The Element of Craft

In my view anyone can be creative, it's only when you include the element of craft that creativity becomes elevated to art And whereas creativity merely requires materials such as glue, paper and paint, performing a craft requires tools such scissors, knives and rulers.

Many of the essays in Glenn Adamson's wonderful book, 'The Craft Reader', argue convincingly that craft has unfairly been relegated to a lower status than art. After reading these essays the quality of my work improved significantly. For example I started cutting and pasting more neatly treating those actions as skills rather than tasks.

I prefer to create images with paper than paint for the mundane reason that it's easier to clean up afterwards. After a few years of being a dishwasher in a big resort I had just about enough of cleaning up big, sloppy messes. My first pieces were reproductions of fashion magazine photos made with colored construction paper. Then, about 15 years ago I had an epiphany: produce a greeting card that resembled a book. I believed that a book format would motivate people to write more than cliche filled commercial cards.

Calling them 'BookCover Cards', they even included additional pages inside for lengthier writing. But, I soon learned that the material, time and effort to produce a single card made them commercially unviable. I switched to a standard single fold format, and rather than a book cover I created ornately patterned margins which surround a Victorian Era advertisement. I dubbed this new line,'A Marginal Existence'.

I'd begin each card's design with a large composition consisting of a border made of hand-cut pieces of hand-made marbled paper. My reason for choosing this paper was that the combination of antique ads with similarly antique period paper would result in an overall cohesiveness.

I use a Fiskar's ring finger knife for the finer, detailed cutting and a Fiskar's detailed scissors with a specially made handle to reduce strain, for the larger cuts. These compositions often required hours of continual cutting and any reduction of strain on my fingers is very welcome.

After some years I achieved a point when these preliminary compositions had merit of their own, and I began exhibiting them at libraries and local galleries. To date I've had at least 15 shows with more scheduled for later this year. I was honored when the Public Library of Waltham, Massachusetts as me if they could include images of my art in their permanent archives!

My productivity increased dramatically during the Covid 19 Pandemic. It's likely due to so many of the places I'd normally frequent being closed. It's made it necessary to be home more. Having my art has been a blessing keeping me busy and safely inside!

I see my life now as a a kind of Horatio Alger rags to riches story. Although, I have achieved neither fame, nor fortune considering where I began I've accomplished far, far more than I could ever have imagined!