Making Things From Discards – Vintage Craft Book Inspires Hi-Tech Art – Part 1
To continue from my previous post, I’ve been working on artwork that explores the relationships between craft and art as viewed through modern technological tools, specifically 3D-scanning and -Printing, and what that means in terms of gender roles and identity. I’m choosing vintage craft books and executing the “creative” projects they contain in step by step instructions, but substituting computers and digital production methods for scissors and glue. My first project comes from the book, Making Things From Discards by Hazel Pearson Williams, first published in the mid-1960s. The book was targeted toward “housewives,” and indeed the introduction page is rife with outdated attitudes toward labor and gender roles, placing an excess of leisure time as a primary obstacle to be overcome through craftwork. This got me thinking about what type of craft is socially acceptable for each gender to assume as their leisure work, both then and now. How have these attitudes changed, or have they? In the mid- to late-20th century, women, as this book illustrates, can be seen to acceptably occupy themselves with what to me seems like “soft” craft: sewing, knitting, scrapbooking, floral arranging, etc. While men are confined to “hard” craft: woodworking, metalsmithing, automotive repair, etc. Women decorate; men build. These social attitudes are built upon the notion that women are somehow less than men, inherently. For a man to perform a woman’s craft or work is seen as being “unmanly,” and confers a lesser status upon that man (again according to prevailing social mores). … Continue reading