arts and crafts

I have heard the story of Big Red.  But I am wondering why you were registering for the draft after you had already been in the army, unless I have The Life of Beagles mixed up and you went to Alaska before you joined the army, but I think I am a better Beagles scholar than that.  But still you had to register at eighteen, so wouldn't you have been in high school then?

The words art and craft overlap into each other.  Sometimes they will talk about a job that is very difficult as an art.  Like they might say heart bypasses are a job, but brain surgery is an art.  I think they are saying that brain surgery is more difficult, but beyond that you have to make some guesses, it is all so complicated that sometimes you are going only on a hunch.

I don't know anything about either of course, but from the way they do bypasses anymore, like oil changes, I imagine it is pretty clear cut.  There are certain procedures that if you follow them you are almost certain to come up with a good outcome, while with the brain who knows what is going where and there is a point where you are beyond the written procedures and just hunching.

Like my last painting, that blue stained glass window on the right, it seemed like it needed more punch, but it's not like there is a book somewhere where I could have looked up how to put in more punch.  I just kind of put my chin in my hand and reached back into my subconscious, and the idea popped up to alternate the columns with different shades of blue. 

Like I said it was my subconscious, so I don't really know where it came from, and I certainly couldn't write out a procedure for it.  By subconscious I don't mean anything mystical, just that part of the brain that is, well who knows, doing something the conscious brain doesn't know anything about.  I imagine it's the same with the brain surgeon, except instead of reaching for something that would look good, he is reaching back through all his experience for what would most likely work.

So I am going to say that the craftsman is the guy who knows the procedures, is adept at following the procedures, and devotes himself totally to the job.  The artist may or may not follow procedures, but there is always some point where he has to reach into his subconscious and hope he can pull out a plum.  He may or may not be a good artist, and indeed the critics will disagree on whether or not he is, but everybody who looks at the craftsman's birdhouse will be able to tell that he has done a good job.

Of course it is more complicated than that.  I'm sure the craftsman reaches points that are beyond procedures and he has to reach into his subconscious and hope that he pulls out a plum, and sometimes the artist is doing something that is strictly routine.

You are right that generally the artist is insulted by being called a craftsman.  There is this idea among artists that somehow they are, or should be, in touch with some mysterious knowledge and their job is to impart that knowledge, and pretty pictures are irrelevant.  Myself I don't go for that.  I don't think that there is any mysterious knowledge, and I think a pretty picture is just fine, but maybe it has to have something more, most likely some odd little thing to make it interesting.

And sometimes an artist, particularly one that has had a lot of schooling, will sneer at one who hasn't, because how can you properly be an artist if you haven't learned all the skills and applied them well?

I think about this a lot.  I usually think of it more in terms of architect than artist (because artist has so many different meanings).  The architect tells the craftsman to go paint those stripes over there, say the green horizontal ones on the bar, but then the craftsman has to decide which shades of green and how thick and how much does one stripe blend in with another, so there he becomes an artist, excuse me architect.

And writing is also a craft.  You know I spend an hour of my life five days a week writing this, and I know nobody else is reading this besides Beagles, who half the time will think that it's a bunch of bullshit, so why am I doing this?

Well I just enjoy it.  I like the way my unformed thoughts go into words, I like choosing the words like shiny pebbles and arranging them just so, I get a kick when I think I have turned a nice phrase (like that shiny pebbles thing.  Should I have said, pretty pebbles?  Ah no, shiny is more to the point, and it won't be confused with the pretty pictures discussed earlier).

Clearly I am cruising. 

Much more to be said on the subject, and we have a weekend to think it over.