Put on by a joint effort between the Craft/Material Studies and Sculpture and Extended Media departments, this unique lecture was unlike the kind I've regularly attended during my time at VCU. Matthew B. Crawford the author of Shop Class as Soul Craft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, is also a Research Fellow at UVA and a Contributing Writer with The New Atlantis Magazine. When showing his work there were photos of engines and engine troubles along with a could shots of the kind of motorcycles pictured above. After abandoning the world of political think tanks and corporate desk jobs Crawford has found intellectual satisfaction, physically rewarding work and the want to spread the word by learning the art of motorcycle restoration and maintenance and with it running his own shop.
Lecturing on the value of the labor arts, as mentally and physically demanding as any of the fine arts I've worked in, Crawford made a strong argument for the preservation of such skills. In the world of skilled manual labor there is a level of craft seen just as easily in the works of master painters as can be observed in the careful hand of an auto-mechanic or carpenter.
Crawford also expressed the idea that wrapped into the practices he described there are moral and ethical decisions as well. I very much agree that there is a responsibility social and otherwise within the world of any art, and appreciated his thoughts on the matter.
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