Course Description

This course is meant to be a space for you to examine and deepen your relationship to the field and your own practice through readings, discussions, and presentations.  The readings are meant to expand your perspective on the field of jewelry and metalsmithing, to define its particularities and concerns in relation to the discourses of the contemporary art world.

Together we will explore a series of seminal theoretical texts, seeking ways to relate them to our own practice.  Through these texts we will encounter a series of themes and historical perspectives that are crucial to the field of jewelry, while also delving into fields and areas of inquiry, that have not commonly been related to our field, but perhaps should or could be.  Our aim is to get a historical and interdisciplinary perspective on where we are as artists/makers today, how we got here and where we could go from here. The course aims to bring up critical questions on why we make, whom we make for and the meaning of our practice beyond the studio and the jewelry and metals world.

This is a chance to practice your skills in connecting theory, reading and writing to your work and to build a vocabulary and ground of reference around your ideas, interests and intentions. It’s a chance to take part in an intense discourse around your field, which you might be asked to do many times in the future of your career.

The Wednesday meetings will adopt the form of a reading/talking circle. Your role in the group is important and the success of our conversations will be based on your participation and engagement. We will all take turns in presenting and leading the discussion and also examine what “research through practice” might mean for us, by exploring some ways of connecting theory and making. 

Oct 10, 2009

FLW- The Art and Craft of the Machine ( 1901)



F.L.W is a staunch believer in the place of the machine in the arts, he believes it will accomplish more than man has ever succeeded with his two hands.
William Morris understood the potential use of the machine but tried to limit its role to a utensil that can be controlled y man.
(John Ruskin- moralist, British art critic, early 19th cent.)
F.L.W appreciates William Morris's' attempt to keep the machine subjugated to man, but he feared the machine will take over the craft. He agrees that the machine has hurt art & artists , but it is also a democratic tool- approachable to a wide range of people.
He mentions Architecture as an example of traditional art form, and printing as a 'machine made' art form.
In every period the artist had tools, the machine is the tool of the new age.
The contribution of the machine to man eases his work, prolongs his life and therefore the most democratic.
The fact that the machine can reproduce art objects effortlessly on one hand makes art available to everybody, on the other hand it belittles art.
Simplicity- makes a point that what W.Morris strives for – simplicity in art which is also a feature of the machine.
Simplicity is not only negation of detail but a well thought program/purpose. As an Example F.LW mentions wood carving works, which he feels spoils the woood and works against its natural qualities of color, natural markings, and texture, while the machine avoids mal treating the wood.
The writer describes a city that a machine contributes to building it, and compares the city to a human body. He praises the modern city and the role of the machine making it.He praises the technology formatting possible, transformation of information from one part of the world to the other- machine dependent.
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