The two different natures of contemporary American crafts are beautifully represented at the Fuller Craft Museum. Crafts fashioned as art-objects are exhibited in the museum members’ Biennial Exhibit. Crafts made as utilitarian-objects are displayed in the Museum’s Gift Shop.
The concept of non-utilitarian contemporary craft art is relatively new in the art world and I’m sure someone is working on a PhD thesis on the topic as I write. An example of non-utilitarian craft, Mo Kelman’s “On Thin Ice,” uses wood sticks and bamboo to create a rectangular web of great intricacy. The sticks cross each other at right angles and are fastened at one end in two mesh-grids of wire. The object is most interesting when the viewer walks around to see it from different angles. The 3D crisscrossing of sticks at right angles casts an intricate shadow that is an important part of the work. But does it have a symbolic content? No. Does it have a utilitarian purpose? No. I’d still be happy to own it.
Ken Lindgren’s “Fingers,” a wood object, also has no symbolism and no use and is solely an object of beauty. Carved either from a tree root or from a branching trunk the wood branches out in as many as 12 different “fingers.” The piece takes on its wonderful allure due to the coarse dark, outer bark which contrasts with the light, highly veined wood. The title “Fingers” seems too explicit to this reviewer, and I would prefer one that left the symbolism up to the individual considering the piece.