Issues in Craft
INFILLING becomes successful when it achieves the impression that it is effortless. This is why engineering a design field seldom works as well as just ‘eyeballing’ it. There is a lovely bowl in the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center which is decorated on the inside with lots of little squares. The artist has been dead for a thousand years, but you can sense the way that she just started with the first square, and then worked outward toward the rim. They are not arranged in concentric rings, nor entirely uniform in shape. They get a little larger as they approach the rim. They don’t bump up against each other, and you can’t guess which ones came first, and which last. This same impression arises from well-fitted quilting stitches.
MOVEMENT: All artists working in craft media learn to accomodate the stubborn resistance of materials to the design intention. Wood was a living thing, with tension and memory built from uneven distribution of moisture and stresses in the tree. When turned, it reverts to its own nature quickly, with cracks, or slowly, as it ovalizes. Learning the will of the grain is a primary challenge for the woodturning artist. Ceramics particles have their own wayward behaviors which create distortions initially upon drying, and then, more dramatically, in the chemical and physical transformations of the fire. Quilting began as a technique to stabilize layers of fabrics of different types (backing, batting, top), which will shrink at different rates when washed.
We sometimes want to create the illusion of motion in the work, as part of the process of creating life in it. Learning to work with the movement inherent in the material is a life-enhancing step. The ovalized natural edge bowl, for example, combines the skill of the woodturner with the tree’s own way of drying differently in the vertical and the horizontal dimension. It is no longer as round as a lathe-turned object, nor as heavy as a chunk of wood. It has become something entirely new.