Magazine provides network for artists, craftspeople

Craftmakers and craft communities all over the world now have a publication that discusses their ideas and techniques. Craft International, a new quarterly magazine of crafts of the modern world, has been launched in New York and is being published under the auspices of the Craft and Folk Art Museum of Los Angeles.

An inaugural issue of the magazine came out in July 1980 to coincide with the World Crafts Council's ninth international conference, in Vienna. The new publishing venture had an enthusiastic reception and during the past year has attracted over 4,000 subscriptions from readers in 50 countries.

The editor in chief of the new nonprofit magazine is Rose Slivka, a well-known craft expert, who has been editor of the magazine Craft Horizons for 24 years. Miss Slivka said that the council's magazine, with its tabloid format on newsprint stock, is aiming at a stable 10,000 readers, worldwide, who are more interested in ideas than in slick paper and full-color reproduction of photographs.

"We are a shoestring operation," she admits, "still trying to raise matching funds to a 3-to-1 challenge grant of $25,000 given by the Tosco Corporation. But we are committed to the principle of humanization through creative work and handcraft. And we will be an independent voice, a network, a clearinghouse through which artists and craftspeople can maintain worldwide communication with each other."

Miss Slivka says emphasis will be given to indigenous art, folk art, and to new and developing craft technologies, as well as to modern international styles. Through a global network of contributors, the magazine is offering studies and profiles of contemporary artist-craftsmen, exhibition reviews and criticism, updates on available grants, and reports on workshops and on where to travel to find fine crafts. It will also explore the theme of conservation at a time of wide concern for the conservation of materials, skills, and traditions.

And, of course, the editor in chief exclaims, "We will offer philosophy and poetry, because these are fundamental to art and craft in all their forms. The theme of the current issue, for instance, is "The Art/Craft Connection: If it is?, What is it?, and Where Do We Go From Here?'"

Subscriptions for the new quarterly are available, for $12 per year in the United States and $16 outside the US, from the Publication Arts Workshop, 24 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. 10012. M.H.