Peter Thomas
I just spent a little bit of time looking at Peter Thomas and some of his stuff on his website and, regardless of what anyone might say about craft vs. art, charging $2400.00 for a handmade book deserves a certain amount of applause. That’s a skill that can pay some bills.
Peter Thomas’s books are neat to look at. It’s not my place to say that they don’t qualify as art but they don’t move me in any fundamental way. There’s no element of sensitivity attached to it that allows me to get inside of the work and see pieces of the person and identify with it on neither a cerebral or a visceral level. If a work doesn’t do that, then I don’t qualify it as art. However, somebody who would be willing to pay for anything off of his website surely sees something that I don’t and it’s not my place to judge that.
