Technique? Art?

Kathy Loomis asks some big questions recently about craftsmanship and fabrication etc:

But that leads me to a more important consideration – what’s with technique and craftsmanship anyway? Is it essential to great art these days? Is it acceptable but not necessary? Or is it maybe even an impediment?

I think it’s a cheap excuse to say one doesn’t need technique. And the real problem (usually coming out of the same mouths that are sneering about the mythical quilt police) is the wrong thinking that both:

I’m an artist because I have frayed edges etc.

and

It’s ok to have frayed edges and poor technique because I am an artist.

While art is made on many different levels and with many levels of expertise, there is nothing wrong with actually learning your medium and craft so that you can use its full range of expression and (!) even go beyond it. That whole building blocks thing – the internalization of what we do so that we can express and change and adapt what we do to our ideas…

Now. If your frayed edges and undulating surface are what you imagined and are part of the design, I’m good with it. If they’ve happened along the way and look like they belong so be it. If you just didn’t know how to finish the edge and there are stray threads and the top is wavy because of wildly ranging tensions and lack of support…

I always told people that you might not ever want to make an applique quilt and that’s fine. But if you know how to do basic applique, you can bail yourself out of any number of piecing problems and suddenly putting on finishing edges and hanging sleeves is not such a big deal. That’s called learning your medium and knowing what to do. If I can applique something on (by machine or hand, whatever) I am not left wondering in the middle of the night if superglue will work. And I won’t have to convince myself or anyone else that using superglue rather than applique is part of my “art”.

I make contemporary quilts. I don’t think of them in any other way. They are sneered* at by the “very traditional” people and “art quilt” people alike and I’m over all that. My quilts are generally pieced and heavily machine-quilted. There have been heavily pieced and quilted quilts since the beginning of quilting and heavily machine-quilted ones since there were machines to work with. I know that from history. I don’t have to cut sandpaper templates anymore or rely on inaccurate templates in books. I have other tools to use. Earlier quilters would have gladly adopted my tools, I believe.

My designs are my own but frankly a little square with a triangle in it has been around for awhile. Too traditional for the “art quilt” folks and not traditional enough for the “very traditional”. What can I do but keep on making my own thing – just has artists of all varieties have for ages.

If I didn’t have technique, I would have to flail around every time I wanted to make something. My techniques and skills and design are all bound up with what I have in my mind and with what I make. Sometimes a thought crosses my mind and I am forced to wonder – how would I do that (and in fact I had that thought for my Quilt National piece and ended up – gasp! – researching!) and expanding my abilities and know how. I have come up with ways to work efficiently and fairly quickly and yet get the result I want pretty reliably. Right now I’m puzzling about something and am open to the idea of taking a class with someone (if I only knew who lol) to figure out a technique question.

Painters and sculptors and everyone else learns technique. Don’t use a need to escape the “traditional” as an excuse not to learn the basics of what you’re working with.

* Sneering is perhaps too strong a word although it certainly applies sometimes. I’ll say by explanation that the “traditional” folks often think my seams should be straighter and such and the “art” people think my piecing is too damn traditional (and why is this in the same show with my arty painted or printed or frayed stuff). I’ve seriously heard both and to both I say: ok. Now go make your own stuff.