Craft in the Expanded Field 138 – 155 Erik Scollon

is possible to conceive of actually using it.To understand this, we can invoke thework of almost any functional potter workingtoday. To consider their work within theexpanded field is to combine the functionaland the non-mimetic. If one needed to returnto art discourse, it would be possibleto apply a language of “4D formalism” toobjects of everyday use. Functional potscan produce meaning by playing on colorand shape and balance as sensed with theeyes and hands and lips, through use, overtime. In doing so, pottery, like craft, has thepotential to carve aesthetic experiencesout of everyday situations.These four points, expanding the fieldof ceramics, demonstrate how there can bemany possibilities within a single materialchoice. This field splits open the reductivedichotomy of vessel/figure usually employedin ceramic conversations, and itarticulates a more nuanced version of vesselpractices. Just as Krauss noted that notevery three-dimensional art form can befitted within the term “sculpture,” not everyceramic object should exist under the term“craft.” If we continue to call all of thesethings craft, we will always be strugglingto convey our experiences. Each of thesepoints working in different combinationsof function and mimesis contains differentviewer/object relationships.To borrow from Krauss:[This] field provides both for anexpanded but finite set of relatedpositions for a given artist to occupyand explore, and for an organizationof work that is not dictated by theconditions of a particular medium.… It is organized instead through auniverse of terms that are felt to bein opposition within a cultural situation… any single artist might occupy,successively, any one of thosepositions. 24In the context I offer here, the specificmeaning of those words undoubtedlychanges, but we can see how this textlogically describes the way that many ceramicistshave often worked. Althoughdedicated to clay, they easily shift betweenpositions within their field.How then do we relate these examplesin ceramics to other forms of material exploration?No doubt glass, textiles, jewelryand wood could be plugged into this gridin a similar fashion, using combinations offunction and mimesis as analytical tools.For example, there is sculpture carvedout of wood, as well as furniture as a separateand distinct category. An axiomaticchair might be an object that referenceschairness, but does not actually invite anaudience to sit upon it. With these pointsin mind, we can make a more meaningfuland grounded comparison betweenMiriam Schapiro’s patterned fabric assemblagesthat look like quilts and the workof the women of Gee’s Bend in Alabama,who actually made quilts. Schapiro’s workwas treated like painted canvas and destinedfor the wall, referencing a quilt thathad lost its function. The quilts from Gee’sBend might seem formally similar, but theywere intended for real beds, and only laterended up on the wall. The former could beseen as an axiomatic example, while thelatter, I would argue, could be comparedto pottery, in that both are functional andnot-mimetic. These same considerations,turning on function and mimesis, could beextended to glass and metals.If we take this field as a set of operationson cultural terms, we can identifymore specific and meaningful relationshipsbetween the diversity of objects thatare all too commonly grouped together as“the craft materials.” This expanded fieldalleviates pluralism, avoids historicism,and more fully explicates the differencesbetween sculptural forms and utilitarianobjects while undoing the material essentialismthat is usually assumed of thesepractices.A Flexible Model: Comparing Craft andSocial PracticeAnother pluralism of practice, variouslydescribed as relational form, relationalaesthetics, social practice or socialsculpture, shares an affinity with “craft”practices. The limited space of this essaycannot do justice to all the nuances ofrelational form. But, starting with theobservation that both modes of workinghave suffered from the question “Is thisart?” and that that question seems mostdifficult to avoid when utilitarian functionis very obvious in the work, we canuse the same schematic, with the sameterms, function and mimesis, as a way toexplore the similarities between craft andsocial practices. Only a few examples willbe examined here, but they will also helpto unravel some of the differences of practicesand actions that are usually lumpedtogether under one term.I’d like to begin by comparing and contrastingtwo seemingly similar projects,both dealing with food, the gallery as asite, and audience interaction. The firstis Rirkrit Tiravanija’s project Untitled (PadThai), which he performed in numerousiterations throughout the 1990s. Ratherthan presenting a collection of objects tobe viewed, he instead destabilized our expectationsof an art opening by cookingThai curry and serving it to gallery visitors.In doing so, he took the social act of cookingand the social act of eating and claimed“the social” as the form he chose to sculpt.Like Voulkos’ Rocking Pot, this work is bestunderstood under the labels not-functionand not-mimesis. Although Tiravanija wasproviding food to gallery visitors, arguablya functional service, the likelihoodof any of the art crowd actually needingthe meal was slim, and in this sense, itsfunctionality was not stable. Or, to speak of150 Sightlines ⁄ Erik Scollon 151