Craft in Art - an extension of the High/Low art discussion

I use craft techniques in my art practice purposefully. I am dedicated to taking the art of craft and weaving a place for it in the high art sphere. I experiment with it as guerrilla art, traditional sculpture, and site specific installation.

I am reading a collection of essays edited by Gloria Hickney that really illuminate the subject. It is called Making a Metaphor: A discussion of meaning in Contemporary Craft.

A quote from one of the essays which I love (sorry I don't have the page number, I was scribbling personal notes in my sketchbook) says:

Making something with your hands goes beyond the merely rational, and we are also becoming wary about living all in our heads. We have learned that our famous modern individualism can in fact be narcissistic, greedy, unheeding of other people's needs. In making things by hand, firmly going beyond necessity to do so, we are in fact practising the individualism we so much and so rightly admire, but in a manner that will actually add to the richness and beauty in the world without harming anybody else in the process.

I have found that some of the primary biases of craft vs art are:
1) The crafter is rarely seperated from the process, and that the process is often viewed in a non intellectual way and from a 'high art' perspective.
2)The crafted object is appraised on its function first and foremost, before its consideration as an art piece

A lovely quote from Michelle Hardy explains these a bit better:

(unfortunately)
Craft remains tied to necessity and to the maker's hand, as opposed to the maker's intellect. The artist is credible because he transcends the particularities of materiality and discovers truth within himself. The craftsperson cannot claim the same transcendance and is therefore denied the same status.

I would love to point out how gender is used in this quote to illustrate another major bias I constantly bump in to. Where as art is viewed as academic, intelligent, masculine - excluding the feminine in the sentence, the word craftperson is more gender inclusive. Suggesting that the craftperson does not sit down to create with the same intellect and their activities are relagated to the catagory of hobby, past time, or low art.

I definitely feel that craft is art, and has the potential to be high art. I use the word potential in the sense that not every painting is amazing high art, and not every mitten is amazing either. Denying the creativity, imagination and grossly over looked intensive labour involved in craft saddens me. I will post some incredible art that is also craft in the near future.