Capturing Craft: Instruction of Instinct through Printed Media
Date
2019
Authors
Lumpkins, Nicole
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Description
This exhibit features books of instruction on arts and crafts based on the five fundamental senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound. The purpose of the exhibit is to consider the seemingly paradoxical nature of trying to teach something that is innate to human nature. Capturing the abstract knowledge of sense into something so confined and limiting as books and language leaves some aspect of the pursued practice wanting. But something within us continues to share craft and keep it alive and breathing, almost like a little body itself. Capturing the inexplicable is a bit of a futile, wishful gesture, so at the very least we can alert people that the instinct is there. We can write down the little that we can grasp, but the senses will keep their secrets for those dedicated enough to study them through practice.
This exhibit features the works and the words of University of Texas students past and present who have delved into the world of these crafts and honed their instincts enough to produce something wonderful. This act of instruction, study, and creation can be applied to all things, not just the traditional material objects and hobbies. It is a way of thinking. Of examining and doing something to the point that it becomes second nature.