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 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.

(more…)

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.

In our flash mob conversation with John Perreault on the FS forum last month, Perreault asked the question that many have about the state of craft today:

“Why are the craft disciplines so isolated? Wouldn’t it be productive to have panels or forums on topics that could be addressed by ceramists, glass artists, fiber artists, furnituremakers etc? Aren’t there mutual concerns? Or is everyone too busy looking over his or her shoulder at the art world? Hey, wake up the art world doesn’t give a damn. I am so tired of ceramics people only talking to ceramics people, furniture people only talking to furniture people, and glass people only talking to themselves. This alone proves that the American Craft Movement is over. It’s all about niche. And, by the way, we are no longer allowed to use the word craft, right? ”

There are entrenched attitudes and power structures that reinforce these separations. These attitudes are generational, institutional and market driven. Many students don’t recognize the separations between disciplines although the institutions they attend may be organized in ways that reinforce them. There are also market realities that coldly enforce heirarchies between art, design and craft as well as between media. John says that craft artists should stop looking over their shoulders at an art world that doesn’t give a damn about them. But from the studio, from the maker’s point of view, from the artist’s point of view, the thrill of making transcends media categories and market heirarchies. The artist will reach for any tool, any jar on the shelf when searching for that thrill. Wendell Castle had a big idea - to get more into his work. Wendell will speak for himself in Purchase, but it seems to me that this is the impulse of an artist - this is the work of an artist. My best friend is a painter. We often sign our messages to each other “buon lavoro’ - do good work, or perhaps “be happy in your work”. We know what it means. We don’t have to say “make good craft objects” or “make good art”. We don’t say “make pithy cultural appropriations”, or “do good institutional critique”. We just say, do the profound thing, do the important thing: make something.

The market may be a hard reality, but it is what it is. I’ve seen a preview of some of the questions to be posed in the first session of the critical discourse panels at the coming FS conference in Purchase, titled “Value”. It should be a very interesting dissection of markets and the perception and establishment of value, but I hope as a group we will come to understand how the divisions that markets impose on makers are just that - divisions imposed by the marketplace.

The June e-news from the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design has just been posted and it includes an abstract of the proceedings of the recent craft “think tank”. The subjects covered include: the web as a new marketing tool for makers, craft collections in museums and the attendant curatorial challenges and opportunities for promoting craft, questions about program and degree requirements for craft students, the status of private and public support for craft, the tensions and opportunities for digital technology, new media, and multiples in studio craft, and in the last session, a question that relates directly to my comments above, the language and relationship of crafts to “fine art” and how does this relationship differ for universities, museums and makers ? Brent Skidmore led one of several discussions on this topic. The notes for this discussion are just that - notes, so I don’t want to pull too much out of context, but I’ll hope to get a chance to talk to Brent about this. Paul Harper, our keynote speaker, also attended the think tank and I’m sure will be sharing his impressions in Purchase.

From the notes of the discussion: “Part of me wants to say that we should all ’shut up and make something’. For it is this ‘making’ that makes the connections to” ( being) ” human like no other if one is a maker.”

And finally, for another voice, Dennis Stevens has posted his own thoughtful comments on the state of the craft on his blog, Redefining Craft.

“As I see it, American Studio Craft remains in conflict with its modernistic roots and at the same time, DIY craft is struggling to come to terms with its own inherent conflicts, in terms of an anti-consumptive, anti-consumerist revolution quite quickly becoming a consumerist institution. Further, the two fields, who share a common name, seem to remain far from reconciling their differences and working together toward a common set of shared ideals.”

See you in Purchase

Paul Harper will be our keynote speaker at the Purchase conference. He came to our attention through a paper he delivered at the New Craft, Future Voices conference in Dundee, Scotland, in 2007. The paper was titled “The Poetics of Making.” Paul’s keynote address will be based on this. I asked him if he would send us a brief introduction and preview and he has kindly sent this dispatch.

David Richardson has asked me to write something for the blog, by way of an introduction. This is always a problem for me as, like many people who work in the arts, I have a ‘portfolio career’, in which I do a great variety of things. I frequently find myself in meetings, with a rising sense of panic as we go around the table introducing ourselves. Everybody else seems to be “the director of this” or the “head of that”, or, in other circumstances, they can identify themselves with a particular practice, “I am a Potter”. I always have to struggle to remember what hat I’m wearing today, how best to represent myself.

Perhaps I should reflect on the development of my interest in the “poetics of making”, as it draws on many sources across my various practices as furniture maker, researcher, teacher, arts professional, writer etc. In some ways I was originally attracted to the idea of the crafts before I settled on my particular craft of woodwork. Having met an older generation of craftspeople who impressed me as being fully engaged with the world through their work. These were highly educated and cultured people who placed equal importance on the rightness of a technique or of a gesture in their making as on other forms of knowledge or expression. So, from the start I saw craft as more than a category of object, but as a world of ideas and a mode of being. As a practitioner I found myself in a community of critically engaged makers who were articulate in expressing their fascination with the minutiae of their crafts, and who, through their particular knowledge, found common cause with other specialisms. Their interests were at once specific and wide-ranging and eclectic.

