"These artists are proud of the quality of their craftsmanship," Ruiz says. "In their work, there is also a concern with creating something that is beautiful." Ruiz knows that highlighting that aspect of this art may be seen as a daring move. That’s because, in addition to demoting the inherent value of the handmade, today’s prevailing postmodernist critical thinking, which asserts that the meaning or value of anything depends on the shifting contexts in which it is perceived, considers "beauty" a mere "construction." It argues that social, cultural, economic and other factors determine what is "beautiful" at any given time. Nothing is fixed or constant. Thus, craftsmanship’s value is disputable, too.

However, for David Revere McFadden, chief curator at the Museum of Arts & Design (formerly the American Craft Museum) in New York, craftsmanship is an enduring quality that does help shape the best artistic works. It is, he says, "an attitude toward one’s creative work" that affects an artist’s "engagement" with his or her materials. McFadden points out that craftsmanship "is ultimately about the ability to effect this transformation" of raw materials "with the goal of communicating visual, social, cultural, political, spiritual or emotional meaning."

Postmodernist and conceptualist attitudes and trends may still dominate the art establishment, but the sun has not set on the value and pleasure—to artist and viewer alike—that good craftsmanship in art can bring. From his vantage point as someone who sees hundreds of artists’ new and recent creations each year, McFadden observes, "I think the tendency to privilege concept over execution is history. Artists are once again making things—and the making is once again a part of the meaning of things. This is why traditional handicraft practices—knitting, embroidery, joinery, glassblowing, weaving—are once again central to the practices of making contemporary art."

Thus, in the best works of "fine art" or "craft," craftsmanship, which might also be described as the recognizable touch of the artist’s hand, may not be something incidental, but perhaps it may be more of an essential, even defining quality. Stevens says he sees his students at New York’s Parsons School of Design, where he teaches a course in design-and-materials fundamentals for illustrators, come to this realization on their own. "It’s exciting to watch, since they all do so much of their work on computers," he says. "They start getting their hands dirty and seeing how well they can make something with their own hands—and they love it."

New York correspondent Edward M. Gomez is writing a book of essays on outside-the-mainstream and "post-postmodernist" art. He is a co-author of The Art of Adolf Wölfli: St. Adolf—Giant—Creation.