: “Not uneducated, untrained, and I was referring to the perceptions of DIY from established makers. I’m saying this is the perception, not that I believe this.”

DIY – do it yourself – would suggest, as Chanel said “ don’t tell me anything, I’m a DIYer”, said with some sarcasm. But DIY is not defined by education, time spent making a piece of work, or ambition for success.

Metcalf said that when he was young he thought that “the revolution” would have happened by now and that we would all be living in an egalitarian utopia. Ah youth. At the Furniture Society’s recent conference, I was talking with my friend Brian Gladwell about the new people we had met and about who we had got to know a little better this time. I told Brian that even after 6 conferences over 10 years or so, I still felt in some ways an outsider – and not that I really minded this. Brian’s response was “we’re all outsiders.” The DIY folks should realize that to choose to be a craft artist, or to be an artist of any kind, is to choose to be an outsider, regardless of age. Yes we know the stars, the success stories, but even for the few who build empires, it’s always a struggle. Wendel Castle himself told of the many unsuccessful shows he had had in is career, “until now” he said, referring to his latest at Barry Freidman.

I had a few questions that I wanted to pose to the DIY contingent, but kept them to myself for the moment, preferring to listen and learn ( a touch of fear of being misunderstood perhaps). But I’ll pose them here. The first is – what are you reading? My second question is – who are your heroes? Again, do-it-yourself implies not listening to others, but I know this can’t literally be true. I have a large roster of heroes and I’d like to know who, in the culture, in history, some of you admire besides your own kind. These are questions I would pose to any maker. Gabriel Romeu asked a big question, which was something like: “how do you see yourself in relation to society”. I think this is a question of political stance – if any – and personal motivation. The question was answered more or less by the entire evening. The third and final Summer in the City salon, by the way, will be on politics and craft – september 18th, The Politics of Craft with Rob Walker, Sabrina Gschwandtner, and Liz Collins.

Sabrina Gschwandtner’s article in the latest American Craft outlines some of what’s gong on with DIY culture – “the quiet political ripple” of making something by hand, in Faythe Levine’s words, and the belief that the ripple will become “giant waves”. She quotes ceramist and blogger Garth Johnson who says it’s “completely about community”. There is an inherent contradiction between a political stance of anti-consumerism and the alternative marketing of Etsy,and this is expressed in the article, ”the emphasis on commerce, as opposed to ethics, is taking over now” quoting artist Stephanie Syjuco. I’m unimpressed with most political art, so a political claim for DIY has a high hurdle to make before it convinces this gray-head. But I do understand and value community. My thanks to the ACC for fostering a sense of community between some folks who may speak different languages but ultimately share a lot more than is at first apparent.

photo by Vanessa, sourced here

Brian Newell’s carving demo

Purchase ‘08

At the Furniture Society’s annual membership meeting in Purchase, Lois Moran asked us to tell stories. This was also Paul Harper’s point in his keynote address – if we don’t tell our individual stories as makers, somebody else surely will tell them for us. Stories were told at the conference: in panels, presentations, demos, in pubs, restaurants and hallways. I will relate some of the ones that I heard in a future post, but I’d like to start with some general impressions. I’d like to start this way:

 

Designer Issey Miyake, who never designed anything ordinary in his life, said this about his goals as a designer:
“I don’t design anything special. I’m often represented as inventing these unusual designs, when in fact I try to stay as far away from the unusual, the odd, as possible. It is the challenge of the age”, he says, “to maintain ordinary sensibilities.” Good words for craft.“Bit by bit, without even realizing it, we are becoming less and less able to understand ordinary things. By ordinary, I don’t mean what happens as we walk down the street each day. I want to be continually inspired by the long history of mankind and nature, to discover, again and again, the threads that link together all of the things human beings have created, from the distant past right up to the present. I want to create situations in which things can happen naturally, and can connect as they should.”* Good words for any maker, for any designer. Leave it to the Japanese: design, art, nature, culture – these words go together. The meaning of Glenn Adamson’s definition for craft as “supplemental” is becoming more clear to me. Craft works with all of these concepts.

craft and design
craft and art
craft and nature
craft and culture

Each of these formulations was examined and experienced at State of the Craft, the Furniture Society’s 12^th annual conference in Purchase, N.Y. Charged with examining the state of our craft, I think we did quite well. It’s in the nature of these things that answers are not provided, but only better questions. If “maintaining ordinary sensibilities” is the challenge of the age, craft should have a strong and necessary position in our culture as we are forced to discover and maintain these ordinary sensibilities.

More Purchase coverage to follow…

* The Issey Miyake quote is from: “12 Japanese Masters” by Maggie Kinser Saiki, which profiles 12 Japanese designers, primarily graphics designers, who emerged in post war Japan.