Buffalo Landscape Design: Notes on Art vs Craft

Notes on Art .vs. Craft

In some of my spare time the last 36 hours, I've been collecting some ideas to situate my landscape work within a conversation I imagine as having been had through all of time. I've casually held this exchange with some in recent years but my commitment to one side or another is seemingly demanded. 

(Process) In my perusal of Google's feedback seaching "art vs craft" - the first thing I was pointed towards was Susan Sontag's essay "Notes on 'Camp."

"7. All Camp objects, and persons, contain a large element of artifice. Nothing in nature can be campy . . . Rural Camp is still man-made, and most campy objects are urban. (Yet, they often have a serenity -- or a naiveté -- which is the equivalent of pastoral. A great deal of Camp suggests Empson's phrase, "urban pastoral.")"

Sontag's 57 other points - and this one - are too large to address here. But, this points to an idea; I believe people take "landscape" to be "nature." To design a landscape imposes human intelligence onto the soil. If a landscape is to be "natural" it only evidences what we believe nature to be. 

I am going to continue to collect points on this and will hopefully foster other comments and conversation. I have a new book I was just handed today purporting to this idea of "Nature Deficit Disorder." It was given to me by someone who is looking to make me a believer. We'll see.

This is all in fun of course. 

                                        (February 2014)