YOUNG CRAFTSMEN LIKEJOSH FAUGHT ARE AT THEFOREFRONT OF THE SLOPPYCRAFT MOVEMENT. GLENNADAMSON DISCOVERS WHYTHE HAPHAZARD HASBECOME SO HIP

"WHEN

CRAFTGETSSLORPT'S A SCENE THAT REPEAT itself over and over

again in art schools these days. The eminent pro-fessor of a craft-based department, visiting a stu-dent's studio, inspects the work in progress. What

she es is expressive. It's got personality. It is workthas dearly going somewhere. There's only oneproblem. It's really badly made.

That is exactly what happened a few years ago atte School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The pro-fssor was the textile-based artist Anne Wilson(recently featured in the Victoria and AlbertMuseum show Out of the Ordinary). The studentwas Josh Faught. But the conversation didrit go inthe expected direction. Wilson was intrigued, notappalled, by what she termed her student's 'sloppycraft'. As she says of her department's pedagogicalapproach, 'Technical skills are presented and taughtquite rigorously, but not with an emphasis on fine-turing high skill as the goal. The concept is thegoal.' To her, Faught's devil-may-care approachseemed perfectly acceptable. It was well matched tothe content of his work, which explores the dynam-ics of individual and family dysfunction through acombination of personal and archetypal imagery.

Faught, in turn, embraced the label - or at leastthe idea that 'calculated sloppiness' was a fairdescription of what he was up to. It aligns him, firstof all, with a line of artistic tbinking running backto the first Feminist artists, such as MiriamSchapiro, Joyce Kozloff, and Judy Chicago, whooften employed homely crafts with which they hadno particular expertise. The 9os fascination withlow or 'abject' forms, in the hands of such artists asMike Kelley and Sue Williams, is another point ofreference for him, as are the fibre artists of the 70s- Magdalena Abakanowicz, Sheila Hicks, WalterNottingham, and their peers - somewhat fashion-able in their day, then deeply unfashionable as their-work came to seem emblematic of a hairier, hip-pier, and more hedonistic time. The worm hasturned again though, at least in Faught's eyes. In

RIGHT 'Nobody Knows

I'm a Lesbian' (detail),

Josh Faught, hand-woven

Jacquard cloth, gold lam6,

black vinyl, plaster, papier

mAch6, gold sequins,

chicken wire, screen-

printed wallpaper, acrylic

yarn, dye, paint, batiked

cloth, drawing paper,

Indian ink, beeswax

and mirror, 2006

36 CRAFTS 211 I I . I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I 1

I

early fibre art, he sees a 'sense of restlessness, oreven a sense of downright domestic hysteria atplay.' His 2oo6 installation Nobody Knows I'm ALesbian, with its haywire pileup of textile techniquesand confessional imagery, returns to all three ofthese historical points of reference - Feminism,fibre art, and abjection. In doing so, it suggests justhow unprocessed those moments are in the historyof art-through-craft.

A cynically-minded person, however, could viewFaught's work as a transparent bid for success inthe contemporary art world, which has long made apoint of embracing my-kid-could-do-that aesthetics.In the UK, Tracey Eminds hilariously bad embroi-deries and Sarah Lucas's casually thrown-togethersculptures are notorious, but the trend is muchbroader than the (once) Young British Artists. Thelist of other prodigious talents from around theworld who craft at least a little bit sloppily includesGhada Amer, Rachel Harrison, Tim Hawkinson,Christian Holstad, Shinique Smith, and FranzWest. The New Museum in New York has justopened its new building with Unmonumental: TheObject in the 21st Century, an exhibition of mostlysloppy sculpture that is billed as 'conversational,provisional, [and] un-heroic'. And when the artworld turns its gaze on traditional craft materials,

as is the case with Rebecca Warren's (Turner Prize-nominated) or Grayson Perry's (Turner Prize-win-ning) ceramics, the sense is that it's not only OKbut necessary for a contemporary artist to be ama-teurish. The lack of evident skill somehow impliesthe presence of concept. The same goes whenavant-garde designers approach craft. This is a par-ticularly noticeable development in the Nether-lands, where the Droog collective pioneered apeculiar slick-sloppy aesthetic. Latter-day exponentsinclude the day chairs of Maarten Baas, the wittyproduct designs of Chantal van Heeswijk, and thenarrative furniture of Atelier Van Lieshout.

So why has the unkempt become so very stylish?Perhaps it's a matter of production values. If onewants to make sense of the bewildering visualcacophony of a major contemporary art fair (likeFrieze or Art Basel), it's sometimes helpful toignore how things look, and what they are suppos-edly about, and instead focus on how they aremade. We are in an art boom, and faced with spec-tacular installations like those in Tate Moderms Tur-bine Hall, anything seems possible. But makingthings, it turns out, is still quite difficult. Indeed,the one thing that seems to bind the majority ofcontemporary art together is the lack of skillrequired to create it. What we have now, mostly, are

found objects, outsourced fabrication, bad painting,big photos printed on expensive equipment, 'rela-tional' situations requiring only rudimentary props,and of course, outsized sloppy sculpture. Seen inthis context, perhaps what we're looking at in theproliferation of the sloppy isrft about concept at all.Maybe it's a response to the economics of art-mak-ing. For the lucky few with big-name galleries andpatrons, fine craftsmanship and multimedia pro-duction are easily bought off the peg; but for thosewithout financial backing, size and guts will suffice.