My perception was that there was very little contemporary writing that reflected the discourse of these craft makers. Then, in my postgraduate studies, I encountered a great deal of theoretical writing about craft that had grown over the last 15 years or so. Some of it seemed useful, but in much of it I failed to recognize my own practice or my community. Furthermore, I found a lot of it very hard to read. On the other hand, as I began to organize my own learning and to formalize my reflections I found interesting developments in other disciplines, and other kinds of writing that illuminated my practice and evoked my experience of making.

One part of my work that is very important to me is my role as a director for ALIAS, an organization that provides support for artist-led groups in the southwest. The Arts Council of England, our principal funder recognizes that these groups represent a vital part of the arts infrastructure. ALIAS aims to nurture artist-led activity by providing a critical context, resources and advice to artist led groups through an advisory service, a website – www.aliasarts.org – and a series of seminars. The seminars are driven by the concerns that we encounter in the groups that we work with. Having found that there was a feeling amongst many makers that there was a theoretical discourse about craft that was happening elsewhere, at one remove from their experience and the concerns that were central to their practice I have organized a series of symposia called practice and reflection. The aim of the series has been to create a positive forum for practitioners to engage with current debates in the crafts and to explore ways in which theory could be more closely informed by practice. Whilst other conferences and symposia tend to be led by institutions, the venues are chosen for their association with a particular group of craftspeople rather than with the academic community. There is an aspiration to begin to engender a confident critical community of makers who can contribute their voices to an expanded and enriched discourse about craft.

The presenters speak from different positions, but the emphasis is on practice and several themes have become evident, which have informed the on-going programme. A central theme has been language, the need for a way of talking and writing that fits with practice and experience, that could facilitate a useful dialogue between practitioner and theorist. Such a dialogue is vital to the emergent research culture in schools of art and design.

Practice and reflection has provided me with a forum in which to test the developing ideas about craft that underpin my research and teaching, and indeed all my other work. Through these events I have had access to voices and modes of practice that are still largely absent from other fora.

Although I made furniture for around 20 years, sadly, I no longer have a professional practice as a maker, largely because I have simply found it easier to earn some kind of living in other ways. Nevertheless, my making continues to underpin all of my work. Not simply in the focus of my interests, but in my mode of working, in the way that I find myself assembling the elements of my knowledge and experience; in my habits of reflection, and so on…

So, whilst I cannot in all honesty introduce myself as a furniture maker, I am, at the least, a fellow traveller and very honoured to be associated with your society.

We’re having a conversation tonight, May 19th, on the Furniture Society forum with N.Y. based critic John Perreault. Please join us beginning at 8 pm.

http://www.furnituresociety.org/forum

This past fall, furniture maker Brian Newell moved his family and his shop from Japan to California. Having just moved my own shop and household, but only less than 20 miles in each case, I couldn’t imagine what his experience was like. I asked him if he would describe his move, his time in Japan and his new shop (uncompleted at this point) and he has sent this dispatch (with more to follow as the story unfolds). Brian will be participating in the Purchase conference as part of the College of the Redwoods panel and giving presentations of his work.

Repatriation

For a decade I had a nice comforting routine: finish up work in the backyard woodshop and then stroll down to the little grocery– a near-obsolete relic from the fifties– for a single can of Ebisu beer. I’d exchange comments about the weather with the sad old proprietor and then wander back up the hill, past the giant camphor tree and the little shrine housing some God or other, beyond the newer plastic houses with postage-stamp yards, and finally home to my wife and daughter. It was a lovely walk on the good days, and a good day was usually when I had faith in whatever contraption I was cooking up in the shop. On the faithless days, well, I might do something like dream of moving to America.

As if the supply of faith in America were overflowing.

In September of 2007 the three of us finally made good on our perpetual vow and moved from the suburbs of Tokyo to Fort Bragg, California. Under ordinary circumstances a guy of modest means would have to give up one country in exchange for another: containerize the life in Japan and ship it to the Land of Opportunity, close down the old and set up the new. I avoided the agony of this decision by leaving my workshop almost entirely intact, machines and all, and convincing myself that this non-decision was in fact a wise and potentially fruitful resolution. My shop would be the western anchor (or is it Eastern Anchor?) of a Culture Bridge. Extravaganza. I wouldn’t just go to Japan every year to work, but in my absence the Tokyo shop would provide safe harbor for some eager Japan explorer. Over the years I have met a great many craftspeople who want to explore Japan.

Meantime, the repatriation grinds on. The Eastern Anchor (or is it Western?) isn’t much of an anchor yet, more like a shell filled with big, vague ideas, 20,000 pounds of idle cast iron (no electricity yet) and vacuuming up resources at an alarming pace. I have had to resist the temptation to retreat back to my well-worn bench near the shrine with a case of Ebisu beer.

I have built my new shop in Fort Bragg like I build furniture: no plan, just momentum. And oblivion. Well, the momentum seems to have run out months ago and the oblivion doesn’t help anymore. I don’t remember exactly how satisfying it can be to bandsaw rosewood, but I have a feeling it is satisfying, and maybe this drives me onward. And besides, Japan is inconveniently located. One of the goals of the move was to learn something, and I seem to be succeeding at that. It isn’t all pretty.

