C and I were just in California for the 100th year celebration for CCAC, now CCA.
CCAC used to stand for California College of Arts and Crafts. A few years ago the powers that were changed the name to the very generic and bland CCA, for California College of the Arts. Several people at the celebration had buttons created by the print-maker Jack Ford, that read, "Conceptual Crap and Art." Seemed fitting.
I really miss "Craft" in the name. Craft is so dang right and cool, not only the 70's macramé and scrap booking (all that is great too!) but the notion of craft, doing a skill so well it becomes art. The question remains, can graphic design, architecture, art education be a "craft?" Of course. All of it can be art as well. Dialog about a teapot or a blown glass vase can be just as valuable, deep and riveting, as that of a sky scrapper, or logo design or painting.
Them is fighting words ... to put that in writing makes artistes defensive and craft people repulsed. Don't compare my teapot with some lousy logo... Don't compare my use of clay with your use of steel or that %!™&#*¡?* computer! All the elements are the same though! Line, contrast, content, composition, materials, intent, use, location, climax, value, color, flow, the list goes on and on, happily. Embrace it all -- and GET TO WORK!
The place (CCAC's Treadwell Hall, the ceramics building, especially) is still so inspiring to me. Someday (strike up the soaring violins and moving cellos) I'd love to work/teach there, simply be more involved. Or ideally, create that environment in my family life, it is serious and committed while also being progressive and light.
The above art that I discovered in a bathroom at CCAC is an example of that last statement. :)
Wouldn't you just love to see this artistic combo at a bathroom at BYU? Within a day it would be sanitized, treated as vandalism. What a shame.
The contrasts between BYU and CCAC were staggering to me. One school (CCAC) celebrates and encourages creativity through any outlet necessary and the other tries to teach creativity through obedience to all sorts of ideas, religion, leaders, famous dead artists' rules, to craft. How ironic that CCAC had craft in the name and now doesn't celebrate craft and BYU was supposed to be spiritually based and had no spirit.
