Altruism, Activism and the Moral Imperative in Craft

As promised I am posting my lecture from the 2010 Society of North American Goldsmiths conference. I delivered the talk on March 11th in Houston, TX.

Some notes:

Below you will find two embedded documents which together represent the talk. One is the text which I read and the other are the slides I showed. I have left the presenter notes in the text, which will cue you when to change to the next image. (change) was used to go to the next slide, (click) was used to cue a transition on the same slide, which in .pdf format really means just go to the next page. There are a few slides which had timed automatic transitions and so they were not noted in the text. So I know it may be a bit bumpy in places to get the text and the powerpoint to match up as you read. Use common sense and it will be ok. Sorry.

I would like to have formatted the talk into a movie, but the combined struggle to find a free server to upload a 50 minute movie from which I can embed onto the blog, and the necessity of getting the lecture up quickly has led me to this slightly awkward format. When I have a bit more time I may try and solve these problems and turn the lecture into a fully digital, embeddable, and sharable plea for craft as a social reform movement. Also DVDs for educators may be an option in the not so distant future. Stay tuned.

Also, if you go through the trouble of reading the lecture I would really love to hear your thoughts, mostly on what the next step should be, but any discussion is good. I look forward to your comments.

Lastly, I would like to thank a few people who I didn't have time to thank during my presentation in Houston. Thanks to my partner Amy Weiks for her real time feed back, Anna Walker for being my beta tester, Mike Morris for editing my manuscript, Sandie Zilker and Diane Falkenhagen - the SNAG conference co-chairs - for taking a chance on someone so young and angsty, and finally my mentors in graduate school, Susie Ganch and Dr. Charles Brownell, without whose guidance this talk never would have developed.

-Gabriel

Altruism, Activism and the Moral Imperative in Craft

Altruism, Activism, and the Moral Imperative in Craft

Ethical Production in Jewelry

As I get ready to post my lecture from this year's Society of North American Goldsmith's conference (delivered on March 11th), I wanted to post this short video about ethically sourced materials that appeared on the onion a short while ago. I very nearly included it in the lecture. Thanks to Islay Taylor from Evocative Objects for bringing my attention to this.

-Gabriel

Report: Baby Skull Jewelry May Be Linked To Violence

Interview with Jay Whaley on Blog Talk radio

On Wednesday, March 10th in Houston I sat down with metalsmithing's best (and only) radio personality, Jay Whaley, live at the Society of North American Goldsmiths conference. We talked about my lecture, the state of ethical production in jewelry making, and next steps for the field. My segment starts at about the 43 minute mark. Have a listen:

Metalsmith BenchTalk Live From SNAG's 'Going to eXtremes Annual Meeting'