This summer I've become obsessed with crafts. I've always casually enjoyed cross-stitch or needlepoint, and I keep random crafty things around like knitting needles and yarn or a kit for a Hawaiian quilted pillow. I spend years working on projects a little at a time when the impulse strikes and almost never finish things. It's therapeutic and a lovely diversion.
Then I decided I had to learn to knit. Like, for real. Make things... and not just long stretches of fabric I was calling scarves. I wanted to follow patterns and understand the structure of garments. I wanted to become a knitter.
Just before the spring semester ended, I joined a stitching group, which I've previously mentioned is full of delightfully interesting and kind women. In preparation for the first meeting, I finished a long-procrastinated needlepoint project. In a free-at-last celebratory mood once my classes were over, I took a trip to Michael's to purchase supplies for a basic scarf that I could work on, as well as piles of other things for more free-form craft projects of my own devising.
As this scarf neared its completion (I finished knitting it last night and need now only to weave in the ends and block it), I found myself more and more intrigued by knitting. I read a book all about knitting. I began surfing knitting blogs, wheedling through the thousands of free patterns online, trying to choose something for my next project, mulling over which yarn I may use.
Suddenly I realized -- this has become much more than a hobby or a throwaway activity. I'm like, way into this. It is beyond therapeutic to know that a combination of knit and purl stitches will create such fascinating, beautiful things. It is thrilling to follow a pattern precisely and end up creating something which for all practical purposes feels original because, after all, I made it.
But I know that knitting is not original, at least not the way I'm doing it now. Working on projects this way is as unoriginal as needlepointing a stamped piece of fabric - it's not a surprise when the resulting piece is just what you expected. It is satisfying and reassuring to know there is a right way of doing something, and I've done it. It feels as though I am doing something creative, working with my hands, making my unique impression on the materials - and that feeling is a nefarious one which I think infests a lot of what I do and keeps me from actuallybeing original.
Put more specifically, I haven't painted really since the semester ended. I was already lamenting then how little I was painting, and it dropped off even more without the threat of impending critiques. This has been a major dilemma for me since beginning grad school, as I find myself constantly questioning "Do I even like painting anymore??" I avoid it more now than I used to avoid washing dishes.
At first I thought it was a problem of logistics - half of my painting supplies were here in my apartment, the other crucial components in my studio, and if I really wanted to work, it'd require major schlepping one way or the other. In the major reorganization of our apartment, I've gotten all the art supplies down to my studio and even spent a while organizing them. I'm still totally uncomfortable being there, but now at least I have almost all the tools and equipment I need.
I also considered maybe I was inhibited by studying art at the same time as attempting to produce it. My Contemporary Art class in particular was brutally demoralizing, as it traced the futility and failures of one way of art-making after another, all but assuring us that painting is dead and only fools try to make anything new. It seemed every seemingly-innovative strategy was about to become blase, and ultimately there was already too much sub-par art in the world. I'm willing to accept that painting is mostly something I did for myself because I enjoyed it... but what now, now that I can't even say for certain that I enjoy it? Am I just another MFA student cluttering the program and getting in the way of the few people truly driven to create? Why does everything I make seem so unoriginal and uninspired?
I see, from knitting, that it does not take much to turn something simple into something elaborate, even within a community already indoctrinated to the tricks and study of your medium. There are always improvements, revolutionary ways of construction, refinement of method, and infinite variations on personal idiosyncratic choices which maintain liveliness in the field. Knitters can admire one another's work even if the colors are awful or the pattern is very simple but the gauge is immaculate - they have a common technical language and an understanding of the craft.
Lately I have not felt that way in painting. Too often I think we rely on gimmicks -- big sloppy brushstrokes as our knit and hard-edged fields of color as our purl. People cling more to their distinctions - figurative v. abstract, colorist v. luminist, formal v. conceptual, etc (ad nauseum) because they are what help artists create a niche for themselves in the market. Even if the paintings created are incredibly formulaic and dull (the blue scarves of the painting world), it is usually possible for artists to distinguish themselves from a group of their peers. Even if the art is just abyssmal, with the right promotion and support, someone will buy it.
I think the main problem with art is money. That there exists a market for art is its worst enemy these days, and as old-fashioned and apologistic as it may sound, I really yearn for the mythical days of the solitary artist toiling away in a small, poorly-lit studio somewhere, doing what they do because they love it. No one buys knitting, and if they do, the market for hand-knit objects is so negligible in comparison with mass-produced ones that it never really drives knitters to seek stardom and riches. Knitters may make and sell patterns or topical books - they may support themselves this way - but the market is so small and diffuse that it is still a case of knitting for knitting's sake. The audience is knitters, and all buyers and sellers understand and appreciate knitting for what it is.
I truly wish the same could be said for art. While I love the fictional veil of democracy in painting (that anyone could theoretically enjoy art, and anyone with enough money could purchase it), I am becoming increasingly dismayed with the reality presenting itself. For several decades now, major artists have been in an incestuous dialogue within the art market. "Great" works of art are no longer immediately recognizable as such - rather, they are the epic equivalents of in-jokes with gallerists and curators, wink-and-nods to critics and other artists. We discuss it openly in seminars, and the majority of my classmates truly don't mind that they are creating elitist work in an incredibly closed-off environment. If it gets them into MoMA, so much the better.
Which is to say nothing about work that is right for the wrong reasons.
So often it seems like originality does not exist anymore in painting. Maybe that is an unfair blanket statement, but I've really had my fill of works which rely purely on appropriation, mechanical reproduction, third-party fabrication, or purely conceptual pieces lately. I can't believe I'm saying it, but I genuinely miss the charms of hand-made objects - and I don't mean the sloppy exaggerations of gesture meant to indicate the hand-made - rather, the careful, considered application of paint to express one's thoughts and inner life. While I can certainly think of a small handful of artists who make good work, by and large, the field is awash with mediocre, if not awful, unoriginal drivel.
I would like to see gimmickless, visceral art. I would like to see one painting, even if it follows a pattern, that is as compelling to me right now as a hand-cabled sweater or a perfect little pair of hand-knit socks. And in the meantime, I have to figure out how to enjoy and care about painting again... which means I have to get going on the painted equivalent of a gauge swatch.
So most of you probably know that today is the 
