extra/ordinary:
craft culture and contemporary art

The anthology Extra/ordinary: Craft culture and contemporary art (forthcoming, Duke University Press) brings together scholarship that draws upon and further develops the sense of meaning with which craft media have been imbued since the previous century, and articulates the growing role and recognition of traditionally denigrated craft media in the work of contemporary artists. 

Since the Industrial Revolution began blurring the lines between industry and handicraft, as well as the upper- and lower-classes, artists have taken great pleasure in using such developments to similarly dissolve the centuries-old barriers that once separated the avant-garde and mass culture, masterpiece and kitsch, art and craft.  In the process, artists have not only recognized the meaningful role of the ordinary in their art practices, but been drawn to media traditionally associated with handicrafts to suggest the power of these “ordinary” media and processes—such as weaving, knitting, embroidery, ceramics, glass blowing, jewelry and woodworking—to create or reflect the kinds of profound meaning traditionally associated with the “fine” and liberal arts.

While the success of renowned artists from Jun Kaneko to Grayson Perry, Miriam Schapiro to Ghada Amer has demonstrated the degree to which galleries, museums, and patrons have been willing to embrace craft media as tools for creative expression in our expansive contemporary art world, art critics and scholars have done little to study or articulate the relevance of this fact.  The anthology Extra/ordinary: Craft culture and contemporary art is an effort to fill this void.

CONTENTS:

REDEFINING CRAFT: NEW THEORY
M. Anna Fariello: Making & Naming: Studio Craft in the craft-art continuum
Dennis Stevens: Validity is in the eye of the beholder
Louise Mazanti: SUPER-OBJECTS: A theory for contemporary, conceptual craft
Paula Owen: Fabrication and Encounter: Content as verb

CRAFT SHOW: IN THE REALM OF “FINE ARTS”
Karin E. Peterson: How the Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary: The Modern eye and the quilt as art form
Elissa Auther: Wallpaper, the Decorative, and Contemporary Installation Art
Betty Bright: Handwork and Hybrids: Contemporary book arts
Jo Dahn: Elastic/Expanding: Conceptual ceramics

CRAFTIVISM
Betsy Greer: Craftivist History
Kirsty Robertson: Tangled and Warped: Craft, activism and tactile communication
Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch: Craft Hard Die Free
Janis Jefferies: Loving Attention: An outburst of craft in contemporary art

NEW FUNCTIONS, NEW FRONTIERS
Lacey Jane Roberts: Put Your Thing Down, Flip It, and Reverse It: Re-imagining Craft Identities Using Tactics of Queer Theory
Andrew Jackson: Men who Make: The optimal experience of the amateur designer/maker
Maria Elena Buszek: Crochet and the Cosmos: An interview with Margaret Wertheim of the Institute for Figuring

Inquiries concerning the project may be sent to Dr. Buszek c/o extraordinarybook@gmail.com