Every scenester worth his or her skinny jeans is lighting out for Milwaukee this weekend to catch 2007's first installment of the biannual Art vs. Craft.
The indie craft fair was started by Seattle native Faythe Levine -- yep, her best friend is Andrea Zollo of Pretty Girls Make Graves -- after Chicago's Renegade Craft Fair knocked her socks off. Art vs. Craft enters its fourth year of bringing Milwaukee the very best of indie crafters, designers and artists from around the Midwest and the U.S. Levine keeps very busy with the craft fair and a flotilla of other projects, including the Indie Craft Documentary and its companion book, and Paper Boat, her boutique/gallery in the Bay View neighborhood.
Former Madison husband-and-wife design team Melissa and J.W. Buchanan (the one-and-only Little Friends of Printmaking) have been in the mix almost from jump.
"We first heard about Faythe and Art vs. Craft while we were still living in Madison," Melissa says. "It sounded really cool. Later, when we first did the posters [for the show] in fall of 2005, she offered us a booth at the event. Working with Faythe has been fun. We try to tailor our work for Art vs. Craft toward [her] audience and what the needs of the event are, but we definitely put a lot of ourselves into it, too."
When JW and Melissa moved to Milwaukee to head the Print & Publishing lab at Discovery World last year, it was a homecoming of sorts, since Melissa grew up there. Their projects at the lab include Inkblot Academy, a series of screenprinting and design classes, and curating a visiting artist series.
