Sunday, December 14, 2008

Sunday night in the universe

This year the handmade world has been all over NPR.
We started hearing advertisements for Etsy.com all hours of the day on our local affiliate WBEZ - (a great side effect of this is the end of the pronunciation questioning of Etsy vs. Eatsee). We also heard plugs for the ever popular DEPARTment and this goofy Etsy knockoff called WorldofGood (don't get me started on this one). Well, tonight, while winding down the week & getting ready for the next we listened to the program "To the Best of Our Knowledge". The show was termed "reconsidering craft" and we were pleasantly surprised to hear them cover this year's Art vs. Craft! Give it a listen here.

In the first segment I'm not quite sure about the part on the craftsman; Richard Sennet seems like his views are formed by looking at people in a petri dish. He takes the idea of the craftsman and dumbs it down while at the same time intellectualizing it - in the end everything is so generalized that it becomes meaningless. I also have no idea why they reference the creation of the atom bomb - guess I'll have to read the book.
But the coverage of Art vs. Craft is really cool - they express the vastness of the handmade movement while packing in a lot of different viewpoints and its recent history. The best part is hearing commentary by the artists while they are at the show. Some of our favorites: Rar Rar Press on making art affordable and Christina Ward's views about crafting and the local economy. The clip really captures alot of the excitement that was present at the show.

Oh, and Art vs. Craft was amazing - Thank you to everyone that stopped by and we hope to be back next year!

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