CRAFTS KEEP ‘EM GUESSIN’

Are you perplexed by the confusion of what passes for fine art these days? Disturbed that you can’t tell a drawing from a painting, a painting from a piece of sculpture, a print from a photograph? Don’t look to the crafts for relief.

The latest word on the subject, a big traveling show called “Craft Today: The Poetry of the Physical,” at the Laguna Art Museum and its South Coast Plaza satellite (through Oct. 4), proves that the field of crafts is every bit as fuzzy around the edges and imprecise in its categories as the field of fine arts.

Among the 300 or so objects chosen by Paul J. Smith, director of the American Craft Museum in New York, are things that appear functional but aren’t and others that look useless but can be worn, sat upon, used as containers or to tell time.

If your feet are small enough and your tastes flamboyant enough, you can slip into Gaza Bowen’s leather collage shoes, but don’t lower yourself into Jon Brooks’ seat-less “Ladderback Chairs.” Rudy Autio’s figurative sculpture might be used as an unconventional vase, while Margie Jervis and Susie Krasnican’s flat glass “Landscape Vases” only represent conventional forms.

Platt Monfort’s translucent, dacron-covered canoe will actually take you down the river, but Sylvia Seventy’s handmade paper and feather bowl won’t hold your favorite salad or casserole. You can put your underwear in Thomas Loeser’s improbable chest of drawers, but you can’t ride Fumio Yoshimura’s wooden bicycles or carry your papers in Marilyn Levine’s clay briefcase.

Well, the old idea of craft as functional object hasn’t had much credence since the ‘60s, when the field seemed to explode in creative exploration and turn traditional attitudes inside out. We have grown accustomed to seeing all sorts of craft and industrial materials in the finest galleries and encountering artists whose technical curiosity and expertise go far beyond the subjects taught in art schools. But the stickiest question of all persists: What’s the difference between art and craft?

In a way, the query is a red herring that diverts attention from more important issues of quality and expressive force. It’s also a political device bent on keeping crafts people in their place--secondary to fine artists. But essentially the question persists because the answer is not clear. And if anything, it has become less so as crafts have inserted themselves into the world of museums and art markets with greater and greater aplomb.

It’s easy enough to distinguish between an earthy set of pottery and an adroitly painted landscape. But what about Viola Frey’s towering ceramic figures that win high praise in museums and turn up in “Craft Today”? What about Robert Arneson, who all the art world knows was commissioned to sculpt a portrait of George Moscone, the slain mayor of San Francisco? What about Neda Alhilali, who helped turn the craft of weaving into “fiber art” and went on to apply her skills to metal, paper and paint?

What, for that matter, about Peter Voulkos, credited with creating the clay equivalent of Abstract Expressionism? Or John Mason, whose geometric ceramic forms are often seen in proper sculpture shows? All of these artists (crafts people?) have work in “Craft Today.”

“There were bound to be overlaps,” says curator Smith, indulging in a classic understatement. Indeed, but viewers who approach the exhibition in the hope that it will clear up the art-crafts muddle are in for a disappointment. The inclusion of such crossover luminaries as Frey and Arneson, plus a whole category called “The Object as Statement” infiltrate the fine arts so persistently that thoughtful people are certain to be confused.

Jan Holcomb’s stoneware “Freefall” panel, depicting a cartoonish figure probably falling to her death, and Judy Moonelis’ clay “Couple,” pensive on one side but distressed when reversed, seem to disprove the notion that crafts are devoid of emotional content.

Patrick Siler’s hand-built clay house of “Bourgeois Ceramicists,” Faith Ringgold’s “No More War Story Quilt” and Arturo Alonzo Sandoval’s “State of the Union No. 4 (Return of the Hostages)” flag demonstrate that dazzling craftsmanship doesn’t necessarily rule out politics.

Other works simply exude formal or material elegance. You’ll find sheer sensual beauty in Lia Cook’s shimmering rayon panels that have been dyed, painted, woven and pressed into iridescent panels suggesting waves and other natural forms. Tactile appeal runs high in Nance O’Banion’s prickly woven construction, “Shadow Wall: X, Speckle Spot Rock, Tom Rock, and Shard Rock,” and in Jane Lackey’s shaggy “Question Man.”

Nancy Crow meshes sharp graphic design with illusionistic patterns in her “Yellow Crosses IV” quilt. Wood has rarely looked more satiny or divinely round than in Edward Moulthrop’s 31-inch-tall “Figured Tulipwood Spheroid.”

Yet, once you get past such particulars to the essence of the show, you see that there is a difference between the collective effect of these objects and that of an equally high-quality exhibition of “art.” The difference is that “Craft Today” demonstrates an intense involvement with material and technique that tends to overshadow all other concerns. The typical piece in this exhibition is the product of mind-boggling processes (often numbingly repetitive) and/or obsessive refinement.

Katherine Westphal, for example, has stitched a “robe” of little rectangles of color Xerox prints. K. Lee Manuel has assembled a collar of feathers painted with Japanese faces and motifs. Arline M. Fisch knits with silver wire, Tina Fung Holder makes neck pieces from zillions of safety pins. Jarmila Machova draws ink lines on laminated pellon and cuts into it so that it unfolds into an arc of variegated color.

It seems that most of the objects would rather dazzle you with their looks than give you something to think about. They would rather astonish you with facility and assiduous detail than stir your soul.

That’s not to say they aren’t affecting, just that the cord they pull is attached to admiration for industry, ingenuity and technical accomplishment and not to the ability to express an idea or translate an experience into visual form. Much so-called art pursues the same goals, but the degree of refinement and attenuation is so extreme in “Craft Today” that it becomes a leitmotif.

You find yourself exclaiming, “That’s amazing. How is it done?” much more often than, “That’s amazing. What does it mean?” Materials and techniques, by and large, are what fascinate the artists and they captivate the audience too.

The well-chosen material and the cleverly crafted form rule “Craft Today” and run through all four categories established as an organizing device for the show. (These themes are most clear in the catalogue. Each section fills a room or more at the museum, while the smaller satellite gallery at South Coast Plaza shopping mall contains a sampling of all four.)

In “The Object as Vessel” are works made of clay, metal, glass and fiber--all derived from traditional containers but often far removed from the source. They range from unique, don’t-touch-me wonders to relatively tame goblets and covered jars.

“The Object as Adornment” features wearables, predominantly jewelry, most of which looks like it would require statuesque bodies, dramatic hairdos or exactly the right little black dress to carry it off. Materials run from traditional metals to the latest in high tech.

You’ll find a sleek rocking chair and coat rack in “The Object Made for Use” section, along with tables that emulate people or animals, and Wendell Castle’s “Ziggurat Clock” of exotic wood and gold-plated brass.

“The Object as Statement” is the most artful and varied, displaying everything from wood and ceramic sculpture to panels of handmade paper and resist-painted, hand-sewn silk.

This is by far the biggest and best American craft show to come to Southern California in recent memory. If it doesn’t elevate the field to the level of its highest aspirations, it succeeds in showcasing much of the finest work that’s being produced--and much that has been underexposed. As the inaugural show of the 30-year-old American Craft Museum’s new home in Manhattan, the exhibition is now making its way across the country and spreading the word of what’s going on in craft today.