What is the value of the handmade object in the high-tech era? This question inspired the development of the Looking Forward project and the exploration of the relationship between craft and new technologies. The Ontario Crafts Council's objective for this project is to build new audiences for craft and inspire fresh thought about its significance as part of our visual culture, using a multi-venue approach: electronic and print media, the virtual gallery and the real. The catalogue includes 50 colour plates of the craft objects in the exhibition Looking Forward: New Views of the Craft Object and the accompanying essays provide a valuable guide to understanding the functions of craft today. The five writers who have contributed to the Looking Forward catalogue are all keen observers of visual culture and how it evolves. They bring to this project the kind of informed looking, from a variety of viewpoints, that can teach us how to see more deeply into the objects, some of which may confront our expectations of craft with unfamiliar forms and intentions. The essays examine ideas, histories, and human behaviours that have helped to shape the nature of craft today, and they include voices of some of the craftspeople discussing their own motivations.

Essayists include Paul Greenhalgh, Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and President Elect of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design; Stuart Reid, Curator of the Art Gallery of Mississauga; Robin Metcalfe, an independent curator and freelance writer from Halifax; Toronto arts journalist Betty Ann Jordan; and Ingrid Bachmann, Assistant Professor at Concordia University, Montreal.

- cover images by Susan Warner Keene, Nature Study #1 (detail), 2000

This is Wood (1999)