the useful object

On Friday I planned a project with my Kindergarten students that was a bit of a stretch with regard to their interests. They had other ideas in mind.

I believe that one of the problems in the art world, and among artists is the idea that the arts are to be used only as adornment of walls, or pedestals or of bodies, and not to be useful in a more pedestrian fashion. In making that decision about art, craft is assigned a lower position in a hierarchy of values, uselessness is celebrated, and the range of beautiful objects that inhabit our lives is diminished. Artists, choosing to only make "art" miss the opportunity that arises from making the whole universe of myriad things that inhabit human life. Need a spatula? Would you rather have a plastic one from Dollar General, or one you've beautifully crafted yourself? For most of us, that would be a stretch, but headed perhaps, in the right direction.

In grade school, art is made to be stuck on refrigerators with magnets. In high school, projects are rarely kept. In shop classes where useful things were once made (most of those classes are no more) things were made with little attention to their originality or artistic merit.

The project I planned for my Kindergarten students to make was inspired by my interest in Educational Sloyd. In Sloyd, objects were made for use in the home and to be of use by those who enabled and encouraged the children to be in school. So in my Kindergarten woodworking class on Friday we made earring holders. If the mother doesn't need one, a sister or grandmother might. And so the useful object, beautifully crafted reigns supreme. Who say's it's not art? And I was relieved that the students enjoyed their work.

Yesterday in the mail, I received copies of a new book in which my research and writings about Sloyd play an important part. Suzanne Spencer-Wood, had contacted me a couple years back with regard to the role that gender differentiation played in Educational Sloyd. Her initial assumption was that shop classes were segregated along grip gender lines, and while it is absolutely true that boys were assigned to woodworking classes and girls to textile arts, following the divide that had long been established, I pointed out the important role that Educational Sloyd played in beginning to erase the barriers that women faced in education. I believe her chapter on Sloyd in this book was enriched by my insistence that Educational Sloyd was on the cutting edge of removing barriers, not of keeping them in place.

At Otto Salomon's Sloyd training school in Sweden, a simple review of photographic evidence shows the large number of women engaged in teaching Educational Sloyd. I hope others will read her book to gain greater insight into that portion of the history of manual arts training. The title is Crafting in the World, Materiality in the Making, Claire Burke and Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood, editors.

Make, fix, grow and create.