Art Vs Craft, Pricing & the Whathaveyou

[staceyrebecca]

Bezalel & RavageFrackle & Gordon brought up a lot of really good points in regards to pricing & art vs craft. I didn't want to completely hijack Mary Kate's thread in regards to copyrights, so I thought I'd post a new topic.

(just to be clear that we're all on the same page, http://forum.muppetcentral.com/showthread.php?t=35442&page=2 is the thread)

Awe dag nabbit, I had this big long series of questions and comments & things & now its missing. I'm a fool.

Ok I'll try to recap with fewer words.

I sell puppets cheaply in comparison. Partly due to the thought of myself as being inexperienced. At our theater the least experienced puppeteer has been doing this for more than 15 years, but on average, 30. Masters degrees in puppetry abound. I just simply don't have that training, and don't build in the traditional sense of covering a foam skeleton & have only been doing this for about 6 years. So I do feel that my work is *much* inferior (especially to a lot of the work I see here), however I'm not sure that I consider it a craft. Is it my frame of reference that allows me to charge more, or is it the product?

I use the same style of building that I sell as I do for performance puppets, however, to me, its so very simple. I don't *want* to be considered a crafter, but I'm afraid that pricing my puppets as low as I have been, I might have trapped myself into that label. Then again, I look at the construction and would feel that I'm misleading someone by saying they're professional puppets. Yes, *I* use them, but I do dirty shows for adults & teach kids in after-school puppetry programs. And yes, I make smaller puppets because I think kids *need* puppets, as an art and developmentally.

Also, they really don't take me all that long to make in the grand scheme of things. The goal to make a better puppet faster came from scripts coming to me 2 weeks before a performance date.

So any advice, consoling, scolding, etc. to make me a better puppeteer is warmly welcomed.

(And, to the more experienced builders, did you go through this in your career? is it a phase?)

-Stacey

 

[Whispers]

Oh I understand how you feel Stacey. I haven't been making puppets very long [its been on and off so yeah] however I have been drawing for a long time now. The feeling of inferiority is a common one but you have to remember. "Great artist didn't just wake up one morning and become great"

It takes time to build up your skill and for some it comes so much quicker than to others. For example, I know a girl that's around 14 and she's a heck of a better artist then I am and she's been drawing for less time. So she doesn't have much 'experience' yet her art is much better quality than mine.

I care much more over quality then quantity as do many others.

Just remember you AREN'T inferior just because you don't have a Masters in Puppetry. Just practice practice practice and you'll improve with time. Compare the first puppet you made to your latest and you can be surprised how even though you don't FEEL you improved, you have!

Sorry if I rambled a bit But hopefully I've helped!

 

[staceyrebecca]

Thanks whispers. I definitely feel as though I've improved, I just feel like I'm not improving fast enough, ya know?

Part of the quantity thing for me is that I figure something new out each time I make one and honestly just can't make enough. I'm a fabric junkie & have furs I haven't even touched. So many ideas, so little time. I'm very impatient, apparently.

 

[Nojoy]

Part of the quantity thing for me is that I figure something new out each time I make one and honestly just can't make enough. I'm a fabric junkie & have furs I haven't even touched. So many ideas, so little time.

Ahem... (stands up)... My name is Nojoy and I'm a fleece-a-holic.
Same here... I can't go into a store and just look at materials... I see possibilities in everything... then it winds up in my fabric bins, waiting to be born.

 

[MGov]

I haven't had any caffeine yet this morning so hopefully this will make sense.

It's something that always comes up among "aspiring" screenwriters. The question is always asked, "Do I have to be in Los Angeles to be successful as a screenwriter?" And the answer is yes. And no. Obviously, there are successful screenwriters and filmmakers in places other than L.A. We can all name them (Robert Rodriguez is in Texas, Woody Allen in NYC, David Mamet started in Chicago and now lives in Virginia). But we can't name a lot of them. So, no, you don't have to be in L.A. to be successful. But you have to be very talented.

On the other hand, yes you do need to be in L.A. Because that's where the work is. That's where other screenwriters are. You can only learn so much from books and the internet. Eventually, you gotta be where the action is.

Puppet building is a little different. The top level work in the U.S. is in L.A. and New York. But you can be a puppeteer in other places (Phoenix, Chicago, Minneapolis).

My caffeine lacking point is this: What level of a career does a puppeteer want? Hobbyist? Local? Sesame Workshop? Disney? Everyone needs to decide for themselves where they want to be and then do what they need to do to get to that point. For some, reading this forum is plenty. Maybe splurge and buy a pattern from Project Puppet. Others ask about UConn and other programs in puppetry. Or they end up with a theatre group that does a lot of puppetry. I was in L.A. for seven years and that made a huge difference. A puppeteer or builder has to put her/himself in a place where they can succeed.

As for the difference between art and craft, I think it's in the attitude. I think craft is doing something you enjoy doing and being happy with it whatever the outcome.

Art, on the other hand, is always trying to stretch your abilities, always reaching beyond what you've done before.

Art is failure.

If you aren't afraid to fail, then you will always reach for something you've never had before.

 

[staceyrebecca]

If you aren't afraid to fail, then you will always reach for something you've never had before.

This is actually a huge theory in improv. That along with the "to what level do you consider success?" Improv meccas are chicago, toronto, los angeles & new york. yes, all lower-cased this morning. However if people who could be successful in those cities simply choose to stay in their own cities and propel the artform there (austin, phoenix, new orleans), then those places begin to become known for awesome improv as well.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

I've seen several people who have or are working on Masters in puppetry and/or have been building for many years who build awful looking puppets, so I don't think years of experience or education should dictate price. I'm a big believer in market dynamics; if someone builds television puppets and can get several thousand dollars for their work then good for them. And if someone builds puppets for church groups or craft sales and can only get a few hundred (or less) that's okay too as long they feel they are being fairly compensated for their work.

