Thoughts On Being Sloppy and Amateur By Lacey Jane Roberts

November 5th, 2009 at 03:58pm LJR

The other day I had an intense experience during my studio slot on Thursday. A person afflitated with the museum had a very visceral negative reaction to my work and remarked to a curator that the museum had progressed beyond the kind of work that I make. She called my work “too crafty,” and it was moved so that it would not make a cameo in a video that was being filmed in the studios. At first I had a very emotional response to her reaction; for most of us who dedicate our lives to being cultural producers, our work is very personal and sometimes political, and to witness such an extreme reaction stirs something deep within us. I took some time while they filmed the video to think about her response and remembered that this is the type of reaction that is indicative that my work brings to the surface the issues that I want my work to create a dialogue about–the hierarchies of material and visual culture that mirror society at large. Notions of gender, race, sex, and class mark various techniques, mediums and contexts. The Museum of Arts and Design has witnessed this firsthand: when the person who reacted to my work was being interviewed in the studios she was very frank about the path the museum had taken to divorce themselves from stereotypes that are attached to the word “craft,” including the decision to change the name of the museum a few years ago. It was refreshing to hear someone speak so frankly about these stereotypes and how they were a burden to tackle time and time again. After the interview she very respectfully came to speak to me about my work. In our dialogue I expressed that my use of overperformed, amateur and sloppy craft was a tactic to magnify the negative stigmas that “craft” carries with it. By overperforming these stereotypes we are forced not only to face them, but to realize that they are constructed to maintain systems of power. Through reclamation, reconfiguration and re-imagination stereotypes can be transformed to unveil new possibilities. This is what I attempt to do with my work.

Anne Wilson, an artist who was featured in the MAD exhibition Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting, has coined this strategy “Sloppy Craft.” Sloppy craft also shares a kinship with queer drag performances that use “crafitness” and over-performance to deconstruct configurations of gender. Recently the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland featured Wilson and Josh Faught in a panel that explored this relatively new area, and soon the museum will stage an exhibition of Sloppy Craft. Thinking about this panel and the incident in the studio has raised a few thoughts and questions for me about my work and what it means to have it being made in the Museum of Arts of Design and the entrance of “Sloppy Craft” into the context of a museum. First, what does is mean if work that tackles hierarchies of visual and material culture is accepted into the institution? Does it risk becoming too much a part of a system that created it, and therefore less relevant? Has this already happened if there is a coined term for the strategy? It’s incredibly exciting to me that this will be an upcoming show, but I wonder how it would be handled and perceived in a place like MAD which has worked, as the person being interviewed said, to distance itself from the negative image of “craft” or “craftiness.”

One of the most incredible things about being an Artist-In-Residence at MAD is the opportunity to receive feedback from the general public. It’s great to talk to people about my work, but mostly it’s a rare gift to be able to receive steady critique from such a diverse set of perspectives. Most people are quick to engage me in a dialogue about my amateur techniques and the messy nature of my work. They know that craft takes many different forms and some of it is privileged above others. When they point this out I carefully consider the status my work may take on by being in the museum, despite the fact that the technique of using toy knitting machines and the medium of cheap and discarded yarn is low and amateur. The work has already become elevated by context and background, and this is something I consider deeply.

It will be interesting to watch the evolution of “Sloppy Craft” and how it navigates its entrance into the institution. The great thing that I remind myself of is that over-performance can always be re-queered, and it’s up to us as makers to tackle that path.

Entry Filed under: in the studio