Excerpt from "Conflicting Values of Contemporary Craft" - a paper I wrote.

Another perspective interest in the value of contemporary craft, can be defined by it’s material qualities of ambiguity. For instance, clay is an amorphous craft material. It possess nearly unlimited exploration in form with constant intrigue. The craft material can never truly answer or solve a problem. With every contemplative and explorative act of what clay is and what it can do, the potential in making the new thing only increases with exponential curiosity. This excitement leads to the compulsive potter or the obsessive weaver. A quality specific to craft, material ambiguity incites learning for the material’s sake, not for a means of an end product, but more to discover endless possibilities in making. A never-ending process which is both physically and psychologically engaging for the crafts maker is developed. Considering the increasingly growing virtual environment, this constant learning experience of craft material could explain our society’s current re-interest in the craft movement.
An argument could be made that our interest in creating the craft object is not a physically aware one, suggesting the need to create meaningful forms as symbols for a humanly responsible virtual world. Rather, the current phenomenon to make with craft materials for the sake of learning is a sociological sub-conscience desire to recognize the immaterial future by embracing the ambiguity of not having a direct answer. By re-examining craft, what we are doing now is integrating the psychology of making. Accepting the varied possible manipulations of craft materials, we are acknowledging the unlimited successes and failures of the material, but never accepting any of these possibilities as standard or solved in order to adapt to the virtual environment we are simultaneously creating today. The current revival of interest in the craft movement may seem a counter-revolutionary act, but is actually a psychologically conditioning process which has been ingrained subconsciously as a need to comprehend a future committed to endless possibility of form as well as context.