Artist - Crafter - Maker

Posted by Susan Caplan Jul 28, 2009

If you paint or draw, people will call you an artist. If you do things like knit or scrapbook, people will say that you are a crafter. I do a little bit of this and a little bit of that – I’ve never been certain what to call myself.

I might sit down with tubes of acrylic paints, work on a couple of paintings and then forget for the next three months that I ever painted with acrylics. I’ll spend five months crocheting ten afghans for Christmas presents (yes, I’m a bit crazy, but, really, the pattern was simple). I’ve crocheted or knitted hats, scarves, fingerless gloves, purses, and stuffed animals for my students every winter.

When I was in my twenties, I determined that I wanted to be creative. Actually, at first, I wanted to draw pictures that looked like the thing I was drawing so I read Betty Edward’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. That book got me thinking about more than just drawing but about creativity. I decided that I wanted to make things – stories, bread, soup, blankets, hats, paintings, drawings, flower arrangements, lesson plans, games, etc.

But what do you call someone who makes “stuff?”

I cringe whenever someone introduces me as an artist because then that new person asks in what medium I work. I’ll mention watercolors and crochet in the same sentence and watch a discounting look cross their face. I feel like I’m setting myself up for high expectations if I call myself an artist. I suppose that I could call myself a hobbyist because I dabble in this and that, but, ‘hobbyist’ just never sat well with me.

I tended to say that I did a bunch of creative stuff and I called myself a crafter. I short while ago I read a book called Handmade Nation: the Rise of DIY Art, Craft, and Design by Faythe Levine and Cortney Heimerl. The book (and a movie, which I haven’t seen) describes different individuals across the country who have businesses selling the things that they make. The thing that caught my attention was that the women and men talked about ‘making stuff’ not ‘doing art’ or ‘working on crafts.’ They called themselves makers.

Yes, this is all just semantics – artist, crafter, maker. But when people ask, it’s good to have a phrase that rings true for who you are and what you do. This week, I’ve made a chocolate zucchini cake, organized my dad’s freezer, wrote a handful of online articles, and made a mini yarn “chandelier.” I’m working on an idea to combine fashion pins and quotes and setting them into shadow boxes – because it’s July and as all makers know, I’m a bit late to start on those winter gifts.