Craft in America: Not your momma's...wait! Yes it is!

Last night the Marimello family all gathered around with our SpaghettiO's to watch PBS's Craft in America series on the tee vee. And what a night it was since not having perused the link Grandma Marimello forwarded thoroughly, we discovered that Craft would be divided three ways: memory, landscape, community. And Community would be well past our bedtimes.

Memory and Landscape both asked interesting questions of traditional crafters and how, ah duh, memory and landscape served crafters in America. And whereas Marimello is more concerned with the of-beat and on-the-pulse crafty-types, these episodes covered traditional crafting. What we think of as Arts & Crafts. Capital A. Capital C.

But how far apart are these interests? Sure, schools allocate special time and space to arts and crafts, and give them particular importance over say learning to cross stitch the F word. But it would be remiss not to point out the HUGE ideological similarities in the ways that the off-beat crafters we usually tune into and the artists highlighted last night find new purpose and new use for crafts while still connecting with the past. The current craft resurgence could be called a re-resurgence, since after all this is not the first time people have sensed a narrowing of life experience as the world becomes overly mechanized.

We hope that Community is not on too late for us tonight. It will be interesting to see if any Stich'N Bitch crews are mentioned in between what we expect to be a discussion about craft as a community experience. Tune in and see. Check local listings here for your area. Or check here to see if the museum exhibit will be traveling through a town near you.