This is not to imply that turned wooden objects whether for use or for
appealing to the senses are not worthy of doing the best we can. Turning
a salad bowl to be as handsome as you can make it isn't the same as
trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, nor is creating a lovely
turned work of art tantamount to gilding a corn stalk. How do we decide
when we've 'done good'? It's getting to be that the decision is not
ours to make. It's in the perception of others.

The hows for trying for our best instead of whats and whys is the
subject of most of our threads as it should be for a ng called rec.
crafts woodturning. It seems to me that we all measure the usefulness
of a turned platter or bowl with much the same standards. Whether there
are standards for turnings to satisfy our senses isn't so universal.
Some people appreciate discordant strident music, some don't.

I wonder if like sheep we are being herded into 'standards for beauty'
by other's critical opinions instead of our own five senses. We all
protest that "we turn for ourselves" and "we don't care what others
think". But is there an ingrained beauty recognition gene, a universal
standard for creative beauty that unknowingly we adhere to, aided and
abetted (herded) of course, by the critiques of those ever present
'others' ...a sort of reverse meaning to "turning by the numbers" I
mean connecting the dots to create a fine instead of a humble object.
It's always easier to turn inside the frame.

Anyway & whatever, the old "eye of the beholder" line may be more truth
than cop-out. Trying to define what makes for a beautiful turned form
may be as someone said about love, "If we could define it precisely, it
would disappear". Showing a turning or a picture of it followed by a
gaggle of attempts by other turners to define its ugliness or beauty
might have a destructive effect on the forms we turn, even if if we
believe we turn them only for ourselves.

Should we all try to define precisely what makes for an ugly bowl? If we
could all agree, it might disappear. That will never happen owing to the
"eye of the beholder" law which some critics scorn and think to be
unconstitutional, but they claim to know beauty, not ugly like some of
us do.


It's obvious that I've never had any formal training or took a class in
art or asthetics, but I know that no woman with a pleasng personality is
ever ugly. Could it be the same with our turnings?


Turn to Safety, Arch
Fortiter


http://community.webtv.net/almcc/MacsMusings