What makes people tick -- drives their passion -- is the underlying question that provides the spark for several enjoyable, well-made television specials airing tonight and Tuesday on WQED.

"Craft in America," which premiered in 2007, returns at 8 tonight with two episodes, "Origins" and "Process." They're followed at 10 p.m. by the season opener of the critically acclaimed biennial program "Art:21 -- Art in the Twenty-First Century." At 10 p.m. Tuesday, collectors "Herb & Dorothy" launch 2009-10 "Independent Lens" programming.

In some ways, tonight's series couldn't be more different. While distinctions between what was once considered "high" or "low" art have been discredited, general characteristics continue to surface, although exceptions and crossovers abound.

Craftsmen honor tradition; contemporary fine artists strive for individuality. Craft is accessible and recognizable, fine art complex and esoteric. Craft speaks of place and of history; 21st-century fine art is global and now. And the programs reflect that. "Craft in America" enters through the heart, and "Art:21" through the head. But they meet in the soul.

The high points of the former are segments with the Owens family of venerable Jugtown Pottery in Seagrove, N.C., where local clay has been spun into functional ware for generations, and with Charleston, S.C., blacksmith Philip Simmons, whose signature iron gates are synonymous with the coastal city's charm.

It's a pleasure to meet Vernon Owens, who has thrived on the hard and rhythmic work of throwing pots for five decades. But his story is made vivid by the contentment in the eyes of his son Travis, a graduate of the College of Art and Design at North Carolina State University, as he contemplates his future in the Jugtown continuum.

Simmons, who died in June at age 97, wandered into a blacksmith shop when he was 9. He was told that he was no match for a fiery-hoofed horse and to return when he turned 13, which he did. Although frail when filmed, he continued to visit his own shop in a wheelchair, encouraging the next generation and offering advice.

"If there's no one there to teach those techniques, or to receive those techniques, then we lose those techniques," he said.

Also enriching are conversations with weaver Jim Bassler, who reminds of the importance of the handmade and tactile in both culture's evolution and its future in a technological age ("The decisions I make are never based on how long it's going to take me."); Kiowa beadworker Teri Greeves, who is a stickler for traditional materials and techniques but doesn't mind changing form (beaded high tops instead of moccasins!); and glass artist Paul Stankard, who interprets the intricate floral groupings within his paperweights as "referencing sex, death and God -- and, to me, that means spirituality, that means the life cycle of nature."

"Process" is more communal and visits craftsmen learning their skills, in their studios, and teaching the next generation.

From the North Bennet Street School in Boston, which has been teaching trades such as bookbinding and violin making since 1885, to Berkeley, Calif., book artist Julie Chen, whose three-dimensional creations merge concept and form, the crafts are alive, from sea to shining sea, and that is worth celebrating after more than a century of mass production.

The "Art:21" productions are erudite, probing, the filmmaker's inquisitiveness matching that of the subjects, themselves the creme de la creme of contemporary visual discourse.

Opening the series within the category "Compassion" are South African William Kentridge, an exhibitor in the 1999 Carnegie International; American Carrie Mae Weems; and Colombian Doris Salcedo (CI95).

Tonight's discussions are rewardingly intense and stirringly engaging, conflating, for example, apartheid and the illusion of physical constructs, slavery and the Obama presidency, and the role of poetic memory as witness to people lost in paramilitary massacres.

Forthcoming programs are: Oct. 14, "Fantasy," featuring Jeff Koons (CI88), Mary Heilmann, Florian Maier-Aichen and Cao Fei (CI08); Oct. 21, "Transformation," Yinka Shonibare (The Warhol, 2001), Cindy Sherman (CI95) and Paul McCarthy; and Oct. 28, "Systems," Julie Mehretu (CI04), John Baldessari (CI85), Kimsooja and Allan McCollum.

"Delightful" sums up this story and its characters, all the more so because they are so unlikely.

New Yorkers Herb and Dorothy Vogel began to collect contemporary art in the early 1960s from relatively unknown young artists and 30 years later had amassed an important collection of approximately 4,000 works. Many of the artists became famous, and the artworks appreciated in value to a worth of several million dollars.

The topper is that Dorothy was a librarian and Herb a postal clerk and high school dropout. They lived on her salary and purchased artworks with his, becoming active members of the art scene, visiting studios and attending show openings.

Eventually the art occupied every inch of their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment. Although they had many museum suitors, they chose to give their collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., because the museum doesn't de-accession, is free, and, as government employees, they wanted to give back to the people of the U.S.

The film presents a rounded portrait of the couple, absorbed at an exhibition; feisty in the home they share with fish, turtles, cats and art; and determined. The NGA had persuaded them to accept an annuity to cushion their retirement years; so far it's supported the acquisition of more art.

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