The value of skill

One of the blogs I read, Bobulate, contained a musing on the importance of skill the other day, drawn in turn from a Boing Boing article. The relevant quote is

Ever since Andy Warhol made “ideas without skill” fashionable back in the 60s, it seems to me that popular culture has been playing a game of “skill limbo”. How low can we go? How badly drawn can a cartoon be and still be considered a cartoon? How many drum machines and sequencers can we stack up to avoid having to learn a real instrument? How much plastic surgery does it take to make acting skills unnecessary? I really don’t know the answers to those questions. Every day is a new horror.

But when I see someone who has both an idea AND skill, I’m reminded just how doggone powerful and dynamic a creative artist can be. I’m sick and tired of accepting “half a loaf.” (Boing Boing)

I wonder, sometimes, what value we place now on skill in the current crafting arena, the arena that’s visible on so many blogs and internet stores today. Is it enough to have a good idea? How necessary is it that skill be involved as well to render an idea well? I wonder about the cross-section of skill and art as well.

There is of course value in that I can pick up an X-acto and try something new one day – because we all have to start somewhere, sometime. In the middle is my own sewing and crocheting, which I’ve practiced for years but still, I’m nowhere near satisfied with the skills I have. On the other end of the continuum are people whose practice of a skill go back years. My grandmother, who has been sewing and quilting her entire life, whose seams are a marvel of precision and her garment fitting a thing of wonder. The 70-year-old crocheted potholders I have that astound me with their intricate attention to detail, evidence of a long life of practicing fine handiwork.

I think about the sweater that I am struggling to finish, the hat I’m now making for my brother, the needlework that I do, and I wonder myself about what value I place on my own skill. Do I turn away from the hard thing or persevere, hoping to add another aspect of a skill to my arsenal? Do I place enough value on my crafting to put in the work it takes to be really good at something, to really understand how it works and be able to use it as a tool for expressing my ideas?

Just some things I was thinking.

p.s. The mountain in question, as guessed correctly by my brother who has been there, is Denali. Because Denali is awesome.

p.p.s. This hat I’m making for Jeremy also features mountains.