Art and Craft

Christopher Gordon Forbes, in old blogosphere style, poses a daily question on his Contemporary Composers Collective page on Facebook.

Today’s question was a good one:

How much do you view yourself as an artist, and how much as a craftsperson? Is there a distinction between the two?

I enjoyed answering it there, and am happy that I can share it here.

Without craft there is no art. I think of craft as the “how,” and whatever happens when a human being interacts with whatever I do as an answer to a “why.” Maybe that’s the art part, but it has very little to do with me, unless I happen to be the person who is expressing herself through a piece I happen to have written.  If I don’t get the “craft” right, that possibility for expression is not as clear as I might have hoped. And without expression (of something) I don’t believe there is art.