about crafts

about crafts

 

craft is the natural product of creativity… with some basic skill and ingenuity to focus the creative energy, production invariably ensues.  all creation flows from the same process, but as the medium becomes more sophisticated, the creative tendencies lose their organic edge and things get so tied up in figuring out the process that they’re hardly fun anymore…

 

when i was a little kid i used to love making crafts.  it usually mean something like melting crayons, or gluing pretzels to a piece of felt.

 

as i got older i started to think it was more sophisticated to make more complicated things, and things on computers, and things with batteries… but as I soon started to lose interest because the processes were complicated enough that it became about the process rather than the act of creation.  imagine, whole universities set up to teach people how to use a tool to make something!  creating things feels best when the process is stripped down to the minimum, and the number of steps between creativity and creation are the fewest.  there’s something to be said for finger painting… not to say that there’s nothing redeeming in silkscreening and airbrushing… but the raw interface of the crafting process is the invigorating part for me.

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