Art and Craft

There are people who were born artistic. Their senses work really well to pull strings here and there to make a great piece. But I am pretty sure that not every artists are just talented. Some achieve it from hard work. The question I had in mind is, how do they learn?

Growing up in a country that has large population and huge education gap, many times I feel that the education system is lacking in appreciating people’s individuality. For example, to get to a good school, you only need to be good in three or five subjects. Other subjects somehow does not count. Probably the government meant that the subjects are the threshold to pass. But in reality, other subjects were kind of forgotten. It is no surprise for kids who become engineer and doctors can survive this. But what about artists?

When we travel to places, a lot of the attraction are about arts: music, dance, shows. I am zero in arts. Well, I do dance a little bit, but for everything else, I have no idea. But I do start questioning when I travel. Of how artists can create beautiful, awesome, full of meaning, artistic stuff.

Then I started to realise arts has a lot of engineering! Firstly you have different raw materials to explore from. It is not just about canvas and brush or pen. You have clay. Paper. Plastic. Glass. Metal. Seashells. Sand. Water. Oil. Feather. Wax. Bamboo. Wood. Bronze. Silver. Gold. And. Many. More. From many of these materials, I am amazed with myself of how little do I have experience with them even they are very easily available around me.

So with the wiiiide availability of raw materials to use from, now comes even more engineering part. You need to process the materials. You want to make a shape. You want to join one part with another. You want to make it stand. You want to make it hang nicely. You want to make it interactive. You want to change the colour. You want to highlight, you want to hide. A lot of these things need some time to learn the technique. Certain material need special ways to process. You sand them. You heat them. You rub some chemical onto it. You knead them.

And oh you need to know how to make the harmony of the shapes. A lot of great piece have strong calculation behind it. Well, ok, the government wasn’t so wrong in making math in one of the required subject in the final exams. But I wish I knew that math is useful in arts too. Haha I complain too much.

I want to share some pics I took when I went to Christmas market in Champs-Elysees. There was some kind of “artist village”. I really admire how crafty and skilful they are.