Material Interest

I am interested in the dynamic between interpretation and intention during the act of making with clay, a medium that inherently possess parallel states of being as it changes from soft and malleable to hard and permanent.  I find these active moments in making similar to the process of experimentation, creating a push and pull tension between the desires of play and control.  

I like swishing clay with my fingers and hands.  With little effort or refinement, the impressions of my curiosities are recorded instantly.  Due to the amorphous nature of clay, human identity is at once set and challenged during the same moment in time, urging constant reevaluations of self as it exists within fluctuation.    

My interest in making, and not things to be made, gives suggestion that its end products   can be understood as evidences or artifacts.  It is the firing process that instills the making act with meaning, holding it in place, slowing down the experience, nearly stopping time completely.  These petrified moments are possibilities in form, alluding to the meaning of material and its connections to our consciousness. 

Craft / Craftsmanship

(Having recently re-watched Sloppy Craft, a public conversation hosted by The Museum of Contemporary Craft, at PNCA, Fall 2009), I believe much confusion on the topic of craft is based on conversations which confuse the place holder of certain things with the notion of skill for intention.
The latter, Craftsmanship, in my opinion, is a sliding scale of quality based on a makers intention and/or concept; do with it as you would or need to do, for the sake of the viewer / user of that thing you are making.
Craft on the other hand, is two things.  One, a wonderfully confusing, frustrating, and convoluted catch-all of issues, topics, and objects that have double, if not unlimited, meanings as those things mean so much to us as a species. Due to which, and my second belief, Craft is the origin of all humanly constructed things, parenting Art as well as Design, because it was and continues to be the defining moment of our very existence in survival and intelligence.  Craft is simply the manipulation of natural materials for our perceived betterment, and indeed survival and intelligence are important, but furthermore, as we work with and change materials, we become attached to them on many levels, making Craft emotional.
When opening discussions about Craft, as in new perceptions of form or considering intentions in concept by challenging traditional techniques, I think it would be thoughtful to consider one's statements either in the realm of Craft or Craftsmanship.  Not doing so, as I have seen in this lecture, as well as having participated in many academically based critiques and conversations, sets any discussion of Craft on a confusing path, which becomes quickly heated and subject to ominously broad quagmires of tangental topics and passionate interjections.  As a participant in such discussions, after some time has gone by, I have always felt like I was watching a Great Dane chase its own tale until it has exhasted its self.
Such is the arena of public lectures, but discussing Craft is sticky enough already, I think that by stating distinctive guidelines between Craft and Craftsmanship could ease the tension and hopefully lead to greater insights.