Ideas Made Real

If any poor soul is still following my blogs they will have realised that I write fairly infrequently. So I'm thinking its been about a year so another post is probably due ha ha. What am I going to chat about today? Well I'll tell you. I come from a Fine Art background and I have always wanted to return to that arena with my pyrography. Fine Art can be lots of things but how I differentiate it from craft is...

Craft: Form follows Function.

Art: Function follows Form.

Roughly speaking with art I believe that the concept and the aesthetic is the primary element to an object, where as craft can be anything so long as the object can still perform its function.

When I first started Blasted Oak Pyrography in 2012/13, I was mainly burning objects such as egg cups, spoons and boxes; I was very much in the craft camp. This was intentional I suppose, it was a new business and I wanted to sell things to make some money. Also I happen to like craft, or as I call it "Applied Art".

Why am I waffling on about art and crafts, well because I am bringing in to Blasted Oak Pyrography something new. As an artist I am always experimenting, be it with techniques or materials. This kind of thing as usually gone on in the background however in the spirit of sharing that is always strong in the art and crafts community I want to share what I call my R & D department :)

I call this Blasted Oak Artisan, and the primary goal of BOA is to experiment with methods and materials and to share my findings with the rest of the creative community and the public at large. Anything created will also be available to buy and will be unique, individual items. They would undoubtedly have particular characteristics or imperfections but that is acceptable. That is their purpose. They are ideas made real, and as such they might well be a success story and go on to inspire a whole new line in Blasted Oak Pyrography or the Salamander Tea Company (Ha ha new reveal! Stay posted), by the same token they might not be so successful and so then become true one-offs.

I am actually on holiday as I write this so I'm now off to enjoy some sort of tall alcoholic beverage with a little umbrella and slice of fruit, so for now thanks for reading and have a great day.

Rich :)