A certain kind of sadness permeates craft fairs and art shows. Tables and booths filled with the creative efforts of some person, who is often left standing or sitting alone amongst all these works. Maybe some passerby will be interested enough to stop and look, or even buy a piece. The excitement creators bring to the process of making transforms into resignation.
There is a tension between expressing our creativity by bringing something we have imagined into the world, on the one hand, and commodifying that creativity, on the other. That tension seems particularly acute at craft fairs and art shows, where fabulously creative people, who have spent considerable time developing their vision and honing the skills needed to realize that vision, are reduced to vendors, who have rented booths and tables in the hopes of selling their work. These fairs encourage (perhaps even compel) people to consider their creativity in terms of the ROI — time, labor, effort, material and rental costs all need to be recouped.
And yet there is a hopefulness and resilence too. The visceral urge to create beautiful things brings meaning to life. Joy comes not from some ROI calculated in monetary terms but from the very process of creating. To be sure, like Plato’s Demiurge, we will fail to produce what we imagine. Our creations will be flawed and incomplete. Recalcitrant matter and our impatience will impede us. But, again like the Demiurge, we will rejoice in the impulse to create, in our striving to make something new in the world.