Vol. 11 No. 2
Fall / Winter 2016
What should we call it – that interface, with which we are all so familiar, between our internal personal creative us and the practical, grocery-shopping, bill-paying person who looks out? ‘Economics’? ‘Finance’? ‘Money’? ‘Capitalism’? What a complicated and workaday subject that sneaks into the very heart of all our decisions.
In discussion for this issue of Studio we didn’t even know how to precisely describe this as a theme, far less give it a clear and meaningful name. Craft and Money? Design and Econo mics? Making and the Market? All the words surrounding the subject are so laden with inferred meaning and heavily woven with emotion and trepidation.
We wanted to discuss not just how craft and design operate as a means of income, but what happens to the creative process as it encounters the socio-political economic system within which we live and work. None of it can be extrapolated to discuss isolated topics without other issues and thoughts seeping in. Patronage and the commission process, as two separate articles display, are deeply connected to marketing and public support, as two other articles show. What we wanted was to explore not only how creativity makes it in this world, but the sorts of broader issues that duck in and out of our minds as we make and make it. Three other articles have nothing to do with money at all – but they’re still about our world; so do they escape the paradoxes of the interface between what we want to do and what we can do? When we look out, for ourselves or onto the world, what do we see? Craft and design have some internal solutions that make capital sense of our surrounding world.
REGULARS:
Editors’ Note
Comment
Slice
Congratulations and announcements
Under the Radar
Spotting lesser known talent
Portfolio
Eight makers discuss their economics of making
Did you Know?
Michael Prokopow considers contemporary craft retail
Review: Le Labo at L.A.Pai
Lindsay Macdonald reviews an important jewellery exhibition
Review: Sloppy Craft and Amateur Craft
Melanie Girdwood reviews 2 new books
Postcards
From Western Central Manitoba
FRESH:
Michael Hosaluk
Celebrating the 2016 recipient of the Robert Jekyll Award.
The Paradox of Patronage
Sarah Swan looks into the age-old question of patronage – who can we get to pay and what does support really look like?
Use the Rules like a Maker
Is marketing a dirty word? Stacey Cornelius shows that it’s not only okay to promote, we’re already creatively doing it.
Craft in the Quebec Context
Mylène Blanchet explores the state structures that make Quebec a unique environment for craft development.
From Custom Work to Commissioned Art
Public art commissions do pose challenges to craft but the rewards are available. Ross Bradley considers the Alberta landscape.
Hardcore Craft
Gloria Hickey introduces us to contemporary tattoo culture, revealing another look to craft.
Digital Museology
Marie O’Mahony encounters and explores the interface between digital and analogue museum experiences.
Craft and Design
Kathy Kranias presents the history of two important architectural stained glass makers in Canada after the Second World War.