Have you seen the puppet pricing calculator thread Stacey? If you haven't, it has a spreadsheet that I put together awhile back to figure out how to price puppets if you doing it in large numbers.

As for art vs. craft, people always seem to get extremely defensive about that subject, but (in the traditional sense) most puppet building is craft, not art. The distinction between the two terms centers around production and distribution methods and has very little to do with the quality of the work.

Traditionally, craft work is skilled work that is usually used to create useful objects. Crafts are generally close-ended activities where you end up with more or less the same outcome every time. When you sit down to build a puppet, almost every time you end up with a puppet. You may not know what the puppet is going to look like when you start, but chances are you know you're going to build a puppet.

This is probably my favourite definition of what a craftsman (or woman) is:

“If a person sets out to make a table, but conceives the table only vaguely, as somewhere between two by four feet and three by six, and between two and three feet high, and so forth, he is no craftsman.” Think about it...something as arcane as the craft of my mechanic, who deals with the subtle mysteries of my old station wagon. Say he’s going to tune the engine. Exactly what he’ll have to do before he’s finished is uncertain — a few informed guesses, a bit a trial and error. But he knows the outcome he seeks. That is to say, he knows exactly what a well-tuned station wagon should sound like with the timing and carburetor correctly adjusted. He may not know exactly how to get where he’s going, so to speak, but he knows exactly what it will be like when he’s arrived. He knows, in that sense, when to stop.​

Art on the other hand is a much more open-ended activity. The idea of "art" is work that transcends materials to create an original statement in a meaningful way. I taught a class once where the example I used to explain the difference between art and craft was that if I show five people a picture of a dog, give them a bunch of materials and ask them to make something that represents a dog it's art. If I give them a bunch of materials and tell them to make a dog puppet it's a craft. That's really what the difference boils down to.

I have seen many puppet builders get upset when their work is referred to as "craft" rather than "art" but the real truth is that most "craftspeople" often produce better looking work than "artists" precisely because craftspeople are focused on the techniques required to make something while artists usually care less about technique and more about the idea behind whatever they are creating.

"Craft" has somehow become regarded as less worthwhile than "art", but only because many people don't actually understand what the two terms mean.

 

[puppetsmith]

I agree with MGov's thoughts. Puppet building, as with almost everything, can be either an art or a craft depending on how far you take it. For example, take a look at these pictures -

http://www.projectpuppet.com/Art or Craft/

I just got those pics in an email forward this morning and (for once was glad I opened it). Now is hammering nails into a piece of wood an art? It sure can be! And personally I think whoever the artist is hasn't taken the "art" far enough. It appears he traced Da Vinci's portrait and he's only using four tonal variations (four types of nails). Think if his artwork was original and he used 16 or more different types of nails...wow!

Even with the Project Puppet patterns, it's entirely up to the puppet builder to how far they want to take it. A person can strictly follow the instructions, glue a couple of ping pong balls on for eyes, and produce a nice puppet. But, the same builder (or a different builder) could use the pattern as a base and push far beyond the limitations of the basic instructions. Gordon's Batfink (Batfink in the PP Gallery) is an excellent example. Many of this year's contest finalists - excellent examples of pushing what could be considered a craft toward an artform.

And it shouldn't stop there to be truly artistic. I received an email recently from one of our customers in the UK, that read in part -

I just wanted to thank you for your brilliant patterns. I run a theatre company and the experience I gained working on your puppet patterns last year gave me the skills I needed to create some puppets without any pattern, but out of foam etc., for shows we are doing requiring large detailed realistic animal puppets.

Now that person is on their way to making their puppet building an art.

(As an afterthought, I didn't mean for this post to sound like a commercial for Project Puppet. I'm just speaking from experience and what I have seen, and that is affected every day by PP.)

 

[puppetsmith]

... craftspeople are focused on the techniques required to make something while artists usually care less about technique and more about the idea behind whatever they are creating.

On the contrary, an artist needs to be concerned with technique, to develop their technique, in order to successfully convey the idea behind what they are creating. Da Vinci wasn't concerned with technique? Michelangelo wasn't concerned with technique?

In the case of puppet building, a builder needs to know what character, what personality traits, what disposition, needs to be conveyed to the audience and use his acquired skills and technique to successfully portray what's behind the physical characteristics of the puppet through the physical characteristics of the puppet.

One of the things that makes puppet building (and puppetry in general) so unique and appealing, is that between the building and the performing of a puppet, there exists countless artforms, artforms that in themselves can stand alone and present their own unique challenges, artforms that artists spend their whole lives in the effort to perfect. Puppetry combines them! Whether it is drawing, carpentry, sculpting, designing, engineering, seamstressing, tailoring, painting, acting, voice acting, and more or less depending on each one's unique approach to the process - puppetry combines them and successful puppetry demands them to be done well.

 

[staceyrebecca]

Do you think that possibly simply the word "crafter/craftsman" has a negative connotation because so many sock monkeys & plastic-canvas doll houses have been created and shown at state fairs next to a child's prize-winning collection of plush monkeys? And I'm sure some of the plastic-canvas house-makers consider themselves artists...and some should be considered such, I'm sure.

ahh plastic canvas houses....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/staceyrebecca/2060469114/

And yes, Andrew, I've not only seen the puppet pricer, but have been using it & have passed it along to some friends of mine in the arts community. They all love it.
Still, I don't know what kind of monthly salary *my* work should bring in.

I am the queen of the run-on sentence.