Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Where Arts and Crafts is Going. Are Going. I Dunno-- Trends In Arts and Crafts

One of my YouTube painter guys, Clive, pointed me to The Art Sherpa who did this thing called #LoveSummerArt where artists with YouTube channels uploaded videos for three days with the hashtag Love Summer Art. I think Cinnamon (The Art Sherpa) wants YouTube to  have a dedicated Arts and Crafts channel. Which it should. Oh and Cinnamon is from Dallas but she really should be from Austin so she can help keep it weird.

The hashtag thingy got over 200 artists to upload projects and, I gotta tell ya, there are some amazingly talented people out there and there are some not so amazingly talented people with access to a digital camera and a computer. I've watched just 58 of these videos but I definitely see a trend. And this trend is "Art Journals". What is an Art Journal, you ask? Well, an Art Journal is what you get when scrapbookers decide that they no longer are doing arts and crafts but are now mixed media artists.



The above is an Art Journal. As is the below.



Out of the almost 60 videos I watched at least 25 were people Art Journaling. There was only one jewelry tutorial and one felting tutorial, no mosaic or sculpting, and one truly fantastic spray paint artist. Not a graffiti artist, but a guy who spray painted canvases. Stellar Paintings is the name of his gallery and he does shows on the boardwalk where he paints stuff like this with spray paint.


Since I only got through a quarter of the videos, I couldn't say if the ratio of Art Journals to not Art Journals gets better. I do know that there are more jewelry makers and knitters that I didn't see. I do not know if there are any ceramic artists --although I did see someone use polymer clay to make a Spirit Doll face.  You know, a face. For a Spirit Doll. Surely you've seen a Spirit Doll. No? Here's one:



According to her hair, it has been as humid in Spirit Doll land as it has been in New York these last few days.

I'm diving back in. Why not? YouTube is free. But I hope nobody minds if I skip all the Art Journal videos.

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