I agree with Callie, Dreamcatchers are a good example of why you should not create art with cultural items/images specific to another culture without 1st educating yourself thoroughly . They are a disgusting, mutated abomination born of ignorance and disrespect for native culture.
If you know anything at all about Native American culture, you know that a 19 year old white girl running around Coachella in a feathered headdress is like dressing up as a "sexy decorated war veteran" and going to a Remembrance Day ceremony. It's super disrespectful, and it's in really bad taste. There's always going to be someone who says "hey, I don't mind looking at that," or "what's the big deal? It was meant as a compliment!" but if it's your culture and your tradition, you know more about it than an outsider. If someone says "hey, the way you're doing that is not okay!" as an outsider to that culture, you need to heed that. You don't get to tell someone else what they should or shouldn't be offended by if you have less knowledge on the subject. As an outsider to a culture, you may be well meaning as an individual, but many things have been done with good intentions that had catastrophic outcomes for the people on the receiving end.
There are some really big holdover attitudes from British colonialism to just assume that another culture's artworks, religion and traditions all carry equal weight within that culture, or that the weight placed on those things are somehow analogous to how we behave in our own. In a lot of cases, it's not true, and I think that's where white folks tend to get frustrated and confused. We lack important, accurate information, and it's a serious effort to track that information down because there's a lot less in depth information recorded about other cultures than the dominant one. So we do dumb things in the name of trying to learn about something that wind up being hurtful.
But what about artistic growth and cross-cultural influence? What about all the cross pollination that happened between China, Japan and Korea in terms of celadon development? What about blue and white ware's influence on middle Eastern ceramics? How about a more modern phenomena of European Christian missionaries going to Japan and teaching the locals about knitting, a handcraft they hadn't developed themselves yet? Japanese knitting patterns are now some of the most interesting and challenging out there, and the colours used in the yarn choices of Japanese knitting designers definitely shows a distinct sensibility from European choices.
That kind of cultural borrowing is totally okay, because no one places a religious or spiritual value on knitting. There are some interesting cultural traditions around knitting design, but the motifs that are traditional in different areas generally don't have a deeply emotional/spiritual significance attached to them. There is an active conversation being had between the two cultures. Or, in the ceramic cases above, there were some shared cultural points (Zen Buddhism throughout Asia) where people were starting from, and then taking the techniques in their own directions.
So I suppose I think cultural inspiration is possible to do responsibly, but you have to be willing to put a LOT of work into the research and learning part in order to be properly informed. I think it's best to had some direct, meaningful contact with that culture. It ought to mean something to you personally, and not just be a cool subject you learned about in school or in a book. I think you also have to not look at the specific motifs or techniques that are being used, but look at what the artists that use them are looking at and being inspired by. You have to be able to continue the conversation that's being had in that area with your own voice and contribute something intelligent to that conversation.
Otherwise, it's like Liam says and you're just profiting off someone else's ideas, which isn't cool.
took 6 months of getting up at 4:30 and throwing a couple of hours before work every day and mostly cutting everything in half before I would say I could throw a decent pot. Couple of years ago tried my hand at doing full time shows for a living and the sudden influx of non-stop daily throwing that had to happen to have twice a month show racks full certainly made a HUGE difference, not just in throwing but every aspect of making.
My take away from the experience is not how long did it take but how many concentrated hours did it take. I think for most, throwing regularly around a full time job and life for 10 or even 20 years will not even remotely compare to someone who throws hours and hours every day for even a few years.
shawnhar got a reaction from Pres in QotW: How do you feel about culture theft?
shawnhar reacted to Callie Beller Diesel in QotW: How do you feel about culture theft?
shawnhar got a reaction from Rae Reich in QotW: How long did learning to throw take.
