Art vs Craft

One of the concerns that I have struggled with is the concept of artist vs craftsman vs crafty. For me, an artist is someone who starts with nothing and creates something (as in the fine arts, sculpture, painting, etc). A craftsman/woman/person is someone who develops a single style of creating and perfects it (as in a woodworker, metalsmith, etc.). A crafty person is someone who delves in arts and crafts making something that isn't necessarily professional or meant for to be sold.

It seems to me that well meaning people will say--"Oh, you are so crafty." They mean it as a compliment but if you consider yourself an artist or craftsman then it isn't the compliment that it is meant to be. If seems that crafty people are considered hobbyists rather than professionals.

Because I work in paper, people tend to place me in the latter category. I smile and then inform them that I am a paper artist--I make things out of paper. For the longest time, I considered myself a craftsman working in paper. Once I started bookbinding and box making, I started calling myself a paper artist. When I was awarded my first solo show in Japan, I was still humbly calling myself a craftsman until a fellow paper artist told me that I was shortchanging myself by doing so. Her argument was that anyone can make things out of paper but what I was doing was creating art.

So now, I am on the quest to bridge the gap between being crafty and being an artist by taking every day crafting supplies and using them to make art. The example above is a page from a signature that I am binding into a book. The cutouts on the side of the page are made from a craft edge punch.

To get the cutouts to align, you must first trim the foredge of the signature, separate the signatures into leaves, then punch out the foredge. The leaves must then be reassembled in the order they were trimmed or the cutouts won't align.

Once the signatures are sewn, they will be bound in a traditional hard case. I have another punch that I am experimenting with which is a Celtic knot pattern. I will cover that case in Kelly Green leather.  The pages are 4" by 5.75".