Jessica Helfand has written a concise essay/article on design and emotions, and to my brain, its a compliment to my thoughts reconciling the Art/Design question. What is Art, what is Design and why define them? I’ve been trying to define them because when I feel like I’m failing at achieving my goals, it helps to step back and define them, then put what I’ve done (work) to the coals of the goals and see what comes out.

In this article, Helfand gives a pretty simple definition of design, that its…”an external representation of something else, joining the manufactured thing to the world of the living”. I’ve read recently that art is a noun to the critic and a verb to the artist. So if I’m constantly trying to define things and categorize and make lists and columns, is this helpful? Am I a critic, or an artist. Or a crafter, designer or poser. I’ve been upset at myself in the past for treating them all as nouns. I don’t get any work done. When I’m defining everything before I do anything, I end up stopping myself from starting. I think its good to be cautious and educated, but it can be stunting if I don’t know where I’m headed.

So far it sounds simple enough. Design is “joining the manufactured thing to the world of the living”, and Art can be joining the spiritual/internal/personal? thing (idea) to the world of the living. Alright: objective/subjective. I move on.

Philly painfully brought back the same problematic formula: Craft/Art. Somehow craft sticks in my craw more than design when it comes to my perceptions of the great “pyramid of power” (in terms of cultural relevance and influence). Art is at the top, design below that, and craft below design. But wait! Craft has neg. connotations but it can be simply defined and empowered too. Craft is something that can be perfected, and that perfection can be repeated. There’s nothing wrong with perfection. To aspire to make “perfect” art is what the artist does, but since art is subjective, only the artist can decide if its “perfect”, or the best they could possibly do. Probably not, because you can always improve on what you did last. So keep making stuff til you get it perfect (you die). But someone that perfects the building of a chair and can repeat can have mucho peace and contentment. Would I? Would You?

Craft too, is simply the use of the tools and medium the artists uses (so, lower case craft). The use of these things can be perfected, or mastered. Does getting a Masters degree make you a master or does working with your tools over and over and over. Once you feel like you’ve mastered your tools and medium (you’re a crafter) you can move on (up on the pyramid) to a designer or artist. You can get a client to tell you what to represent externally to the world or you can listen to the spirit in your soul and represent that. You can help create a new and better world or, you can keep promoting someone else’s agenda. That sounds negative but I don’t mean it like that.

The Shakers made chairs in the form of a chair at its simplest. It showed their subjective thoughts on form (simplicity void of decoration, craft as devotion) within the parameters of craft (perfect and repeatable) but in the same old 4-legged dictionary def. of “chair”. Some say a Shaker chair is art, but its a chair and you can get a “Shaker” chair from Charlie down the road (if he’s a good enough crafter con man). The repeatable doesn’t have a soul (Robot vs. Human). Arne Jacobsen makes a chair but changes the form to something we’ve only seen in nature. He doesn’t craft it, he designs it. Its for the human form. He’s a designer.

Philip Guston learned to paint (mastered his tools/medium/craft),

then stopped listening to the client (gallerists, buyers, professors) and listened to something nobody else could hear.