I’ve been waiting six months for the electric company to hook me up. Last week I laid (with permission) three-inch conduit in a 240 foot long trench and then filled it in by hand. The few people who came out to check on me were full of pity, which at the time I mistook for admiration. Everybody loves a guy who can dig his own trench, don’t they?

I have a 36 inch bandsaw in pieces, cluttering up the place. I wasn’t going to mess with it, but just accept its ugliness and use it. But the tires had to be dressed, and just before the task was finished the gouge dug in and the tire disintegrated. Well, a new tire meant pulling the wheel, and as long as the wheel was off the bearings ought to be replaced, and if all that stuff is removed, the upper shroud could be stripped and painted, and if you’re going to paint that, you might as well strip and paint the rest. There is a lot of square footage on a 36 inch bandsaw. There is no joy to be found in bandsaw restoration after all.

See Brian’s work here.

Furniture Society member Neil Lamens visited David Ebner at his Long Island, N.Y. shop and shot a video. See the amazing scallion coat rack being made and one of David’s signature chairs. David will be making a presentation of highlights from his 35 years of furniture making at the Purchase conference.

 

 

The three day pre-conference workshop this year will be a master class with three accomplished furniture makers. Space is still available as of this writing for those who want to be part of this exciting workshop. I attended the pre-conference workshop in San Diego three years ago with marquetry expert Patrick Edwards and it was a wonderful opportunity to learn from  a master furniture maker.

 

 

Vivian Beer, Filled With Birds and Beasts

The Chair: Three Days – Three Makers

2008 Pre-Conference Workshop

June 16-18, 2008, Purchase College SUNY

Join three furniture makers - Vivian Beer, Curtis Buchanan and Will Neptune - as they construct a chair of their own design. As they build their chairs, each artist will demonstrate the processes they use, share what motivates their design, and how material affects both design and process. This will be an opportunity for registrants to closely observe each artist as they proceed step by step through a project, from concept through finishing, and to gain a broader view of the many approaches to designing and building this most intimate piece of furniture.

*****

Vivian Beer received her masters degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2004 and is currently artist in residence at Penland. Vivian’s recent chairs are the most striking “chair as image” that I’ve seen in the last year or two.

Curtis Buchanan makes Windsor chairs in Jonesborough, Tennessee, and his work is in the permanent collection of the Tennessee State Museum, The Southern Highlands Craft Guild, and Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. He is also profiled in The Penland Book of Woodworking.

Will Neptune was an instructor at the North Bennet St. School in Boston for 15 years and since 2001 has worked in a co-op studio in Boston, accepting commissions for furniture and architectural elements. Woodcarving and carving restoration have been his specialty for many years. Fine Woodworking magazine has published a series of his articles on construction techniques for various furniture forms.

In everything I’ve done,
Of one thing I’m certain.
Beauty’s not found
But within our heads.

… from Hollows by Frederick Vetterlein, one of the Carpenter Poets of Jamaica Plain

We tend perhaps to consider carpentry a trade - as opposed to craft, and certainly as opposed to art. Maybe. I’ve spent a fair amount of time walking 2×6 double plates 20 feet off the ground, and it’s fair to say I’ve worked with all three: tradesmen, craftsmen and even artists. One of my favorites was Phil, the head of a 3-man crew (him, another guy, and me) building 2 government residences in Kotzebue, Alaska. Each wood framed building was 2 stories, 50′ x 70′, perched 4 feet above the ground on refrigerated steel pilings drilled 20′ into the frozen tundra. We did everything except drill the holes for the pilings, the mechanical/electrical work, the sheetrock finishing and the painting. We had 9 weeks to do it in. We didn’t sit around a whole lot. Phil was over 60, I was probably 36, and he wore me out. I simply could not keep up with him. If Phil asked me to haul something to Joe up in the rafters, my next glimpse of Phil he’d be standing next to Joe way up there, straddling 2 rafters, hollering down where the hell was I with that goddamn tool?

An oft-repeated phrase of Phil’s was, “Hell you doin‘? We ain’t buildin’ no piano!” I heard it whenever he caught me being too meticulous with some detail or another. He enjoyed goading me with that line, because he knew I’d spent a couple of years leaning to make fine furniture.

But Phil was compulsive about details, too. He was obsessed with making things well, and right, and as they should be - in addition to making them quickly. He was very adept at both. If we did something wrong, or just not in the best way it could be done - Phil had us tear it out and do it over the right way. He was a craftsman, alright - just on a larger scale. He was as in command of his craft as it’s possible for anyone to be. He was undaunted by problems, improvising elegant solutions on the fly. No piano has anything on the houses Phil built.

I doubt Phil was a poet, unless there’s lots of rhymes for “goddamnit.” However, there are some carpenter-poets in Jamaica Plains, NY who enjoy applying their muse to their craft. You can find their history and their poems online at www.carpenterpoets.org.