Extra/Ordinary

Maria Elena Buszek is a critic, curator, and Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Colorado, Denver. She is the author of the book Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture, also published by Duke University Press. She has written for magazines and journals including BUST, Art in America, Photography Quarterly, and TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies.

List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction: The Ordinary Made Extra/Ordinary / Mary Elena Buszek 1 Redefining Craft: New Theory Making and Naming: The Lexicon of Studio Craft / M. Anna Fariello 23 Validity Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Mapping Craft Communities of Practice / Dennis Stevens 43 Super-Objects: Craft as an Aesthetic Position / Louise Mazanti 59 Fabrication and Encounter: When Content is a Verb / Paula Owen 83 Craft Show: In the Realm of "Fine Arts" How the Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary: The Modern Eye and the Quilt as Art Form / Karin E. Peterson 99 Wallpaper, the Decorative, and Contemporary Installation Art / Elissa Auther 115 Handwork and Hybrids: Recasting the Craft of Letterpress Printing / Betty Bright 135 Elastic/Expanding: Contemporary Conceptual Ceramics / Jo Dahn 153 Craftivism Craftivist History / Betsy Greer 175 Rebellious Doilies and Subversive Stitches: Writing a Craftivist History / Kirsty Robertson 184 Craft Hard Die Free: Radical Curatorial Strategies for Craftivism / Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch 204 Loving Attention: An Outburst of Craft in Contemporary Art / Janis Jefferies 222 New Functions, New Frontiers Put Your Thing Down, Flip It, Reverse It: Reimagining Craft Identities Using Tactics of Queer Theory / Lacey Jane Roberts 243 Men Who Make: The "Flow" of the Amateur Designer/Maker / Andrew Jackson 260 Crochet and the Cosmos: An Interview with Margaret Wertheim / Maria Elena Buszek 276 Contributors 291 Index 295

"Maria Elena Buszek's volume critically unravels assumptions about craft and pieces together new theories about contemporary handmaking that are at once vibrant, textured, and necessarily scrappy." Julia Bryan-Wilson, University of California, Irvine "Maria Elena Buszek has compiled an anthology that matches the dynamism of a field in flux. As a museum curator responsible for developing exhibitions which examine contemporary craft, I actively seek tools that provide context for craft from within, across and outside of this arena's historic borders. The essays compiled here provide access to diverse voices and approaches, filling a current void in scholarship that engages craft from a range of perspectives and places in a shifting culturescape. Buszek's anthology moves across discursive platforms to share fresh ways of thinking about craft in relationship to gender, domesticity, feminism, activism, and science. Here, ordinary craft is the focus of productive criticality rather than denied, broadening the frameworks for how we connect craft to meaning today." Namita Gupta Wiggers, Museum of Contemporary Craft "Extra/Ordinary is not only the best anthology of recent writing on craft out there, it also delivers several assessments of the Do-It-Yourself movement, which is sorely in need of critical interpretation."oGlenn Adamson, Victoria and Albert Museum