TVQ ESSAY: Good Manners, Freezer paper, and Subterranean Wars

By Catherine Jones

In the border zones where art, craft, hobby, and industry meet there are no neutrals and few innocent bystanders. Describe any object to be made -- a quilt, a painting, a piece of clothing -- and everyone has an opinion on how the work should be done. We may try, of course, to practice good manners and mutual tolerance. We may try to look beyond our personal mode of working and say something hopeful about the multiplicity of approaches, about, for example, the cross-fertilization of art and craft. But underneath our public open-mindedness there usually lurks some private conviction about the most effective or appropriate or satisfying way to design and make the item in question.

Privately we hold some favored model or models of the right way to make a quilt. We believe in a certain balance of mental and physical labor, a certain balance of tradition and innovation, and a certain relationship between the human hand, the machine, and (maybe) the computer. And we also assign a certain relative importance to the end product and the process that produces it. But -- unless I've missed something -- few of these privately held opinions ever make it into the public discussion of quilts.

I come across lots of praise for particular quilts and lots of technical advice on how to achieve particular effects, but not much talk about the aesthetic, philosophical, or political issues that make people prefer one method of working over another. Given the energy expended on these issues in connection with other art forms -- given the manifestos, ranting, and general debate historically associated with fields like painting or even pottery or architectural ornament -- the upbeat, non-ideological tone of quilting discussion strikes me as unnatural. I always suspect that fierce arguments rage just below the surface.

Sometimes I've caught a glimpse of these arguments when people have written to me in indignation over the things I haven't said. I remember, for example, after doing one of these essays, getting a polite but angry e-mail pointing out the therapeutic value of quilting. The writer described an apparently hectic life, protested against the "competitiveness" of modern quilting, and mentioned a decision never to use the computer as a tool for quilt design. Elements in the letter linked computer use to economic privilege and to the business world, so that rejection of the computer became a kind of statement in favor of what the writer called "the simple life."

Since the message was unsigned and didn't seem intended to invite any real dialog, I didn't try to respond to the writer's feelings. Instead I wrote back in a purely rhetorical way, noting that computers function in many different milieus and that one person's making quilts for exhibition doesn't prevent another from making quilts as therapy. In other words, I sidestepped the whole argument and did my best to sound high-minded and reasonable. Yet, even as I was making my commonsense points, I felt dishonest.

Because, in fact, I believe that a conflict does exist between the artist and the hobbyist. However absurd it may sound to talk about the artist in general or the hobbyist in general (not to mention other categories like the craftsperson in general or the industrial designer in general), I think these categories do make sense and that they correspond to real differences in values and methods of working. Ignoring these differences or pretending they don't exist drives any real debate underground and results in an overly bland public discussion. The issues that divide us then vanish from view; the passion and convictions that could fuel a productive argument come out instead in occasional catty remarks.

One benefit of facing up to our differences is that all the wise and foolish talk about such differences that goes on all the time in other fields of art then becomes relevant to quiltmaking. We can learn from this talk, play with it, pick out clever quotes or insults from it, or use it for more serious soul-searching. Once it becomes fully acceptable to speak about art versus craft or commercial art versus fine art or design for production versus one-of-a-kind design or quiltmaking-as-therapy versus quiltmaking-as-art -- once we can broach these distinctions without fear that the very mention of them will be seen as divisive or elitist or rude -- once this happens in the quiltmaking milieu we will have at our disposal a wealth of writing from other areas of art to use in clarifying our own goals and beliefs.

Recently, for example, I read Elaine Hochman's new book on the famous, ill-fated, and still influential Bauhaus -- the German school of art, craft, and industrial design that came into being shortly after World War I, survived countless internal and external artistic and political struggles, and succumbed finally to a raid by the Gestapo in 1933. Hochman writes well, but her book (Bauhaus: crucible of modernism) wasn't easy for me to read. Partly because I found it painful, agonizing even, to read about the difficulties artists faced and about the self-destructive infighting among artists and among political activists during the critical years when there might still have been time to avert the Nazi debacle. And partly because the parade of personalities and organizations connected with the Bauhaus was so complex; Hochman's book is full of names, dates and acronyms. One of the reasons I continued and picked my way though all the acronyns was that hardly a paragraph in the book didn't relate in some way to the issues I've sensed lying just under the surface of our present-day talk about quilts.

For example, there's a section on the conflicting ideas of two abstract painters, Johannes Itten and Theo van Doesburg, who competed for the loyalties of the Bauhaus students. Itten -- probably best known to quiltmakers for a book about color theory (The Elements of Color) -- advocated an emotional and spiritual approach to painting and drawing. His students, Hochman says, were to be "purged . . . of what Itten considered the rational, materialistic, and technological biases of his Western culture . . . ." Van Doesburg, on the other hand, "claimed that art should reflect technology . . . . The machine, he declared, would replace handicraft." Furthermore, Hochman says, "Itten proclaimed that truth lay within; van Doesburg that it lay without, that it was universal and collaborative." Nearly eighty years have passed since Itten and van Doesburg held forth on the right way to make art, but Hochman's summary of this old argument still seems relevant to quiltmaking today.

