Handicrafts exhibition a response to consumption-driven society
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Allyson Mitchell's room-sized installation "Hungry Purse" appears in the exhibition "DIY: A Revolution in Handicrafts" at the Society for Contemporary Craft. -
Kate MacDowell's porcelain sculpture "Migrant" is part of "DIY: A Revolution in Handicrafts," at the Society for Contemporary Craft. -
Amy Johnston's silver "Did Dolly Dream of a Bio Mom?" references Dolly, the cloned sheep, atop a double helix. -
Ehren Tool "CBU 87" is made up of 14 shelves each holding 14 ceramic cups embellished with military and patriotic imagery, contained within the suspended shape of a large bomb. -
These choice cuts are part of the installation "Stuffed Full" by California artist Lauren Venell at the Society for Contemporary Craft. Ms. Venell prices her meats according to their actual costs, incorporating their effect upon the environment and human health. Her total for pork is $39.88 a pound; for beef, a whopping $138.79.
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The DIY movement -- "do it yourself" -- has been gaining steam among crafters in response to a culture that has shifted from people making their own personal items to a consumer society that divorces those items from their sources, both physical and geographic.
At the turn of the 20th century, the Arts and Crafts movement formed in opposition to the Industrial Revolution, and had both an aesthetic and an ideological edge. Similarly, DIY's youth aesthetic shares prominence with the politics of sustainability engendered in the Slow Food movement and other efforts to wrestle options from purveyors of mass-produced and mass-marketed goods.
But DIY goes one further, exemplified by the 16 American, Canadian and British artists/collectives in the timely exhibition, "DIY: A Revolution in Handicrafts," at the Society for Contemporary Craft.
"Once again, craft finds itself a reactionary cultural activity by virtue of its connection to self-sufficiency, manual skills and cottage industry; in short, by its wholesome and romantic values," writes Gabriel Craig of www.conceptualmetalsmithing.com in a small, smart publication that accompanies the exhibition ($3).
The show's work confounds expectations, appearing to align more with fine art than with craft, until one learns that the common denominator that unites DIY is values.
Because of social shifts in family structure and gender roles, urbanization and the rise of the middle class, men are far less likely to build their homes than those a few generations back, and women are less likely to sew clothing for family members or to cook meals from scratch. While some of that change has been freeing, it has its own kind of entrapment.
"Today, it's in the context of a world in which it's possible to get by making nothing that making -- and the simple empowerment it confers -- can emerge as a category of active interest and political meaning," writes Katherine Sharpe in the show brochure. Ms. Sharpe, a Brooklyn resident, is online editor of ReadyMade, a bimonthly lifestyle magazine centered on DIY projects and modern design.
The exhibited artists add yet another twist. Knitted items and jewelry, media one would expect at a handicraft show, are represented. But Mark Newport's colorful 6-foot-tall "superhero" suits challenge stereotypes of masculinity, even as they reference his mother's hand-knit sweaters. Robert Longyear works in a deserted St. Louis industrial building and makes brooches of materials found therein that look like exotic crystal growths, to call attention to "the fate of our neighborhoods, which are presently filled with abandoned warehouses, idle factories and empty lots."
First Published February 16, 2011 12:00 am
