The beads are done.
I'm hanging out at Zoka coffee waiting for my contact at Fusion Beads to come in so I can deliver my bead order. Oddly enough, I'm not freaked out. I may be when I get there and am actually handing the beads off, but oddly enough I don't think I will be. This is a huge change for me.

While I was cleaning, polishing up, and packing the beads last night a thought occurred to me. A few people have commented that my work with glass has made me some sort of artist, but that title has never sat well with me. Maybe it's because I was raised by, essentially, a family of engineers who considered artistic pursuits something you did as a hobby, but I think it's more because I believe that art requires intent. I have no statement with what I'm trying to do with glass. I'm not trying to get across a vision, I'm just trying to make something that looks neat. Perhaps I'm being naive about the artistic process, but I've always felt that art requires that the artist not only intend for their piece to be art, but also that they be trying to say something by the piece.

Craft, on the other hand exists for its own utility. Craft has function (even if that function is just to look pretty) and a craftsman is only trying to make something well made that fulfills its role well. That's what I'm trying to do, so I've decided that I'm a craftsman rather than an artist. Make a note of it. It should be noted that I appreciate the arrogance inherent in that proclamation, but I will say that I didn't say I was a good craftsman. And, at least technically, a professional one.

I also want to note that this is a personal statement and what I said above was medium neutral. That is to say, I work with glass and think of myself as a craftsman while someone else who works with glass is an artist. The same is true with wood, paint, or mechanical parts. Intent is the key in my mind.

Anyway, I'm not sure why this makes me content, but it does. The notion that I was being an artist without trying to create art rankled me. Somehow being a craftsman takes a lot of pressure off. Actually, I think I know why. I've spoken in the past about the difficulty of switching from science to art because science is all about self doubt, peer review, and margins of error while art is all about the confidence to proclaim, "This is art and it means something." Craftsmanship, though, requires neither of those. The object is created and stands or falls on its own merits, and really, that's how I like to work.