The Craft Gallery & Studio is dedicated to exposing craft-based mediums to the Kansas City art community. Through a combined effort between fine art exhibitions and the education of the community in papermaking and bookbinding, The Craft is committed to showing Kansas City the true artisanship associated with working in traditional craft materials.
Within fine art there needs to be a level of skill that can only come with a dedication to process and materials. In the Postmodern art community, the word craft in itself has taken on a negative connotation referring to that of paint by numbers and popsicle stick houses. There needs to be a change in the way we look at what craft means. Embracing all the craft centered mediums in a fine art setting acknowledges all those that have come before us and honors where we have come from. The need for that which is handmade has become obsolete in our industrial society, we don’t need someone who can make a sheet of paper or weave a piece of fabric, but these skills of the past offer us so much more in an artistic, expressive way.
“The hand in craft plays a central role in this for it is more than a simple appendage of the physical body; the hand is a reflection of the entire human organism; it is a direct extension of the mind.”
- Howard Risatti, author, A Theory of Craft