[TheForge] Peter Ross speech

[Andrew Vida]

On 8/5/2012 3:32 PM, Mike Spencer wrote:
>
> Mike Graf quoted  Chuck Robinson:
>
> cr>  The only response was from Mike Graf.  Peter and I are puzzled by
> cr>  the lack of reaction and discussion by folks on the list.
>
> and wrote:
>
> mg>  In the interest of clarity I believe you have the wrong Mike. I
> mg>  tthink he response was from Mike Spencer.
>
> He's right.  If there was only one response, it was mine.  I'll add
> another here.
>
> Peter remarked on David Pye's "The Nature and Art of Workmanship" and
> goes on to propose a "machine mentality":
>
>      I believe what I am seeing is the emergence of what I will call
>      "machine mentality." I will also describe what I think of as "hand
>      mentality". Please don't think of this as a comparison of hand
>      versus machine or traditional versus modern. We would spend our
>      time just as well discussing which is the best color. Instead,
>      these terms suggest the orientation of the workman, not the
>      methods; the mentality, not the process.

To what degree can mentality and process be separated?  After all, the 
work is the expression of mind.
>
> I read Pye's book long ago.  He makes a very nice distinction [1] that
> should be intuitively apparent to anybody who beats hot iron and who
> has ever seen an aluminum pop can. Rather than bloviate here, I'll
> refer you to my "artist's statement" [2] on the web. [3]
>
> The notion expressed there is that the intended piece -- the
> "embodiment of mind" -- emerges slowly from the hot workpiece.  The
> imagined or intended form may change with each blow, "accidents" may
> happen that are then incorporated into the image in mind. [4]

I cannot speak for anyone else, but if accidents were not allowed I 
would be in serious trouble.
>
> I once had a piece rejected from a juried show on the grounds of
> "uncontrolled workmanship".

The "art" world is one of those places where the most inconceivable 
stupidity is not only acceptable, but is often elevated upon the great 
altars of worship.

  [5] This little gargoyle was partly a
> demo, partly fooling around, partly group work with various strikers
> at a week-long workshop.  There is a fracture in the metal that was
> allowed to remain. Not a great piece but it embodies the process from
> which it emerged.  The juror for the show from which it was rejected
> was a German high-art guy who made little (but huge for jewelry)
> box-like "jewelry" pieces composed of dozens of parts from different
> precious metals, fitted together with perfect, machine-like precision,
> soldered invisibly, dressed and polished to perfect planarity.  There
> was clearly no meeting of minds here. :-) But it was a perfect exhibit
> of Pye's distinction.

Each has its place.  What annoys me is the intolerance (due often to 
ignorance, but not always) of those of one mind for those of others. 
Why not just start screeching, "burn the witch!" while you're at it?

Variance of opinion is all well and good, but when judging in such 
capacities something of a standard ought to exist, and here I mean a 
rational standard.  Some will say that rationality may have no place in 
art, to which I respond, "feh!"

It is most interesting to note the rigidity of thinking, corralled into 
narrow channels, that so many people display.  It breeds a linear 
intolerance of difference that becomes inappropriate beyond a boundary 
of degree or character, here "propriety" being a key issue, and one I 
believe raised in Peter's speech, albeit implicitly.  Just as fear and 
hatred have their rightful places in our lives, they readily go morbid 
because people do not understand the parameters of their keep and use. 
Intolerance of an error in a machine-made piece may be perfectly 
understandable - necessary in fact.  Blindly applying the same degree of 
intolerance to a wrought iron gate as one would to an optical flat makes 
no sense, yet how many times do we see such misapplication?
>
> cr>  At the last meeting of The Gulf Coast Blacksmiths. we discussed
> cr>  the speech.  The old farts like me, were in general agreement, but
> cr>  many of the younger members seemed bored by it.

I attended one of Peter's classes at JCCFS.  We spent a week doing 
nothing but the practice of hammer control and judgment by eye.  We 
built nothing and walked away with about 1/2 dozen short pieces of iron 
that were nothing but geometrical forms.  Some of the people in the 
class, including a couple of older farts, complained in conversation 
about this and I was utterly perplexed by it.  Any time I speak with 
Peter, which is not very often, I remind him how he completely ruined 
black smithing for me when he lead me to learn how precisely I could 
make metal move with nothing more than the hammer and anvil, thereby 
lifting me from my former and blissful fog.  I thoroughly enjoyed that 
week and would even do it again, yet most of the other students 
intimated that they didn't think the class was that useful or interesting!

Perhaps they were utterly fantastic smiths, though I do not recall it 
being so.  I think the broader perspective was lacking there - the 
overbearing desire for spectacular results - here "spectacular" fitting 
some definition outside of my own personal opinions.  I found enormous 
value in what was demonstrated and to which I was exposed and trained. 
But then again I am a basics kind of guy and always have been, vis-a-vis 
most others who seem to like to go from step A to step Z, skipping steps 
B through Y.  Symptom of our cultural times, I suspect.  A symptom of 
the "machine mentality" that has arisen over the past 12 decades and 
especially in the past 4 or 5, and especially especially the past 2.

All the advances in technology have whisked people's mind far and wide 
from the foundations of our humanity and a whole lot of those people 
appear to be just fine with that.  To each his own, but I prefer another 
balance that does not shut out what we are in preference for the dull 
uniformity of machine perfection.

If anyone is tempted to think that I view myself as some great sage of 
difference, banish the suspicion.  During that same week I was forging 
out an 8-sided, tapered piece about 18" long intended to be part of a 
candle stick.  I was very much in machine-mentality mode when I 
dolefully came to Peter complaining about how imperfect it was (it 
wasn't, but I did not see it at that momoent because of where my mind 
was resting).  Peter looked at me - gave me THAT look - and spoke to the 
effect of telling me that one must understand the difference between 
that which comes from a machine and the natural variation found in 
COMPETENT hand work.  He referred to my work as competent - you could 
have pushed me over with a feather. :)

Looking back on it, the piece was actually quite good and something of 
which I can feel some pride.  The facets were flat, straight, and 
equally consistent in all important ways to a tolerance that was not 
only good, but very good.  I did that.  It made me feel very pleased. 
More importantly, Peter shook me loose (didn't take much beyond simple 
awareness) from my subconscious and inappropriate application of the 
machine-mind to hand-wrought work.  I've been fine ever since.

So yes, Peter Ross you ruined black smithing for me forever.  ;)
>
> I got into this stuff because I was taken (seized?) by the magic of
> moving hot iron around with a hammer.

Creating something from "nothing".  Making metal flow and move was it 
for me.


> Did I say "quicker"? Most people under 30 have grown up with
> computers.  Things happen instantly.  If they don't, you strive (or
> someone does) to make them do so.  You buy a new computer or optimize
> the code or buy more bandwidth -- whatever your skills and pocket book
> will support.  Imagine it, clikky-click, it happens. To the extent
> that you use computers to do stuff, the computer experience frames
> your perspective. Hitting apiece of iron a thousand times is
> accompnied, then, by inner dialog about how to do it faster, not about
> what's happening under the hammer, inside the iron, in your wrist,
> elbow&  shoulder.

Methinks this is a broadly common human proclivity.  Nothing wrong with 
it, per sé, but there is another human proclivity at work: that of 
misapplying otherwise sound ideas.  This is what gets us into a lot of 
trouble.
>
> This is not a slur upon youth (I'm one of the Old Farts, too) because
> I see it happening to myself. After years with no electricity, I've
> spent a lot of time doing computer stuff since I got my first CP/M box
> in '87. Sit up all night, tweaking code, trying to figure out how it
> works, compile, and after that the task can be accomplished over and
> over again, instantly.  Don't have to re-type a whole page to correct
> a typo.  I find I don't have the patience I once did when standing at
> the anvil.  More, planning a project that will involve making the tool
> to make the tool to... [rinse and repeat...] to make the piece looms
> more intimidatingly that it once did.  I resist it but it still looms,
> y'know?

We seek greater power.  It is in our very fabric.  Look at children, how 
they exult in their conquests - walking, talking, tying the shoes, 
learning to fish, riding a bike, and so forth.  It is the acquisition of 
new skills and powers that those gatherings impart to us.  The down side 
is that we also tend to become unmindful in the broader sense, becoming 
so very focused on our specific endeavors.
>
> There's another factor that might have some relevance. I recall that
> when I first started meeting other smiths, their chops were very odd
> for people in a manual trade: Many of the old guys had less than 8th
> grade education.  The young guys had dual degrees in philosophy and
> Germanic studies; PhD in biochemistry; master's in biology; BA in
> psychology; BSc in chemistry; BSc in engineering; master's in fine
> art. A similar situation existed in the 60s&  70s when the digital
> world was being invented. There were no degrees in computer science.
> Hackers were mathematicians, electrical engineers, chemists, musicians
> (!) and the odd Not Elsewhere Classified eccentric genius.
> I don't have any clear picture of how this might affect the latest
> crop if blacksmiths because I haven't met very many of them but it
> might be worth reflection.

I've thought on such things more than perhaps I should have.  Nothing 
much different there, IMO in the sense that the differences that ARE 
there arise because of the presence of the blinders.  In general I find 
people do not wander much beyond the boundaries of their mental worlds, 
save perhaps in a few select direction such as their personal 
proclivities might allow/dictate.  This, of course, is difficult to tell 
with any certainty since it can be tough to divine the inner workings of 
the minds of others.  One must endeavor to step outside of their worlds 
at the most fundamental levels in order to obtain new perspectives. 
This is a habit and intention I developed when I was in my early teens. 
  I am not sure why, but I think it related to my observations and 
interest in the fact that people survived and flourished for many 
thousands of years prior to this "modern" age of ours.  If modern means 
are in fact so essential to survival, how in God's name did those people 
manage?  I smelled the faint but unmistakable scent of bullshit in the 
air even at that early time in my life and I guess my drive to find 
truth is strong and stubborn in me, so I went on a quest and have been 
on it ever since.