Craft & Technology

      As for the revitalization of craft processes and production I agreed with his notion of bringing the crafts into the contemporary and keeping alive the practices of the past. The basket makers that had transitioned their practices into hot air balloon basket making were able to continue their work but on a larger scale. Though there is a sense of "selling out" ones artwork that goes along with switching the function of craft pieces.
      However I have to disagree that students of these crafts are being dulled down into creating work that is not challenging or respectable within the craft community. I think that there will always be students and young artist that are willing to go against the grain and challenge both past and present methods of creating crafts works. Now more than ever artists and craftsmen are able to create on both commercial and personal creative levels that allows them to make money within practicing their craft while also staying true to the separate work that they want to create.
      For craft to survive in the future technology and craft must coincide with one another. Like members of the Autonomatic group, creating craft works with the help of technology must not diminish the integrity of the craft object, but should heighten what we considered is a craft object, and what it is becoming in the future. 

-t.m.