Juried Shows and Slick Publications

I used to love going to craft shows. They were held in high schools on Saturdays and had all sorts of great stuff. Right now I'm looking at my sock monkey, Dandy, that I bought for $8.00. He's magnificent, with black felt pants, a gold and pink felt tunic with a black belt with a yellow heart jewel in the center, a yellow felt vest held together by some pink jewels, and a yellow felt cap with a black brim and a pink felt feather. He has black button eyes, a black plastic triangle nose, and a big red stitched smile. And all for eight bucks!

I also have two great crocheted dogs, one in loops and one in fringe, that I bought at another craft fair. Then there's Lula Mae, a teddy bear made in synthetic fur wearing a dress and panties made out of white fabric with blue teddy bears on it and trimmed in lace.

I have just about stopped going to these craft shows now because they are all juried. Juried! Why on earth would anyone want to jury something so free and delightful? Everything is original, say the fliers. Who cares? I'm sure all these delicious animals were made from patterns, but so what? We're not talking gallery art here, just some people having a lot of fun making things that give them pleasure.

I went to one of these original craft shows. They had about half of the pre-juried number of booths there, and just about everything was clothing or jewelry. The stuff may have been original, but most of it was also pretty awful.

I am really tired of all this jurying. Everything looks the same at the fancier juried shows, because the same person or people picked it all. We have a very large craft fair in Rochester, Michigan called Art and Apples. When I started going to it eleven years ago, I had such a great time because I saw everything from stuffed animals to wooden trains to some very fine watercolors. Now, of course, the art fair is juried. So long stuffed animals. Some wooden trains are there, but they are oh, so tasteful. In fact everything has become tasteful. And boring, oh, so boring.

I like to have choice, thank you, lots and lots of choice. I want to see everything and not have somebody else decide what I may and may not see. If these fairs have too many entries, they can have a lottery. Or throw the forms up in the air and pick them up from the bottom of the pile until they have enough. Or assign each entry a number and play roulette or bingo. I don't care what they do, as long as they don't use any of that "artistic criteria."

And I am also getting tired of a lot of the contemporary books and magazines, especially the ones that aspire to the "art" of fiber. Again, it is all so very tasteful, and so very boring.

Some of the magazine articles, which call themselves criticism, are just about unreadable. I was in graduate school at one time, and the main reason I quit was because I was so bored from reading and writing this very proper and very dead academic criticsm. When I look at a fiber magazine, I want to see what people are making, all sorts of people and all sorts of things. And then I want to read about these people and how they make their stuff. I've been buying a lot of older fiber mags from my library's used book store, and they are sooo much better. The layout may be less sophisticated, and there are certainly fewer color photos, but the work jumps off the pages with life. The writing is friendly and conversational, and the tone of the magazines is inclusive.

These books and magazines have become so slick and trendy that they are losing their souls.