The Absolute Need for Art and Craft
Could we survive without art in any form? Could we stop doing it? Why would we want to?
I’ve been binge-watching Craft in America on PBS Passport (also available on YouTube) and as much as I’m enjoying the heck out of it, it finally hit me that a big part of my delight at finding this not-so-hidden treasure—and why I can spend so many guilt-free hours watching it—is because I’m in the presence of artists and crafters who are doing what they do for the sheer love of doing it.
The craft is the thing that moves them. If any of them became famous later on it’s not so much that they went after fame, it’s that fame came to them. They were going to create, no matter what.
There are a few famous names you’ll recognize in this series—glass artist Dale Chihuly, furniture maker George Nakashima, and Simon Rodia, the man who built Watts Towers, for example—but the majority of the others are mostly unfamiliar, at least to me. And I’m pretty sure they’re okay with that.
But what a celebration! I get to be there as these crafters talk about their creations, as they show me how they work, as they try to describe what it feels like to enter that space of their own, big or small, and zone out doing that thing they love.
I feel…privileged.
I can’t believe this program has been going on since 2007 and I’ve never seen it. Not once. And I watch a LOT of public television. How could I have missed it? Well, it doesn’t matter, because every episode is available now, including the newest one on miniatures.
Some of the segments focus on community projects, where artists and crafters can sell their goods, often making the difference between poverty and just getting along, and some take place in a garage or a barn or even out in the open, because that’s where the person is, it’s the space they have, and it’s where they want to be.
Much of what I’ve seen on Craft in America is built around community. These craftspeople— sometimes working in craft school settings like Berea or Penland or Cranbrook Academy (See ‘Community’ program below) but more often in simpler settings— feed off of each other, gaining inspiration and thriving in ways they might never have done on their own.
Many of these people are either self-taught or are a part of families or groups that have been working at their craft for generations.
In one segment someone said of them: “They’re not teachers, they’re people who do something well.”
A group of Appalachian women quilters scoff at the idea that they’re artists. They’ve learned from their mothers and their grandmothers, using cast off clothing and ordinary threads and needles. They make quilts to put on their beds. How could that be art?
The townswomen of Gees Bend, descendants of slaves, create their own brand of quilts out of what began as necessity, using the materials at hand, only to discover that outsiders find them to be modern and sophisticated and desirable.
In the episode below, on traditions, the focus is on the beginnings—showing how crafters have either adapted new ways of doing the old, or have kept to the old ways, down to the last detail.
The video below, called ‘Storytellers”, blends art and stories about our beliefs, about our history, about our wants and needs. This is where we come in. The history of human life on Earth revolves around stories. We learn about each other by the stories we tell, and storytelling can take many forms—words, music, art—all of them melding to give us a better understanding of our own humanity.
I may be the only one in America who had never seen this series until I just happened upon it one day while I was wandering around my PBS Passport page. But if you’re like me and you haven’t seen any of it—or even if you have— YouTube offers the complete programs, as well as shorter highlights from each of them. It’s an amazing way to spend some happy time.
And look—I got to write about it! I could have gone on and on, but now it’s calling to me again. I’m going to rewatch the episode on Democracy. I’m revving up for next year’s election and I need all the inspiration I can get.
As always, the comment section is open if you want to talk about any of this. Or anything at all. You know how it works. ❤️
***Added because it looks like I’m not the only one who missed this series: Have you seen it? Have you ever heard of it? Is it only us??
Ooh, this actually looks like something worth watching! My husband and I are not t.v. people, so we were not aware of this show. He and his business partner are fine furniture makers, before that boat builders, whose craft fits into the 'doing what they love' description. Though it is their vocation, I'm sure they would both be building things out of wood no matter what. I also see humility as a common thread among these folks, which adds to the beauty.
This comment, though: “They’re not teachers, they’re people who do something well.” Perhaps this is true if we define teacher too narrowly, but in the broader sense, oh my gosh, what teachers they are!
One of my favorite things is watching someone do something they love and are very good at, specifically my sons and their sports, but also anyone doing anything that is about the simple love of that activity and through that love comes skill. It makes my heart sing!
Thanks for sharing, I think I would enjoy this show too.