Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

What is a "craft"? Does the phrase "arts and crafts" point to a rigid or fluid distinction between arts and crafts?

Often, the term craft is used to speak of the skilled, practiced, trained elements of the production of an artwork or craftwork e.g. the craft of writing; practicing the craft of pottery.

Is the distinction between art and crafts one of an elite social status and snobbery? Is a painted portrait of a rich nobleman really more artistically worthy than, say, an intricately woven basket? What about a schoolchild's fingerpainting? Sock puppets, anyone?

Once I was too lazy to reach for the remote and sat through a long television show on the construction of paper flowers. What, if anything, makes this a craft rather than a work of art? Or is it both (a crafty art or an artsy craft)?

Art has been a tool of patriarchal domination for centuries. Museums are full of phallo-oppressive male art featuring the female nude as a perfect wife or whore. Crafts are better than most art since they are anti-patriarchal. For instance a gf of mine makes candles, and they are beautiful large candles made with herbal extracts and her own dyes. We use them in, teehee, various rituals, usually in celebration of Diana or Hecate. That is art. Art is not the chicken-scratchings of some downtown punk bitch who thinks his decorations of his mommy's bedroom are Claude Monet; its by and for wymyn, boyo.

craft is utilitarian. art is non-utilitarian. both are non-gender specific. hoogaldee boogaldee.