Who would blame you if the term "craft" put you in mind of doilies tatted by your grandma or a framed needlepoint sampler created by mom?
But as events like "Art Vs. Craft" and the "Handmade Nation" phenomena created by Milwaukee's Faythe Levine have taught us, contemporary craft isn't the stuff you made at summer camp anymore.
To get a good look at what's happening out on the frontiers of the craft movement, check out the Chipstone Foundation's exhibit, "The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft," which opens Thursday, March 10 at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
The Milwaukee-based Chipstone Foundation has staged a number of shows at MAM, with which it partners on the exhibitions, including "To Speculate Darkly: Theaster Gates," "Green Furniture" and "Dave the Potter."
This latest collaboration was curated by UWM assistant professor Fo Wilson.
"The works blur artistic boundaries by integrating new media and technology into traditional craft materials," says Claudia Mooney," an assistant curator at the Chipstone Foundation.
"In other words, it turns the definition of craft right on its head."
In the exhibition catalog Wilson writes that American craft in the first half of the last century was seen as a "remedy for a change in human values heralded by the Industrial Age."
But, she adds, the 16 artists represented in the show -- which Wilson created for the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Mass. -- "are treading compelling territory between their mediums and emergent technologies."
That means to these artists, craft and modern technology are no longer really at odds. The former is no longer a "remedy" for the latter, but a partner with it.
"The artworks are varied and reference craft in different ways," says Mooney. "For example, 'Virtual Novelist' by Tim Tate, uses video to show objects that are now virtually extinct, like the typewriter. He then places these videos inside glass reliquaries as a campaign against the book's demise.
"There is also Donald Fortescue and Lawrence LaBianca's 'Sounding' (2008), which explores the relationship between technology and nature. The artwork consists of a cabriole-legged table, which the artists filled with rocks and lowered into the ocean for two months, and a hydrophone placed near the table, which recorded the ambient sound. Fortescue and LaBianca exhibit the work with an oversized hornlike funnel, tied together with zip ties, which amplifies the recorded sound."
"The New Materiality" is on view in Milwaukee Art Museum's Decorative Arts Gallery through June 12.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