Like any contemporary artist, Josh Faught mustnegotiate these conditions of production. And yethis particular brand of sloppy seems, as Wilsonintuited, to be going somewhere special. Faught'swork puts a new spin on the always-interestingdilemma of why we value craft in the first place.There are as many answers to this question as thereare ways of making, but one dichotomy seemsespecially crucial. On the one hand, skill com-mands respect. We value the integrity of the well-made object, the time and care it demands.Therefore, what we most want out of our craft issomething like perfection. On the other hand,though, we value craft's irregularity - its human,indeed humane, character. We want craft to standin opposition to the slick and soulless products of

LEFT 'Nobody Knows

I'm a Lesbian' (installation

view), Josh Faught,

for materials see

previous page, 2006

LEFT BELOW

'Practice Makes Practice'

(chandelier), Christian

Holstad, chain, paint,

2(x)ist underwear,

millinery, flowers, horse-

hair tubing, pencils,

human hair, nylon mesh,

xerox transfers, cans,flame, lights, electrical

wire, felted wool, close

pins, 2005-06

OPPOSITE PAGE

'Clutch Snake #41

Christian Holstad, vintage

glove, vintage snakeskin

clutch, vintage dress,

antique obi, vintage

millinery netting, vintage

shoes and fiber

fill, 1.07 m x 86 cm, 2007

Making things is quitedifficult. The thing thatseems to bind the bulkof contemporary arttogether is the lack ofskill needed to create it

38 CRAFTS 211 1 1 1 1 1

44

systematised industrial production. In this frame ofmind, we might care less for an immaculate objectlike a Fabergb egg than someone's first pinchpot, ora knitted jumper made for a grandchild.

Faught seems to come down on the latter sideof this argument, hard. But it's not so simple. Likethe artists that inspire him, he indicates a way outof the conundrum, a refusal of the false choicebetween the perfect and the affective. There aregreat differences between Sheila Hicks, MiriamSchapiro, and Mike Kelley, but all are similar inone key respect. They each separate themselvesfrom the amateur even as they quote it. This is notonly a matter of form - content does count here -but form is a big part of it. The swagger of Hicks'scascading braids, the historical layering ofSchapiro's 'femmage,' the disturbing unpre-dictability of Kelley's collaged stuffed animals, allfind correspondence in Faught's installations andsculpture, which are (formally speaking) anythingbut inept. This is, perhaps, the dirty secret ofsloppy craft: there may be nothing so difficult topull off convincingly.

I asked Wendy Maruyama, the great Americanfurniture-maker, for her opinion about sloppy craft.She responded, 'I completely understand its usage.Sometimes it's done well, sometimes it's done

poorly and sometimes it pisses me off that somepeople do it poorly so well and get away with it!'Joshua David Riegel, a curator and critic in Brook-lyn, agrees. In work like Faught's, he says, 'there isa purposeful defiance of a perceived easy construc-tion (belying our desire to equate "sloppiness" withcelerity) and a consequent irreverence for easy con-sumption (in that expectations are turned on theirhead if not shattered altogether).'

In the post-disciplinary art environment inwhich students are trained today, a long-terminvestment in dedicated skills is less and less com-mon. As Tanya Harrod noted recently, a line wascrossed when instructors began teaching skills onan 'as and when' basis. Students learned how to dosomething - embroider a pillowcase, throw a pot,carve wood - only when they thought they neededto. Indeed, they might only do it once. No form ofpedagogy could seem more appropriate to a culturethat seems afflicted with attention deficit disorder,and at the same time obsessed with informalknowledge. Right now the quintessential art formsmay no longer be physical objects at all but rathermusic video mashups and hypertext-rich blogs.

The DIY movement, currently at the height offashion, is an obvious expression of this open-source culture, and the crafters' emphasis on com-

munity and gratification often results in a casualattitude to technique. This permissiveness hasdeeply penetrated art-school culture, fascinatinglyblurring the line between hobbyism and profes-sional endeavor. But as Sabrina Gschwandtner,author of the blazingly fresh book KnitKnit: Profilesand Projects from Knitting's New Wave, points out,there is more than one side to DIY. Some indiecrafters work hard to perfect or at least improvetheir craftsmanship, precisely as a way of bringingthe disparate strands of contemporary experienceinto focus. Knitting and other homespun craftactivities are restless phenomena, susceptible to ahuge range of technical, formal, conceptual, andpolitical frameworks. 'We have to keep interrogat-ing the boundaries of contemporary craft,' saysGschwandtner, 'so it doesn't remain at the level of"sloppy stitches".' I suspect that Josh Faught, insome respects the quintessential product of a post-disciplinary craft education, couldrft agree more.

'Unmonumental: The Object in the 21St Century' is theNew Museum, New York, until 23 March 2008.For details of show, and stockists, see Crafts Guide.'KnitKnit: Profiles and Projects from Knitting's NewWave', by Sabrina Gschwandtner, is published byStewart, Tabori aK Chang Inc, £15.95.

This permissivenesshas deeply penetratedart-school culture,blurring the linebetween hobbyism andprofessional endeavor

LEFT 'Clay Furniture'

group, Maarten Baas,

steel, hand-modelled

synthetic clay, 2006

OPPOSITE PAGE

'Their First BundIle,

Shinique Smith, fabric,

clothing, ribbon,

457 cm diam, 2004

40 CRAFTS 211

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: When Craft Gets SloppySOURCE: Crafts no211 Mr/Ap 2008

The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and itis reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article inviolation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher:http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk