I recently entered a juried art exhibit. The rules of the exhibit encouraged fiber art
and in fact last year my quilted wall hanging was accepted. But this year it wasn’t. Now that is OK, sometime artists are at the
whim of the jurors. Whatever the juror
interprets as acceptable is what goes in.
I learned after the show that the jurors (it was a
committee) in this case was not following the theme of the art exhibit but more
if the piece was ‘real art’. So many
times anything made with fiber (other than paper) is not considered art but
craft.
So that got me thinking (again) what is the difference
between art and craft? I looked up a
number of different dictionaries. Some
definitions had the same elements for both.
Both included creativity or imagination.
Both included some skill involved like painting, weaving,
sculpting. But the big difference seems
to be the use of the finished product.
A craft item while it could be beautiful to look at also had
a function. A piece of pottery could be
used to serve food or drink. A quilt is
meant to cover a bed. A piece of
embroidery could be part of a napkin or towel. A knitted shawl is meant to keep
someone warm.
A piece of art is meant only as a decoration, to be on
display. It has no other function than
for aesthetic purposes. And some
definitions added that it was art if on display in a gallery.
Now this is a dilemma many fiber artists face. The techniques we use whether it is quilting,
knitting, weaving, felting are typically used to create things people use in
their every day life but those same techniques and sometimes even the finished
‘functional’ product can be aesthetically beautiful, as much as a painting.
Quilting now has a category called “Art Quilts”. These are often wall hangings that can be as
beautiful as a painted canvas (and sometimes the wall hangings are
painted). But because they are made of
techniques that if used on a bigger scale can cover a bed, does that make them
less artistic? I don’t think so.
So how do we change the perception of what Fiber Art is –
not just a functional item but a piece of aesthetic art? That is the question I have been asking
myself. I don’t know if I have the
answer but here are some of the ideas I have come up with.
We need to change our idea of ourselves. It is OK to say “I am a quilter” or weaver or
knitter or whatever. But what if we said
“I am a Fiber Artist”? That is what got
me into the Fiber Artists group here in my city. A Quilt guild member came up to me and told me
about the fiber artist group and added
at the end, “And what you do is art”. Well,
OK, sign me up. No one had ever called
what I do – in this particular case with punchneedle embroidery – as art. Since then I have described myself as a fiber
artist.
What if we displayed more of our work on the walls of our
homes? You have woven or knitted a shawl
to wear. Great! But how would it look if instead of hanging
it in a closet when you are not wearing it, you displayed it on your living
wall?
Not only display what you do as art in your home but talk
about your needlework as art. Describe
it to others as art. And don’t let
anyone tell you “Oh you just knit” or “That is just a quilt”. No tell them that is Fiber Art.
If you have a chance to enter a show or exhibit that accepts
Fiber Art, do so. Even if your piece
isn’t accepted in the case of the juried show, you are entering your work as
art. And even if the jurors don’t see
it as art such as the jurors supposedly did in the recent show I entered,
somewhere down the line, what I enter or what you might enter may change
someone’s mind about what art is.
What you do is art whether it is displayed on a wall in a
gallery or on the shoulders of your back.
Functional or not, it is beautiful and it is art.
©2019 Cheryl Fillion
