[Artemisia] arts and sciences (Godwin)

[S CLEMENGER]

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: morgan wolf<mailto:morganblaidddu at yahoo.com> 
  To: Kingdom of Artemisia mailing list<mailto:artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org> 
  Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 6:42 PM
  Subject: Re: [Artemisia] arts and sciences (Godwin)



  Arwen my darling, as much as I love you, you are wrong- there is much art in archery, although I will agree much is craft as well.  Making basic arrows, as I do, is a craft, or science, but turning a chunk of wood into a beautiful bow is also art- not everyone can do it, or even learn it, and it is a beautiful thing, and teh artist invests tehmself into it.
   
  <snipped>
  *I've no doubt that well-crafted arrows and bows are a joy to hold, and a delight to the eye (I've seen some amazing ones at LPTs), but *they are not, in and of themselves, "archery."  They are the tools that one uses in the the performance of archery....(I'm picking nits, but still....)

  *I think you could make a substantive argument that archery is an art in that it's a *martial* art, but it is, to my mind, still more martial *than art.  In the SCA context, that would make it more of a fighting thing, than an "A&S" thing, although I've seen my share of battles in *an A&S context, and have also wondered at the beauty of a really well-fought fight, or beautifully placed shot....Viscountess Katlin used to ruminate on something similar--she used to toss out the idea of having set pieces or sets that the SCA's martial artists could perform in an A&S context, much along the same lines as various katas in modern martial arts.....
  *--Maire