crafts

Kerry Miller of BUSINESSWEEK recently interviewed me for this story, and I thought the questions were really interesting. They are posted here unedited by Miller, and conducted only as informal background research, but nonetheless, I liked them. Which means: you get to read them.

--

A painter turns one of his large-scale works into a series of wallets/tote bags/greeting cards/etc. He's happy that that more people are being exposed to his work and that he now has money to buy groceries, but he still feels a slight twinge of guilt. Should he?

In case you missed it, over at the NYT Rob Walker's written up practically the entire craft movement in one single story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/magazine/16Crafts-t.html?pagewanted=1&...

He touches on all the things that are awesome about crafts: they're cool, they feel good to buy, they're usually better quality products, mostly made by ladies, they're unique; but also touches on the things that make me uncomfortable about craftrepeneurs: their unflagging devotion to making it big and "taking over" the market, their one-way relationship with consumers--or more specifically consumers' money.