Let me compare painting to sewing. I enjoy both activities. I’ve sewed on production lines and to me that’s neither art or craft, only a job and not fun. Sometimes I sew clothes. I’m following someone else’s instructions but I still have to make a lot of creative decisions, which pattern would work best, which fabrics, for starters. When I paint I’m following the steps I learned in art school. A lot of sewing projects don’t work out and a lot of paintings don’t either.
Sewing can be frustrating, but the more skill you get by practicing the more creative you can get because you know what didn’t work before, just like painting.
It’s all just hand work. When I paint, is my mind in a special place? Yes, it’s in the zone. Sewing can also make you forget the world for a little while. Compare the brainwaves. Is there a big difference? When I paint do I suddenly get enlightened? It’s the thing about using your hands and eyes at the same time to make something. It’s not that painting is on some much higher level of the mind. They’re so close I can’t tell the difference.
Good teachers make a lot of difference. With painting or sewing. They start you on a certain path then you have to spend years working on your own.
If you have enough dexterity to sew you can paint but taking a class can help. It’s not something you’re born with. No one is born knowing how to cut and sew fabrics or how to use a sewing machine and painters have to practice their skills too.
I call myself an artist and in the past I called myself a seamstress. It’s not like I rose to a higher level of being.
As always, feel free to opine. I’m not going to fight and you can’t hurt my feelings. I like to hear what others think on this subject.
You have a lovely comparison here of how -creating- both traditional art and traditional crafts are similar experiences for you. I’d add that I see little difference in my experiences -admiring- both. I look at a painting or a quilt (what I sew) and I get the same thrill; it’s the same emotional journey for me. I’d even expand to to ALL creative endeavors – a good book, a clever pun, music, math – anything a human being makes can fill me with the exact same sense of wonder. It’s all amazing when you really think about it.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thanks! I used sewing as an example but music, wood working, and so many forms of art all have the same thing in common. There’s no way to draw a line between them that I can see.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Looks like there aren’t (so far…) any “art=good/craft=bad” responses. That warms my quilty little heart 😀
LikeLiked by 2 people
Sometimes people romanticize artists and think crafters are less. We’ll see. They might come forward and say why.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, I like to sew, make stuff, mend things in creative ways, repurpose unwanted stuff, do diy around my house, it’s all creativity – bringing real stuff into the physical world, creating with my hands, painting and drawing is just the same in that way! It’s something to do with the point where knowledge and ability come together to bring a satisfying result and yes, there is some kind of creative ‘zone’ to be reached in the process of all of it! Good, interesting thought, Chris! 🙂
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thanks for your thoughts, Hilda!
LikeLiked by 2 people
I view art as something to adorn the walls (or floor) and sewing as something to adorn the body. Sometimes these are intertwined. Yes, I think I’d call them both art forms.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Yes, decoration works for both. Thanks, Vivienne!
LikeLike
Thanks, Chris. I, too, have always enjoyed sewing. This summer, my granddaughter asked to learn to sew. I had fun passing along a bit of my knowledge. I think it is just another creative outlet.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’m glad your granddaughter is interested in learning to sew! Nice that you can share it with her!
LikeLiked by 1 person
There was a distinction when trainee artists had to go to school to learn the techniques and theory of art.
Now, since Marcel Duchamp who presented the urinal as art in 1913, and since the popularity of the idea that ‘mixed media’ of almost any kind, using any materials, on any subject is also art, I don’t know what is art and what is not art.
Craft, however, involves the skilled use of one or more tools to craft or shape one or more media. Very often, but not always, to a useful, functional end.
A lot of art today does not require any tool nor any particular skill. A lot of art does not require schooling or the artist to know how to paint a human figure, for example.
In my view, it would be a shame to give up the distinction between art and craft because in doing that, we give up the acknowledgement of the long practice it takes to become an expert in a craft form. An expertise which is no longer necessary to practice art.
Just a thought. Sarah
LikeLiked by 2 people
I see what you mean. Art without craft is lame. Unfortunately, that’s how it is these days. I’m hoping the tide will turn soon on that situation. Thanks for your thoughts, as always, Sarah.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Whenever i saw my mother sewing i never thought of it as an art. Until i grew up and actually realised that it’s an art. And lifeskill at same time.
Loved your blog. Following you right away !
Let’s connect over wordpress.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I wish more girls would learn to sew! It was a mandatory class for girls when I was in high school but that’s probably changed by now, and one year I convinced them to let me take shop classes which were for boys, but they did let me take wood shop and metal shop which I enjoyed but didn’t follow up on after graduating.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I see ‘Art’ as the all-encompassing umbrella term that covers literally anything that ‘stirs the soul’, traditionally including fine art, photography, music, dance, theatre and including Literature, with which it’s also so commonly twinned. These days it covers anything from Rap to a pile of stones. But I look at it as referring to the end product as such, the finished article.
Whereas the term ‘craft’ for me suggests more of the act itself, the crafting of an object, and where the process of the crafting can be a therapeutic process for the crafter, and matters not whether it actually produces and end result but can simply serve as an aid to help occupy the mind and pass the time, a pastime if you will. This does not in any way diminish the fantastically creative and beautiful things crafters actually produce.
LikeLiked by 2 people
That makes sense. Thanks for your thoughts!
LikeLiked by 1 person