Artworks by Werner Hammerstingl

Art school is all about timing. The year I finished I remember that the debate of Art vs. Craft was still heated and divisive. I think mainly because Craftspeople thought they were getting a crummy deal. Artists were swooning around being important and “informed” whereas the “Crafties” were dismissed as “decorative or functional”. I remember Ken Waugh, my lecturer in Art history opening an exhibition where he mentioned that we were dangerously close to the “Macrame belt of Melbourne” ( Warrandyte). Anyway, the more I thought about this, the more I needed to make a statement about where I thought the difference was.

So I did the obvious and treated the two doormats according to their function i.e Art or Craft.