To Craft a Line

I've recently taken up quilling after a chance encounter with an instructional book. The thought had never really occurred to me to use paper strips as 3D lines. Wire had been considered, but I felt like the kinky bends in wire didn't have the same feel as a flowing line. Embroidery (another craft I'm fond of) was also a candidate, but was too rooted in having a 2D surface. So quilling was an exciting new technique to pick up.


The above is the beginning of a super secret project I hope to make into a series. For scale, the largest coil in the back is the size of a dime. I'm sure there's some sort of irony in the fact that my favorite work threatens to blind me.

But during research, I noticed that quilling had the same pitfalls as other crafts. It was... well, crafty. Most of its uses were in scrapbooking and card-making. It had a place in history among leisure crafts, but nothing on the level of museum quality appreciation. There's not a problem with that really, but I wanted to take it to another level. To make it "art."

The area between art and craft is funny, defined by scholars using big words to make big points. So for contrast, here are some small, pointless words on the same subject, (or any subject, really):

Start at the edge and work towards the middle to bridge.

Start in the middle and work out towards the edges to build.

Right now I have art and craft, and gradually I will bridge the two. And when I do that, maybe I'll have the skills necessary to build it further and see where it goes.