Thems sound like dangerous ideas you've got there! lol, jk, I like the topic. There's a lot to be said about the historic reception of art and women's roles within it. The world seems to be divided into men's and women's spheres and canonic art traditionally fell into the men's spheres while crafts are the women's domain (you see this division today mainly in advertising and the way they sell their products specifically to men or women. For example, women are addressed as lovers, homemakers, mothers, caregivers, while men are spoken to in a language of success, work, achievement and roles that are outside the domestic sphere). Therefore in art there exists a rift that has yet to be fully closed that separates canonic art (painting, sculpture etc) from non-art of crafts and textiles etc. If you're interested in this look for work by Griselda Pollock (there’s one called Nude bodies: Displacing the Boundaries between Art and Pornography in "The Body") and Judith Williamson (a good one is Woman is an Island: Femininity and Colonization) who explores the male and female areas of life and art.

I hope that helps

As someone who dabbles in a bunch of different things, mostly in the crafts catagory, I think of myself as compulsive.

I have to create, it isn't because I expect to create something great, wonderful, or useful, it's the process itself.

It's part of me, and I don't consider myself either an artist, or a crafter, it just is. Kind of like I have black hair, and I could dye it another color, but it would still be black hair. There are times I have turned to creating other things, and took some fine art classes during that time, but really, it's the process, not the product that is important to me.

Clear as mud?

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Opprotunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work - Thomas Alva Edison

~sculptureclub

*Future-Art-Magazine

~ArtisanCraft

Thanks for your response.

I found something you said very interesting. You might like this quote I found in the book: "By Hand, The Use of Craft in Contemporary Art":

"I am fascinated by the craft and do-it-yourself booms, ... I think they are a result of people having no place in ordinary life to work with their hands anymore. We used to have to make our own clothes, build our own houses and furniture, preserve food, bake bread, and, in general, keep busy with our hands. Now, those tasks have all but been eliminated, but there is still the human need to create." -Robyn Love, page 102

Thanks for that, I will definately look up the two artists you mentioned straight away.

I am doing a Gender and Sexuality (in art) theory class and we are reading all sorts of amazing articles and writings about the things you mentioned, some are pretty far out, suggesting women can't create art simply because they do not have the ability to have genius and creativity the way men do...

There is a great book called "Old Mistresses", particularly chapter 4 which talks about how there isn't even an equivalent female term for "Old Masters".

I tend to think that a craft can transform into more of an art, it simply requires more dedication. People can be born with a natural talent to draw, or an eye for photography, but crafts tend to require more of a transition.
I noticed my own work through time transititioning from technique into style, and style into art.
I'm also making a shift into a new medium and am finding myself having to go through these stages again. (with a bit of a leg up from having done it once )

From what I have learned is that craft does not have the creative and emotional experience as art does. I.E. creating an embroidered wrist cuff that looks like the atomically wrist because you have wrist pain is art. Creating a black construction paper bat by fallowing step-by-step instructions, with out having a creative experience is craft. Art is the creative and emotional experience that we often find it hard to articulate, but people who have had it know what it is. Why society and DA likes to tag certain media as craft? I do not know but I have see some beautiful art in the craft section and some nice craft in the drawing section. As one of my Professors has stated that art is the creative and cognitive process not the final piece or artifact.

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Visit Peachy's Playground Art Blog
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Possible, although some of those, make cloths, bake etc. I do.

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Opprotunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work - Thomas Alva Edison

~sculptureclub

*Future-Art-Magazine

~ArtisanCraft

I aways found that topic fascinating. I took film, so I always studied it from that pov, but film and visual art intermingle quite a lot so there was a lot of overlapping. There are a lot of articles that try to support that "men only as artists" idea and while they are full of you-know-what, they're still worth reading because they're funny (lol) and they're a part of a very real history and an ideology that is still around today.
I might have to look for that Ols Mistresses book, although it would just be preaching to the already converted. lol

Speaking of women artist's and gender in art, have you ever heard of a performance artist named Orlan? Used plastic surgery as her performance. lol

Yes I have, she did a talk at the neighbouring art uni to mine. Pretty full on and kinda outrageous. She's done her whole face over, she looks like the bride of frankenstein.