Bad Crafts: String art
Once again, in researching this particular bad craft, I found a really nice example of how it can be done right, in a modern, clean, contemporary fashion. But this is an exception, because for the most part, string art is a craft which is rooted firmly in the past.
For some reason in the 1960s and 1970s, people decided to start making pictures out of string. Mostly pictures of owls and sunsets, from what I can tell. Here is how you make one of these pictures: you pound nails into a board, and wrap string around them. It's like Connect The Dots, but for adults, and meant for display on your living room wall.
I remember a great aunt who had a string art owl hanging on her living room wall. Her home had wood paneling throughout, and was completely stuck in the past. It was like Junior Soprano's house, basically. Can you smell the musty furniture? Oh yeah.
Anyway, whenever my grandmother took me over to visit, I had trouble tearing my eyes away from the string art owl. I used to fantasize about snipping all the strings, or plucking them like a guitar, or just rearranging them on their pegs. String art is a craft which just begs to be messed with somehow.
Most examples of vintage string art are done in classic 70s shades of chocolate brown, rusty orange, amber yellow, and avocado green. Honestly they have some kitsch value I suppose, but I can't help but wonder about the need for dusting. Unless you figure out how to contain your ironic string art masterpiece inside a glass case, eventually you're going to have to figure out how to dust the darned thing without pulling all the strings off.
As with crochet, string art had an unusual fondness for owls. I bet if you were to visit your nearest thrift shop right this second, you would find a string art owl in there. Yikes!
Image courtesy Flickr/Darwin Bell