State of the Union presented the work of 12 artists within various craft disciplines whose work considers the ways in which craft can position itself within the current shifts between more traditional material-based practices and more interdisciplinary approaches. The exhibition focused on the post-disciplinary practices being used by emerging artists who are interested in questioning the fundamental assumptions of the definition of craft.

 

Given the historically validated hierarchy between crafts and the fine arts that has been explored exhaustively by countless theorists, a new generation of artists within several craft discipline are using their work to consider ways in which craft can maintain its identity in relationship to the fine arts. Considered through the use of material and skill, this self-reflexivity of the very position of craft and its reception by the viewer becomes the subject of the work itself. Some artists included in the exhibition explored craft processes and materials, borrowing from one or more techniques and media, thus questioning the traditional categories of craft as textiles, clay, glass, wood, and metal. Others reconsidered the traditional function or use value of craft, referencing its history as an object to be used or worn thus subverting its original purposefulness. Yet others questioned its ties to the decorative and the roots of craft aesthetic in Western history.

 

Adapting techniques and materials in multiple craft disciplines by a single artist or even within a single work encourages the viewer to think in terms of craft broadly in a way that both respects the qualities of particular disciplines and transcends their self-assigned limits. The artists Amy Beecher and Austin Heizman borrow from different methods of construction and employ multiple kinds of materials to create abstract pieces that sit outside the conventions of craft as a purposeful object. For these artists, process and open-ended skills are employed in sculptural terms, all the while referencing materials traditionally associated with craft.

 

While Beecher and Heizman represented one end of the post-disciplinary spectrum through an open and fluid approach the final form, more refined and technical methods applied to varied materials within a single object was reflected in the work of Julie York, Rachel Abrams and Tetsuya Yamada. In their pieces, traditional techniques such as casting, carving, and throwing are employed to create a reference to skill and its significance in craft, but their adoption of forms from industrial or mass-produced everyday objects.

 

Many of the artists in this exhibition also referenced the traditional forms and uses of the crafted object. This allusion to the decorative in some cases and the function in others asks the viewer to question their assumptions of the categorization of craft. For example, the works by Gord Peteran, Haley Renee Bates and Richard Bloes also take traditional forms—vessels, tableware, and furnishings, respectively—and challenge their ability to be consumed as an everyday object. They reflect upon material and form as a conceptual idea, thereby destabilizing the meaning of what is to be a vessel, a spoon or a table, etc. Crafts use as adornment for the body is also referenced in the work of Jill Baker Gower through her examination of the association of jewelry to commercialized aspects of beauty and the desire for altering the body to meet a mass marketed ideal. 

 

Like use and function, the traditional Western decorative aesthetic is part of the historical classification of craft. Adelaide Paul, Jennifer Blazina, and Jeanne Quinn also work with Victorian and early Modern decorative motifs found in chinoiserie, Victorian picture frames, and other parlor style furnishings. Deemed quaint, beautiful or merely ornamental, both artists reexamine the association of the decorative with the domestic and its consequential marginalization in art. Borrowing from the familiarity of this aesthetic, Paul, Blazina and Quinn ask in turn for the viewer to not only question their own assumptions and associations with such objects, but the its ability to classify craft as a less serious practice then other forms of art.

 

Rather than treating craft as pejorative term as defined against the fine arts, the artists in State of the Union  embrace the term craft and reject the idea of distancing themselves from the field. Simultaneously, they approach craft in a way that reaches beyond the restriction of a single medium or by referencing its historical purposefulness invites connections to the fine arts, interior design, architecture, new media, performing art, and pop culture. Whether it is sculptural and abstract thus working outside the conventions of the media chosen, or through its reference to the industrial, the purposeful, the decorative, or as a form of adornment, the artists in State of the Union reflected the ongoing debates of what constitutes craft production today.

 

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