Where Art and Craft

COLLIDE

BY ANNIE BUCKLEY

Contemporary artists use traditional crafting techniques to make their case.

From knitted wall hangings to cast bronze rugs, hand-torched metal to papier-mâché birds, it’s evident that crafts inform and inspire a growing number of contemporary artists.

Case in point: the 2007 international art fair Art Basel Miami Beach, where pieces on display included a sculpture constructed from a porcelain animal swathed in a hand-crocheted suit, a painting laced with needlework, a collage bursting with faux flowers and recycled materials, and various discarded soccer balls, bottle caps, and cardboard boxes sewn, glued, welded, taped, or otherwise pieced together with supplies as simple as Elmer’s glue and a needle and thread.

Art Basel Miami Beach, the American sister to the main Art Basel show held annually in Basel, Switzerland, draws upward of 20,000 people — artists, dealers, collectors, and enthusiasts from around the world.

A growing number of smaller auxiliary fairs, such as Pulse Miami, Aqua Art Miami, and the New Art Dealers Alliance Art Fair, have cropped up around Art Basel Miami Beach. Works inspired by contemporary crafting — typically found in the free-spirited atmosphere of flea markets or crafting fairs — hold their own in the fast-paced, champagne-laden party scene with price tags that can top $100,000.

“People appreciate something complex and labor intensive, and this is what comes across in these works,” says Katrina Traywick, whose Berkeley, Calif., gallery Traywick Contemporary participated in Aqua Art Miami.

Miami’s Fredric Snitzer Gallery has participated in Art Basel Miami Beach since its inception. Snitzer

notes that young artists are using more of what are traditionally considered to be craft processes. But, he says, “I don’t think, in general, that a contemporary artist takes up craft techniques to re-engage in craft so much as that they are open to using anything as a resource for making art. This generation of artists is so hungry to make art that they will take ideas and materials from wherever they need to take them to make their work.”

At Pulse Miami, San Francisco’s Rena Bransten Gallery exhibited sculptures by Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, who uses handcrafted crochet covers to transform mass-produced porcelain statuary.

At the Aqua Art fair, Seattle’s Roq La Rue Gallery took advantage of the setting to display Boo Davis’ skeleton-themed quilt draped over the double bed in a room at the Aqua Hotel. As with many of the craft-inspired pieces, this one challenged the familiar borders in the long and complex relationship between art and craft.

“It gets into so many wonderfully murky areas,” says Namita Gupta Wiggers, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Ore. “But that’s what makes it interesting.”

Historically, definitions of art and craft have depended heavily on time and place. The evolution of the British Arts and Crafts movement instigated a pivotal convergence in the early 20th century. A renaissance in the use of handicrafts in American art renewed interest during the 1970s. But how do the fields relate today?

“Craft is definitely having a resurgence — it’s not a punitive term in the art world anymore,” says