#48

On craft, in ignorance

“You’ve got to make it pay,” my Dad tells me.

Thora Birch as Enid Coleslaw in Ghost World (2001) dir. Terry Zwigoff.

As time doth drift through Winter winds, babe, the days becoming brighter as I slowly approach mine thirtieth turn around the sun, I wonder whether I’m destined to be an ‘artist’ in the ways I’d first imagined. I see school friends before me, those near and far from my orbit revealing white diamond rings, fluffy little puppies and belly bumps, plush velvet furnishings, and antique tiled fireplaces, and feel I must make a fatal choice.

I’d like a home to call mine own, angel; a long-awaited holiday to somewhere warm and new. Instead, I ascend a staircase with fragrant expanses of black mould, which kisses the studio door, and wonder what the purpose of all this work is.

As recommended by a kind princess close to my heart, I’ve been exploring short courses with the School of Traditional Arts, London; gilding and illumination, contemporary calligraphy, icon painting and ornament. I cannot afford such courses, nor the travel, nor the accommodation, nor the materials required to participate. I look to a painter whose work I’ve adored for some years, floral spoils of oil curling into mystic English shrubbery, whose mastery has only grown through daily, dedicated toil.

I wonder, in earnest, the position I might find myself in, if I too had the financial means to refine my craft through daily graft, without the necessities of a day job.

There is a genuine want to know and understand what’s to become of all of this. Where shall I be one, two, three years from now, writing another love letter to thee? Is this work to be made for making’s sake, in fervent naval gazing, for friends to touch and admire as a sentimental treasure, to sell as product or decoration, or to exhibit - as I’d always dreamed - in a white-walled gallery? Everything I’d thought I’d wanted, needed, babe, has fallen to the wayside. Within each milestone I reach, I find myself demystified by its mundanity.

“I think you’ve underestimated yourself.”

I recoil at the thought.

Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love (2002) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson.

I’ve been thinking much - brows pinned firmly together in the cold chill of the printing press - of the verifiable distinctions between contemporary art practice, and craft. I’ve come to find in the days spent combing over my portfolio, in preparation for a return to University, the loss which worms its way through to the weary heart of my work. I’m upset, reader.

Stonemasonry, a specialism I’ve explored collaboratively in recent years, is defined as a heritage craft. A ‘heritage craft’ in the sense that a master stonemason, historically male and oftentimes a father, shall pass down his knowledge and teachings to his apprentice, his son. The son inherits this knowledge and, in turn, bestows those teachings to his own child once he comes of age. I long for such a practice. Stonemasonry as I’ve touched and felt, alongside bookbinding and letterpress printing as I seek to know now, are all individually recognised as heritage crafts ‘at risk’ of extinction.

I circle back to loss, and feel a deep pang in my heart at the thought of all the knowledge my Dad held which I now, will never know. Experience, irreparably lost. I think about the insecurities of oral tradition as I stand amongst retired compositors and printers at the Winterbourne Press. I long to sit beside them, cup of tea in hand, and scrawl in a panicked hand-style all they’ve learned in a life of hard work.

“You’ve got to make it pay”, he tells me. I know Dad, and I don’t know how.

Office Space (1999) dir. Mike Judge.

As part of my current research fellowship with Birmingham Museums, whereby I’m exploring the social histories, material processes and aesthetic principles of Victorian-era Valentine’s cards, on 14th February I held a Valentine’s making workshop, using reproductions of historic materials: paper lace, chromalithograph scraps, and Dresden ornaments. What I’d come to find, dear reader, beyond belief, was that each attendee was mine own age if not younger.

As lamented in recent weeks, I know to be true that there is a collective yearning for us to love, share, live in and connect with the material world, desperately so. While I wile away the hours, morose in mine shameful loneliness, I realise that others, too, wish to divest from the Internet, and work with their hands to craft something bespoke and special.

I think, too, of the long-standing industrial and manufacturing heritage associated with my hometown of Walsall. Leather beating, embossing, and saddle making. I recall as a child visiting the Leather Museum, being gifted a small scrap of tan, embossed leather to take away with me. That museum, now, is under existential threat. Why are heritage crafts dying, and why does it matter? How can I operate through the lens of contemporary art practice, and heritage crafts within the same token? What does that look like?

I imagine all the things I wish I could have done, with the knowledge and the foresight I possess now. I strive to remind myself that it’s never too late.