The person who wrote to me about quiltmaking as therapy, as a way of transforming the quiltmaker's inner life, and who found the computer repugnant as a tool for this purpose, may hold a number of opinions parallel to Itten's. In fact, from that person's point of view my own approach to the quilt may look soulless and perverse -- possibly the way van Doesburg's ideas looked to followers of Itten.

(To clarify how I may have appeared I should say that I'm less interested in the quilt as a physical object than in the abstract decorative patterns characteristic of patchwork. And that my main quilt-related activity lately has been writing software to generate such patterns and painting them onto paper or canvas, with or without little touches of realism. I'm not sure I'd call this activity rational, but it's certainly technological, product-oriented, and logic-ridden. I'm not trying to heal myself or discover an inner truth or even to experience the sensual pleasure of fabric; I'm trying -- with all the technology I can grasp -- to capture certain ideas and images in a form that will reach other people.)

Communication is hard across the divide that separates me from the writer of the unsigned e-mail message. We could probably have a good argument about Itten and van Doesburg. Or about many of the other outspoken characters who populate the history of art and craft. But we can't have this argument and can't connect with each other until some cracks appear in the smooth pseudo-tolerant surface of quilting discussion. Until that happens it's all too tempting to phrase all dissent in personal terms, argue by innuendo, or take refuge (as I did) in a meaningless high-minded stance of live-and-let-live.

I think the dangers of argument by innuendo are especially great in subterranean conflict between artists and hobbyists. Because of the defensiveness and pain on both sides. And because the issues that don't get openly discussed -- issues having to do with the efficient use of time, energy, and materials, with the balancing of societal and artistic obligations, and with the boundaries and uses of so-called "outsider art" -- are inherently interesting and worth talking about.

Rather than speculate on the artist/hobbyist conflict in general, I want to run briefly through some examples of what I've encountered over the last few years in Internet-based quilting discussions. Having cast my own lot with the artists (whether or not I belong in that group by any given standard), I'll try to explain how things look from that perspective and what I mean by innuendo, defensiveness, and pain.

The first thing I've noticed in these quilting discussions is a coyness surrounding the terms "art" and "artist." Often the words appear in quotation marks or in conjunction with smiley faces. A person who didn't know the terms might guess that they referred to something naughty, ridiculous, or at least questionable. Then there's the embarrassment or pretended embarrassment about quilt designs never implemented and projects abandoned before completion. This emphasis on physical production always leaves me uneasy. The implication seems to be that physical labor confers more honor than mental labor, that mistakes are shameful and should be paid for by throwing good effort after bad, and that the quiltmaker's time counts for very little since it's virtuous to spend this time finishing up doomed projects that can't any longer sustain the quiltmaker's serious interest. Finally there's the exhausting list of socially useful work that quiltmakers claim to be doing: the regular job, the family responsibilities, the voluntary and charitable activities. Quilting discussions, in my experience, contain a lot of moral and social innuendo.

If I spend too long reading a quilting discussion I come away feeling like a fraud (for calling myself by that questionable term "artist"), like a slacker (for spending so much time designing, looking, reading, and experimenting, rather than physically making things), and like a fugitive from social responsibility (for avoiding a steady job and various other time-eating commitments). No matter that I may be living within my means, making reasonable use of my time, and trying generally to lead an honest life; artist and hobbyist values don't always coincide, and I come away from the discussion feeling diminished or at least on the defensive.

I think that if artists and hobbyists could talk more frankly, if we could acknowledge our different choices and beliefs and the range of possible positions and ways of working that lie between the two extremes, we'd have more interesting discussions. I also think that the moral and social subtext of these discussions -- all the implications about time, labor, waste, responsibility, and social connection that I, as an artist, find so menacing -- might turn into a good subject for debate, once dragged out into the light of day and removed from the realm of innuendo and the personal anecdote.

I can't compete with someone who's raising 517 children, working 618 hours a week, and turning out 352 quilts a month for a global waiting list of friends, relatives, and charitable organizations. Or even with someone who makes good-natured jokes about not living up to this ideal. But I do have reasons for reading the quilting discussion when I could instead be struggling through the fifty-odd footnotes at the end of some art-critical essay. I do value the quiltmaking tradition, I don't despise decoration, and I do want to see art and artists connect in useful ways with everyday life. If quilt-related discussion opened up a bit and became less relentlessly personal, there might be room in it for a reexamination of the whole raucous, politically tinged debate that has gone on at least since Victorian times over the concept of socially useful art and the proper role of the artist, designer, or craftsperson. (That book on the Bauhaus might be a good starting point; the school brought together all these different constituencies, and the struggles that followed were raucous indeed.)

Border zones can be dangerous places. This essay is already a day overdue, and I'm sitting here in pure dread of sending it off. I know I've spoken in outrageous generalities and failed to mention the many capable writers who argue against classifying quilts or any other artifact into categories like "art," "craft," and "hobby." But I see some value in dredging up these dangerous words, cleaning them off, and putting them into the public debate. At least if the words are out there people who find them offensive will have something definite to argue against. Argument is inevitable, I think, and more enlightening when carried out openly. Because quiltmaking isn't just about fabric and pins and freezer paper; it's also about ideas.

Catherine Jones, a regular contributor to TVQ, lives with her daughter in Berkeley, California.