Thursday, September 27, 2007

Art Craft Commerce Painting Clayers Ars

First post. All definitions sucked from Wikipedia and cropped for content.

ART: Art refers to a diverse range of human activities and artifacts, and may be used to cover all or any of the arts, including music, literature and other forms. It is most often used to refer specifically to the visual arts, including mediums such as painting, sculpture, and printmaking. Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy which considers art.
Traditionally the term art was used to refer to any skill or mastery, a concept which altered during the Romantic period, when art came to be seen as "a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science".
Generally art is a (product of) human activity, made with the intention of stimulating the human senses as well as the human mind; by transmitting emotions and/or ideas. Beyond this description, there is no general agreed-upon definition of art, since defining the boundaries of "art" is subjective, but the impetus for art is often called human creativity.

Craft:A craft is a skill, especially involving practical arts. It may refer to a trade or particular art.
The term is often used as part of a longer word (and also in the plural). For example, a craft-brother is a fellow worker in a particular trade and a craft-guild is, historically, a guild of workers in the same trade.

This definition from wikipedia needs work, it is thin.

Painting: Painting, meant literally, is the practice of applying color to a surface (support) such as paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer or concrete. A painter and decorator is a tradesman responsible for the painting and decorating of buildings, and is also known as a decorator or house painter.
In England, little is known of the trade and its structures before the late 1200s, at which point guilds began to form, amongst them the Painters Company and the Stainers Company. These two guilds eventually merged with the consent of the Lord Mayor of London in 1502, forming the Painter-Stainers Company. The guild standardised the craft and acted as a protector of the trade secrets, in 1599 asking Parliament for protection, which was eventually granted in a bill of 1606, which granted the trade protection from outside competition such as plasterers.
The Act legislated for a seven year apprenticeship, and also barred plasterers from painting, unless apprenticed to a painter, with the penalty for such painting being a fine of £5. The Act also enshrined a maximum daily fee of 16 old pence for their labour.
Historically, the painter and decorator was responsible for the mixing of the paint; keeping a ready supply of pigments, oils, thinners, driers and sundries. The painter would use his experience to determine a suitable mixture dependent upon the nature of the job. This role has reduced almost to zero as modern paint manufacturing techniques and architect specifications have created a reliance on brand label products.
Larger firms operating within the trade were generally capable of performing many painting or decoration services, from signwriting, to the gilding of objects or even the finishing or re-finishing of furniture.

Clayer: What about itinerant potters? They may not own wheels let alone kilns.
Not potters? Not working? What about potters doing production for a
distribution compnay, not communal and often they don't own nothing.
What about people who find various kilns and their differences part of
their creative process. I am glad you brought up communal kilns, you
give up control. You put someone in charge of firing a part of a wood
kiln, you give up control. I don't believe in this purist stuff. I
don't buy the pure line here. It never exists.
ie.
You are not a potter until you dig your own clay.
It is not your kiln till you form your own bricks.
You better mine and grind your own spar.
Yes these are part of the creative process. Or at least could be.
But if you think a painter should mix his own paint, I will say they
should at least consider it. I pick on painters often.
You aren't an educator unless you own your own school, just a tool of
the administration.

Encaustic on pots by Rick Pope. Used mason stains as pigments, Ever
seen them? Gorgeous.

By the way I try not to call myself a potter, and I hate Ceramist, let
alone Ceramicist, sounds snooty. I use clayer.

Louis

>" You are not a working potter until you own a kiln. Period." (just quoting a purist )