BY NOELLE FOYE AND DAVID H. BLOODSWORTH

The word craft often evokes images of simple handmade objects. Yet, as the exhibition Craft in America: Expanding Traditions clearly demonstrated, the “C word” has grown and evolved far beyond the simple and traditional roots often associated with it to be the center of much discussion and debate recently. In 2009, Fuller Craft Museum took the C Word Roadshow to college campuses and community centers around New England to open up the conversation and invite people to share their thoughts in an effort to discover the status of craft today.

Kicking off a series of events at regional schools, UMass Dartmouth hosted the opening panel discussion at the Star Store campus in New Bedford, MA, on Feb. 17, 2009. Students and faculty joined Fuller Craft to ask questions about how craft is defined, created and considered in America today. The panel included local artists, curators, academics and others involved in craft. Audiences were drawn not just from the college but from the whole community. The museum hoped to reach a broad demographic of students, working artists, collectors and the general public, invited all to ask questions and express opinions, ...

BY JENNY GILL

In the December/January issue of American Craft, freelance writer Meribah Knight looked back on her grandmother's sewing circle as a source of early inspiration for her own craft practice. The American Craft Council’s News & Views asked Meribah to share her favorite holiday craft tradition, memory or object. She wrote, "I have many holiday craft memories—gold spray-painted macaroni tree ornaments, angels made out of Sculpey—but the most consistent is my grandmother Hortense Lasky’s embroidered Christmas stocking. This object, with its intricate stitching of a jolly snowman reading a book to a fox, a bunny and a fawn, was my gateway into sewing. It made me ask my first, and most important, question about crafts: How did she do that?"

We asked the ACC’s Facebook fans and the readers of our monthly e-newsletter to share their favorite holiday craft traditions or memories. Here are some of our favorites:

My favorite holiday tradition as a child was making dough ornaments, baking them in the oven and hand-painting them. I've considered trying it again as an adult, but I'm sure the results would not be as wonderful!
-Cervini Haas

Starting at age 10, I ...

This would have been the editor’s letter in the current issue of American Craft, but it was displaced by an exceptional number of letters coming in.

The cover story of the October/November issue generated varied responses, which made me think about more general communication issues. A recent exchange of e-mails by a group of craft writers grew rather testy and included some name-calling. I was surprised, since the craft field has previously been accused of too much bland niceness. Then I happened to read a review of a new book on Internet communication, which asserted that the immediacy and anonymity of Internet messages seem to encourage unpleasant words that would probably seldom be handwritten and even less likely spoken.

However, American Craft’s Letters to the Editors have always been heated, even before the Internet. AC and its predecessor, Craft Horizons, have a history of caring, even impassioned readers, who make their opinions emphatically known. There have been avalanches of letters at certain times. The response to Lauren Kalman’s work was not comparable in number, but typical in sharpness and divergence of opinion. One letter congratulates us for an outstanding cover, and the next says the choice shows contempt ...

DJ Pommes Frites spun entrancing music and the beers on ice were an added bonus to one of my more interesting recent craft fairs. According to the e-mail announcement from Chris and Jennifer Daltry, the owners of What Cheer? Antiques + Vintage and coordinators of the early November Rock & Roll Yard Sale of vinyl records and local DIY craft, the purpose of the fair was to prove that “vinyl is not dead and the DIY handmade movement is raging.” Inspecting the vacant storefront in downtown Providence transformed into an urban yard sale with more than 30 vendors—half music merchants, half DIY artisans and most somewhere in the middle—I wondered: why market vinyl records and handmade art in the same space?

I went to find out. Immediately to the right of my functional pottery booth was a vinyl record enthusiast selling from his personal collection. When I asked which albums he was most proud of, he promptly pulled out early Sinatra. Asked why, my neighbor scratched his chin and took his time to answer. “Because Sinatra was a real craftsman,” he said.

On my left was another vinyl aficionado and record label producer who was happy to ...

Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design
DVD, 65 minutes, Director, Faythe Levine
$19.95

Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design
By Faythe Levine and Cortney Heimerl
Princeton Architectural Press
$24.95

Ah, youth! It is impossible to watch Handmade Nation and not be affected by its spirit: passionate, upbeat, idealistic and above all energetic. The frenetic pixilated opening credit sequence almost suggests that the title might be Over-Caffeinated Nation. It is also impossible not to be struck by déjà vu all over again, for most of the ideas seem more than familiar. The artists and others interviewed are, gosh!, in favor of the handmade versus the mass-produced. They prefer the tactile. They seek an alternative to the corporate. Oh well, to each generation its own rebellion against the forces of darkness. The film does offer a lively sampling of the indie craft movement from around the country, including Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, Atlanta, New York City and elsewhere, covering a lot of ground in crafty as well as geographical terms.

It is perhaps not surprising that there is little historical or critical perspective: ...

Scrapbook, an occasional posting, will feature reader-contributed photos of craft events of general interest. Click on the heading to see larger image and caption. Send your digital image and caption information to letters@craftcouncil.org, with Scrapbook in the subject line. We must reserve the right to select for appropriateness and interest.

Craft has long been connected to home, and to the hand. Now one could say that craft is connected to home, hand and Internet. The web is often cited as a reason for and enabler of the DIY craft movement: its speed and ubiquity drives people to tune out through slow handcraft, but it also connects crafters to each other and thus grows the movement, the theory goes. Craft, the DIY movement asserts, is a lifestyle, one centered on the belief that you should make what you need (or want), through creative efforts that are environmentally sustainable and reflect your own personal (not corporate) aesthetics. Looking at any crafter’s blog, rich with images of yarn stashes, backyard gardens and kitchen table Gocco projects, will show how fluidly DIY’ers move between their online and offline homes. Perhaps in recognition of the home-hand-Internet triad, three of the biggest pro-handmade websites are now offering moving image tributes to DIY abodes.

Etsy’s There’s No Place Like Here series artfully profiles creative types with unique spaces and treasured collections of cuckoo clocks, globes or photographs of people with dogs. The formula is simple but lovingly executed—the hosts stand at their ...