Extra/Ordinary

“Extra/Ordinary is not only the best anthology of recent writing on craft out there, it also delivers several assessments of the Do-It-Yourself movement, which is sorely in need of critical interpretation.” - Glenn Adamson, Victoria and Albert Museum

“Maria Elena Buszek has compiled an anthology that matches the dynamism of a field in flux. As a museum curator responsible for developing exhibitions that examine contemporary craft, I actively seek tools that provide context for craft from within, across, and outside this arena’s historic borders. The essays compiled here provide access to diverse voices and approaches, filling a current void in scholarship and engaging craft from a range of perspectives and places in a shifting culturescape. Buszek’s anthology moves across discursive platforms to share fresh ways of thinking about craft in relationship to gender, domesticity, feminism, activism, and science. Here, ordinary craft is the focus of productive criticism rather than denied, broadening the frameworks for how we connect craft to meaning today.” - Namita Gupta Wiggers, Museum of Contemporary Craft

“Maria Elena Buszek’s volume critically unravels assumptions about craft and pieces together new theories about contemporary handmaking that are at once vibrant, textured, and necessarily scrappy.” - Julia Bryan-Wilson, University of California, Irvine

“The publication can be warmly recommended to all those who like to indulge in reading, and are interested in the debate that exists between the spheres of craft and art.” - Textile Forum

“[A] smart, sassy collection of essays . . . bound to be a new classic for both academics and craft artists.” - Antonia Blair, Bust

“Finally, a reason to put down the knitting needles. . . . Like a quiltmaker, Buszek has assembled a fine array of writers and topics. . . .” - Anastasia Masurat, Bitch

“[A] timely response to contemporary art’s interest in craft, challenging the perception that artists choose media or their work with the mere wanton abandon of a child in front of a pick’n’mix counter. Instead, its various authors explore the complexity of art’s interaction with craft, making subtle note of those covering this terrain before.” - Stephen Knott, Crafts

“Extra/Ordinary begins to establish, with refreshing honesty, this thing that has become Craftivism. Time will tell if it sticks.” - Jessica Hemmings, Surface Design Journal

“Not a foundational reader, nor an academic history, the volume is a kind of ‘the state of craft in art’ after postmodernism. The selection of essays introduces myriad hybrid practices as well as the academics, writers, and practitioners—some recent graduates, some established professionals—currently working in this under-theorized area. Rather than an attempt to narrow the field, this book attests to an expansive, decentered, vibrant condition. Buszek avoided having too heavy an editorial hand; each author’s
voice is maintained rather than serving one unified narrative, and the book is the better for it.” - Meredith Goldsmith, Journal of Modern Craft

“Antiques collectors will do well to attend to many of the chapters included in this volume as the objects which collectors today collect, in many instances, would have been called ‘craft’ were they to be produced today. . . . Quilts, ceramics, letterpress books and wallpaper are among the media addressed. . . . The forward-looking text simultaneously reflects on all those attributes we contemporary collectors of antiques value and, often, insist on.” - Bruce A. Austin, New York-Pennsylvania Collector

“... [T]he anthology is a significant and useful contribution to burgeoning scholarship on contemporary craft.” - Mary Caroline Simpson, Woman's Art Journal

“[A] stellar collection of interdisciplinary essayists. . . . [T]his collection features full color illustrations, figures and photographs which not only clarify the processes and products referenced in the accompanying articles but also makes the book a joy to read, enhancing as it does the visual performance of the text itself. The inclusion of the full-color documentation of artistic process as well as the art objects produced therefore honors the main premise of the text: that craft can and should be understood as a liminal form of culturally performative fine art.” - Kristen Williams, Liminalities

“This volume fills a void in the scholarship that examines the meaning and the diverse roles that craft plays in the discourse surrounding contemporary art and social, political and popular culture bringing together the voices of artists, curators, cultural thinkers and scholars. Together these authors have opened the dialogue allowing craft to have its own voice and its own meaning, no longer defined by or against fine art.” - Angela Brayham, Visual Studies