Is This Art?

Is this (coaster) art? To be considered art, does the object have to be displayed as a nonfunctional thing? Or can functional items be considered art? Can they be considered fine art?

I made a set of eight coasters using tiny pieces of leftover fabric that I had dyed. They are backed with felt and have old floppy disk plastic covers inside to make them stiff and keep condensation on glasses from seeping through them onto furniture.

As I made them and after they were finished, I wondered what they would look like scaled up and mounted in frames. Would that change the way they were perceived? So I used an App called ArtScale to check it out.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked them. Usually, when an artist tries to scale up a work to a size significantly larger, there is too much empty space or not enough contrast in texture or some other element to support the design. But, I like the way these look. It would be impossible to recreate them exactly because of the nuances of the dyed fabrics.

Some of them are better than others, but all of these have promise. If I was to create these in this large size, would I keep the burlap edges? Would I have the edges stay as uneven as they are on the coasters? Would I machine stitch or hand stitch? Would I make the stitching completely parallel to the edges or have it uneven as it is on the coasters?

I don’t know the answers to the questions, but I know it would be an adventure worth trying.