Subject: Re: Too much art - not enough direction?

From: GEORGE DIXON <[email-masked]>
Date: 05 Jan 96 11:59:11 EST

Perhaps it is less an art v craft issue than the paucity of articles of how that
art or craft was realized.  The Anvil's Ring should be representative of the
finest work being done today.  That require that the finest work is photographed
and submitted.  The gallery section shows that this is happening to a degree.
The other half of the issue is, to my mind, a desire to learn how that work was
achieved.  From design considerations to tooling to process. This is a valid
desire and serving it is something the Anvil's Ring should also do. Again that
requires that someone who does the work writes, cogently, about how they did it.
That is not happening to any serious degree.

ABANA is not intended to be a pyramidal organization with the bottom supplying
support for the top.  It should be an information sharing, peer reviewing,
display and educational organization. If there is a serious complaint to be made
it is that almost no one among the intermediate or advanced artist-blacksmiths
is writing about how they achieve effects or the tools they make.  

The demographics of ABANA are roughly that something under 10% of the 4000+
members are full time metalsmiths.  (I hesitate to use the word "professional"
because of the incorrect connotations attached to it.  A hobbyist can also bring
an extremely 'professional' attitude to their shop, art or craft as well as can
a full time smith working to pay the mortgage). So what you have is a huge
number of members that want how-to information as well as inspirational pictures
and esoteric articles. (How-to should NOT be construed as only basic.  Try to
find a smith that knows all there is to know about artistic blacksmithing. The
true gulf is in the intermediate areas.)   While  ABANA has to serve both needs,
please realize there is no "ABANA" in an entity sense. The organization is only
what members put into it, no articles = no publications, no volunteers = no
Board, no Conferences, no Chapter officers or newsletter editors.

I point this out to illustrate that if you think there is too much 'art' and not
enough of what you feel there should be it is because someone sent in the 'art'
and no one sent in the other.  When someone demonstrates at a chapter function
help arrange that someone draws and writes about the steps shown.  When you do a
piece, document it and submit the how-to you went through. Lacking that, write a
letter to either editor, for publication, that askes for information about a
piece you saw in a previous issue or a process you want to learn.  The  result
may be to begin a cycle of informational sharing that so many want and need.

George Dixon