Charles Krafft - AIN'T HE CRAFTY

stolenspace.com

Krafft has toiled for years in obscurity as a painter and writer in the Northwest, earning himself the dubious distinction of being "The oldest promising young artist in Seattle." Five years ago he joined a guild of lady china painters and acquired the skills to launch a line of hand painted disasters in delft. His career has since taken off like the space shuttle Challenger. Collector plates are something we've all seen in souvenir shops, or advertised in the back pages of supermarket tabloids and Sunday papers, Krafft explains. After wading through the usual swill of bad news and lurid gossip, you can usually find one of those limited editions of a maudlin portrait or a rhapsodic pastoral scene to send away for. But you never find the pictures of the gritty life most of us are living in the late 20th century on ornamental china because no one would want to hang it on their walls, much less eat off it