FINAR604 DPII: Arts and Crafts

How do we reconcile the often-disparaged term "arts and crafts" with the Arts and Crafts Movement, a political response to the Industrial Age that had both utopian and socialist aspirations? This course begins with German cabinetmaker Frederick Meyer's 1907 founding of CCA as the School of the California Guild of Arts and Crafts. In conceptualizing his dream of "a practical art school," Meyer wanted to integrate theory and practice as well as approaches to art, craft, and design, an ideal that is reflected in the school's official seal. From its political underpinnings in nineteenth-century Europe to its fruition in the Bay Area and its relation to current forms of Craftivism, we will mine the problematic yet potentially useful aspects of the Arts and Crafts Movement for our own purposes. This movement itself hearkened back to the historical model of the medieval guilds, a system that has evolved into both trade unions and corporations. With this paradox in mind, this course will utilize the classroom as a cross-campus "workshop" for exchange, dialogue, collaboration, and interdisciplinarity, understanding art as an alternative economy, a form of currency that reflects our ideals. How do we generate discourse and create dialogue around our work? How do we engage with viewers, attract audiences, or build community? How do we situate notions of making and direct engagement within the constraints and possibilities of the Information Age, the so-called "post-medium condition," or the post-studio era? How do we navigate the international art world and position our work within the vast field of contemporary art? The Arts and Crafts model offers intriguing answers to these questions, and in the dialogues and practices of this course, we will use it to identify and develop the practical and theoretical tools and skills we need not only to survive in the twenty-first century but to shape culture and to creatively confront the world around us.