At the Artmarket

This morning I went to Holmfirth, to the Indoor Market, to visit the Art Market where local artists display and sell their work.

I missed the last one as I was in Florida (ooh yes, notice how I just snuck that in). I wanted to see my friend Katrin's stall (see her online shop here) and also to see what everyone else was showing.

I love Katrin's corsages, which can be worn as brooches or hair clips. The one I bought was pale blue and dark purple which isn't a combination I'd have thought of but the colours go beautifully together - - and pale blue goes with most things that I wear. Here's a whole trayful of them:

I don't generally wear jewellery at all and I'm not sure why not - I love it sometimes on other people but I don't think it's "me". In my youth - (oh, I've got to THAT age, have I, when I start sentences with "In my youth") - I wore a lot of badges, usually with some kind of slogan on them, usually with a point to them but hopefully funny too.

But now I just don't tend to wear any jewellery. Not "proper" jewellery - I'd rather spend the money on something else - and not the strings-of-beads type either - they both feel wrong on me.

But these corsages can be either dressed up or - in my case - dressed down and that's one reason why I like them - and no two are the same.

There were lots of different stalls:

Although the actual artists may be different, you do tend to get the same "spread" of exhibitors at these kind of events - - a photographer - - watercolours - - clothes - - knitted things - - and I always find myself wondering the same thing - - is this Art or Craft?

You always get someone who has a duff idea and flogs it to death, and they are usually the person who is strongest in the defence of their works as Art. Something like making models of the Eiffel Tower out of empty crisp packets. They think that the world needs this, and indeed has been craving it, possibly for hundreds of years. Their crisp-packet Eiffel Towers are a metaphor for something or other - - what? Man's ability to rise high above the rubbish and reach for the stars - - well, that's the kind of guff I'd write if I were Crisp Packet Craftswoman.

The trouble is, Art is held to be worthwhile: Craft, on the other hand, is held to be something that well-off ladies do in their spare time, and therefore doesn't have much credibility. Its creativity is judged to be somewhere on a par with painting-by-numbers - something I never liked. So lots of Craft people insist that their work is Art. Similarly, there are plenty of superbly skilled craftspeople who wouldn't dream of classifying what they do as art - the wonderful wooden furniture that my mum's cousin Frank used to make, for example.

I think that Craft should get a better press, and the skilled end of Craft should be as well-respected as Art. And, further, I think that Art should involve skill too, as well as ideas.

And I think that the type of Art or Craft that involves neither skill nor ideas should be reclassified as "pretentious crap". There we go. Sorted.