The Debate on Art vs. Craft Continues

In my opinion, the "useful" angle helps differentiate an art from a craft. I knit, crochet, bead, embroider, and needlepoint - in my mind, these are all crafts. There's either an end product that serves a purpose beyond decoration or a kit/pattern that was followed. Crafting can include a great deal of artistry, but if it's a useful object, it's a craft. (I even include objects I've designed from scratch in this category.) On the other hand, I love making altered books. My father's side of the family is extremely artistic; they paint, sculpt, film, and photograph. Comparing what they do to making a quilt or knitting a sweater strikes me as profoundly unfair. Calling a bead ring made from a Klutz kit "art" is silly. It may seem like an arbitrary and even fuzzy distinction, but a paint-by-number horse isn't the same thing as the Mona Lisa. Recreating isn't creating. But making the distinction is difficult. My main creative passion is writing fiction: an art AND a craft.

Now this is tricky and in this world of mixed ideas and thoughts on the subject. I am artist who paints on canvass and I am sort of a teacher who works with crafts with childrens via kits and sometimes no kits. Ok, I really don't think it is that important. I believe art, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder.