On the hill that overlooked Fort Mason, I scanned down below to find any semblance of a man who looked like my close friend and one time TA, Jonathan. We met in a furniture design class, one of the most rewarding and engaging experiences UC Davis had to offer.
He was the TA, and as such, kept a close eye on the 15 or so of us who decided we were ready to actually make things with our own hands. After screaming at me on the first day, I had a feeling we’d be fast friends. Nowhere to go but up, right? Plus, he’d just saved my thumb from being cut off by an exceptionally sharp-looking buzzsaw.
Fast forward a few years, and Jonathan and I are now meeting up to immerse ourselves in the West Coast Craft Fair. West Coast Craft is a sort of Coachella for Bay Area folks who drive Subarus, have framed Monet prints in their home, and whose favorite meal is some seasonal variety of soup. My personal bias aside, it attracts all sorts of people, both the obvious and not. Over the years, it’s grown exponentially- what once felt like a “if you know, you know” glimpse into the creative underground of the Bay has now turned into a huge event. Jonathan and I were here because of our shared love for good design, with empty tote bags, and high hopes.
Coming down the hill, Jonathan’s first words to me were a compliment regarding my sunglasses. I was wearing a pair from Jacques Marie Mage, a splurge purchase impulsively made after nearly dying on my bike. The situation was thus- after entering a downhill climb, a rogue sunbeam escaped past the treeline of the Presidio and hit my face, timed almost exactly with a pothole around the bend. I was thoroughly shook, and went online to purchase a pair the very same day.
If I was going to protect myself from harmful UV rays, I may as well do it with something that had expertly sourced materials, meticulous artisan craft, as well as a shape & form that made me excited to actually use the thing. I like Jonathan because I am almost certain he feels the same as I do, with an affection that stretches to nearly every man made object.
For as long as I can remember, this is the way it’s been. I have always been enamored with things that have been made a certain way, or crafted in a particular manner. Is it practical? Well, not really. Is it affordable? Also no. But I look around my room as I type this, and I am brought great joy- ceramic vases from Roma Norte, colorful crates from Danish islands, and various souvenirs from yard sales around the United States decorate my shelves. An earthenware pot holds flowers I received for my birthday, besides it sits a Konica Big Mini, perhaps the most charming camera ever put into production. (When you click the power button, a square lens eeks into existence, protruding its little head from the body of the camera.) My friends were once perplexed by all this, but I think they’ve come around. If they thought me needing things to look a certain way was a passing trend, they’ve been endlessly humbled (and annoyed) by the lengths I go to achieve a personal aesthetic harmony.
Which leads us to West Coast Craft. As Jonathan and I step into the old warehouse where it is held, there’s a buzz in the air. It feels huge. It is huge. There are what I can only describe as swarms of people, slowly coiling around the faire, examining, appraising, judging. It is nearly impossible to make out just how many people are in this building, but it has to be near capacity. Not since Outside Lands and its annual swelling of Golden Gate Park had I witnessed so many people in one place, so many folks both young and old coming to perceive, and to be perceived. I was of course, without a doubt, one of them.
As we melded into a relatively smaller swath of people, Jonathan and I began talking about what it was we were looking for here at West Coast Craft. He, an accomplished woodworker, was looking for other furniture makers to talk shop with. I, however, was much more vague. He pressed me on it, not in an aggressive way, but a familiar one- the way a TA presses a student when they want to unearth something meaningful from the dirt mound of their mind. I caved. I told him I was looking for myself, or a piece of myself, or, most confusingly, a perspective about a piece of myself. I had a desire to see myself reflected in the work of someone else: a mutual understanding between me and a complete stranger, bound by anything from artistry to craftsmanship. I told him it was deeply selfish, and Jonathan replied that all creative work was- that’s what made it special.
With that in mind, we kept walking the labyrinthian grounds of West Coast Craft. I was enamored by just how many booths there were, it seemed as if every single person who may have wanted a spot got one. There were some retail stores I recognized from around town, some fairly bigger brands in the mix, and most curiously, lots of food and beverage people. Like, here’s a cookie, but make it aesthetic. These were foods that seemed to exist only to be documented before consumed, a good metaphor for the irony of our current moment.
But among it all, I noticed a singular trend, one that pervaded all genres of West Coast Craft vendor. It hit me like a truck speeding a hundred miles an hour. Oh! This is what I was seeing, I thought. It was a revelation concentrated in the halls of Fort Mason, a come to Jesus moment in the sistine chapel of expensive tote bags.
The trend was one that had bright pastels, heavy use of checkerboard print, and a bent towards the playful. It was seen in the work presented on the tables, but also in those who presented the work themselves, dressed in jumpsuits, overalls, and rompers. It could be seen in the clay they used for their ceramics, the hues they decided on for screenprints. The shapes of their objects, decidedly the opposite of minimal, were not meant to blend in, but to attract. To put it simply, it was a childlike wonder about the world, reflected in the aesthetics of their craft. I couldn’t escape this throughline, it seemed as if nearly every other vendor had embraced it. But why?
This is where I spoke up to Jonathan once more. Do you see it, I asked him, first jokingly, but then in an exceptionally genuine tone. It’s almost like….I trailed off, but Jonathan replied with oh yes, there it is, I can see it, look at the shape of that thing! He pointed to a beautifully grotesque ceramic vase, glazed in deep purples, metallic reds, with a crash of a radiant yellow on the side. We got closer, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the thing. It looked like a piece of outsider art, or at the other end of the spectrum, something a preschooler would make. And the price tag was exceptionally steep, so we kept walking.
I wondered, how did we get here? If one was to look around West Coast Craft, the answer lies in the crowd, in both merchant and consumer. The audience here is young- not like, Cocomelon young, but folks around my age, hovering anywhere from 20 to 30 years old. I did not spot a single person with gray hair at the event, save for the hordes of young women doing their best Phoebe Bridgers impression.
For this age group, the current American iteration of “young people”, to review what is happening in the world is to survey the crumbling of institutions and empires. From the return of wars happening on not-so-foreign soil, to the economic crises, to the flailing American dream (which many are leaving to find somewhere else), it is not surprising to see that many are using nostalgia to combat that reality in their art. Not to ignore that reality, but to push back, and to emphasize a time when the world was big, you could afford a house in a city, and that a political impasse was just that. There is a yearning for a time when we weren’t afraid of the future, but when we were excited by it.
This pre-school, whimsical, childlike wonder that I saw envelope the craft fair could not have been planned. We are not living in a world where everyone got together and said “well, alright, let’s bring it back to when we didn’t have anxiety and our parents paid for summer vacation.” Of course it’s easy to say there’s a collective desire for a simpler time, but to see it so heavily reflected in the work people are making, to notice it so vigorously represented in all mediums, that is a special thing.
It coincides quite well with the other side of the coin, which is actually what was missing from the fair. There was a curious absence of minimalism, with nearly no one embracing the once prevalent language of Scandinavian design. It makes sense, all things considered. Why go for precise details, non-offensive hues, and soothing materials when the whole world is on fire? Why embrace subtly, when for our generation, there is nothing subtle about the environmental crisis, economic turbulence, and a global swing towards extremism? By embracing a design language that echoes an artist’s youth, they channel work that expresses both nostalgia for days gone by, and a current resistance to the gloom that may be entering the world.
With an acknowledgement of what aesthetics West Coast Craft Fair was missing, it’s important to shift but to the artists themselves- simply put, what is it that they’re missing? The answer is simple. They are missing the freedom of being able to color outside the lines, with the stability of knowing it’s okay to do so.
As for the actual work itself, well, it can be a bit cringe, a bit tasteless, but there’s value in that, too. I was looking for a piece of myself at this craft fair, to display on my shelf and to proudly tell people about at parties. Instead, what found me were insights into the future. To make art is to be alive, and I found no death kneel at the West Coast Craft Fair. It was quite the opposite, in fact: a rebellion against current affairs, a promise that the next generation will step gloriously into a future they themselves craft.
