023 the art - craft divide

023 the art - craft divide, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

There is always more way than one of achieving anything, and part of what I want to do is to show the very different ways that people believe we can or should live our lives. The reality is that, as a human, you have choices, you decide which is the most appropriate way of doing the things that you want to do.

The problem is that a large proportion of the kind of people who get to make the decisions and apply social pressure are the craft-type people, and so we have education and work environments that are alien to the basic precepts of another large chunk of the population.

I have seen people in different Flikr groups endlessly going on about how important craft is, rejecting or restricting therefore their own ability to create art - and thereby conditioning other people to fail as well. You haven't got the right camera? You are not a Photoshop expert? You want to take pictures of yourself, your family or your pets?

The list is endless, but I am fighting back, taking the battle to where it needs to go - right in the face of the craft controllers.

After all, the world really is a beautiful place, and our lives are limited. Let's find ways we can explore it.

Anyway, when i posted this on flikr I had quite a few insulting posts from someone who seemed to see that I had demonstrated what he was doing as being craft, and not art. When I checked out his photostream the images were well produced but lacking in anything that could be said to be original. He even deleted the comment I left on one of his images - so not only could he not deal with my concept, he could not deal with a slightly negative comment on his images. Such is life.