American Craft: refers to the products of artistic production or creation that require a high degree of tacit knowledge, are highly technical, require specialized equipment and/or facilities to produce, involve manual labor or a “blue collar” work ethic, are accessible to the general public and are constructed from materials with histories that exceed the boundaries of western art history, such as ceramics, glass, textiles, metal and wood.

These products are produced within a specific community of practice and while they differ from the products produced within the communities of art and design, the boundaries of such often overlap resulting in hybrid objects.

Additionally, as the interpretation and validation of art is frequently a matter of context, an audience may perceive crafted objects as art objects when these objects are viewed within an art context, such as in a museum or in a position of prominence in one’s home.

This definition was originally posted here on 10/18/04. The original posting can be found at: http://www.redefiningcraft.com/index.php?p=48.

This definition was amended January 28th, 2007 to include the following:

DIY Craft: refers to a form of domestic creativity that emerges from a DIY ethos that seeks to confront mass market consumerism and the homogenization of culture as a result of the aggressive expansion of big box retailers. This creative handiwork is often nostalgically ironic, concerned with style, irony and occasionally contains a touch of kitsch; it often contains wit and humor and it is about being in the know; but also, without question, it is about choice. This work does not seek validation within traditional art methodology but rather it is motivated by a desire for creative and economic freedom.

These products of the human hand are produced through predominantly social activities that are related to community activism and third-wave feminism with a lineage that can be traced back to the 1980’s and the punk movement, zine activity and into the early 1990’s with the Riot Grrrl movement. In its essence, craft demonstrates a “because we can, damn it” form of domestic creativity that often makes the second-wave feminists cringe.

Because they have a choice to make what ever they want, many Gen-X and Generation-Y women (and men) are choosing to create using traditional domestic processes such as knitting, quilting, weaving, sewing and decoupage.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Authored by: Dennis Stevens, New York, NY