 April 2009
Greetings!
The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design (CCCD) has launched ENEWS to keep you current with all our programs, exhibits and events. ENEWS will be sent out monthly with most news linking to more lengthy information found on our website www.craftcreativitydesign.org. Announcements cards will still be mailed for upcoming exhibits and talks. If you are on our mailing list to receive an announcement card for exhibits and would prefer to receive the information through ENEWS, please let us know and it will save us a stamp! Dian Magie, Executive Director 2009 North Carolina 8th Annual CRAFT THINK-TANK
Convened by the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design
*All images compliments of Phil Renato
Each year we plan a trip for participants in the Think Tank to learn about various happenings in the Asheville area. The photo on the left was taken in the studio of Deb Karash at Marshall High Studios in Marshall, NC. The middle photo shows Ayumi Horie and Annet Couwenburg at Blue Spiral 1 Gallery in Asheville. We also visited the River Arts District where Brian McCarthy, owner of Highwater Clays, provided a history and overview on the River Arts District. The photo on the right shows Elizabeth Agro, Stoney Lamar, Jane Sauer, Tom Loeser and Leisa Rindquist during the Think Tank, which takes place over two days, filled with lively discussion on a wide range of topics. The weekend concludes with a dinner, this year at Grovewood Café in Asheville, and we invite members of the community and universities to join us. PARTICIPANTS A full report, including discussion topics, will be available on our website soon. A report on all previous Think Tanks is currently available on our website. 2009 WINDGATE FELLOWSHIPS ANNOUNCED
The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design is pleased to announce the ten 2009 Windgate Fellowship winners. These ten graduating undergraduate students each receive $15,000. There were 28 finalists from the 89 applications representing the 69 invited universities and colleges. The 2009 panel members included: Elisabeth Agro, The Nancy M. McNeil Associate Curator of American Modern and Contemporary Crafts and Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Sandra Alfoldy, Associate Professor of Craft History at NSCAD University and Associate Curator of Fine Craft at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; Love Jonsson, a free-lance craft and design critic and curator and a teacher at The School of Design and Crafts at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden; and Dana Moore, in her sixteenth year as program director for Penland School of Crafts. View the work of the ten fellowship winners and read a summary of their proposals. 2009 Windgate Fellowship Awards 2009 Finalists UPCOMING EXHIBITION
Vivian Beer, Current, designed 2004, steel and paint, 24 x 16 x 36"
Susan Link, Walnut Chair, 2003, 23 x 24 x 32" Austin Rhodes, Stance Chair, 2008, Cherry, Cherry Veneer, Leather, 21 x19 x 36" Curtis Buchanan, Mantis Chair, White pine, red oak, milk paint, hickory bark, 2009, 20 x 20 x 44" Susan Hutchinson, Soose Bench, 2006, forged mild steel, 5 ft x 30" x 3.5 ft Ken Tuell, MacKintosh Comfort, African Mahogany and fabric, 2009, 24 x 20 x 48" "Are Chairs Just for Sitting?"
Guest curated by Wayne Raab May 5 - August 14, 2009 Gallery Talk with Wayne Raab followed by a reception Thursday, May 14th at 6pm Artists:
"Western North Carolina has a rich history of furniture making and chairs being just one of the functions a furniture designer/maker might produce. This exhibition however is not about the history, but more about what is currently produced with a nod to history. The contemporary designer, craftsman, or artist has come from a variety of backgrounds. Some are self-taught, some have apprenticed with a "master" and some have taken the academic route and have attended colleges and universities. Their inspiration for what they produce is as varied as their backgrounds. Some explore function or if it is comfortable, some start with the material they choose to work with, some have exceptional technical skills, and some have their own unique design or art language to express themselves with. So chairs are not just about sitting and comfort, but as much about the artist /designer/ maker and their personal expression in their work." Wayne Raab was born and raised near Buffalo, NY. He earned his Bachelors of Science degree in Art Education from State University College of NY at Buffalo and his Masters of Fine Arts degree from the School for American Craftsman at Rochester Institute of Technology. Wayne set up the Professional Crafts Woodworking program at Haywood Community College were he taught for over 32 years. Though he thinks he has learned more about woodworking from his many students over the years, he has had the opportunity of studying with many woodworkers and teachers, like Doug Sigler, Jere Osgood, Bill Keyser, and Tage Frid. Recently he retired from teaching and is doing his own designing and woodworking on speculation and commission work. CURRENT EXHIBITION
SOUL'S JOURNEY: INSIDE THE CREATIVE PROCESS
22 Contemporary Object Makers from the Southeast Jan. 23 - April 25, 2009
This exhibition features 22 accomplished contemporary object makers living in the Southeast - from Virginia to Florida - working in ceramic, fiber, glass, metal, and wood. The exhibit developed from is a six-part documentary series (of the same name) illuminating the creative process through an intimate view of these working artists told largely through their own words. The film was conceived and produced by David Hutto, Vice President for Technology at Blue Ridge Community College, and videographer Chanse Simpson. The exhibition complements the documentary, showcasing significant works by these artists and are representative of the diverse creative traditions and cultural heritage in this region. GALLERY HOURS ARE 10-5 MONDAY THRU FRIDAY 2009 CRAFT RESEARCH FUND GRANTS - DEADLINE JULY 1, 2009
Guidelines and applications are now available online at www.craftcreativitydesign.org for the 2009 Craft Research Fund, awarding PROJECT GRANTS of up to $15,000 for research in United States craft by academics, independent scholars, and curators and GRADUATE RESEARCH GRANTS of up to $10,000 to graduate students currently enrolled in a graduate program in an accredited college or university for research related to a thesis or dissertation on United States craft. This is a national award program in its fourth year, administered by the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design. Deadline for the 2009 grants in both categories is July 1, 2009, with announcement of awards mid-September for research beginning October 1, 2009 to be completed within 18 months. OF RELATED INTEREST
APRIL IS WOODWORKING MONTH in Asheville!
Hunt Clark, BMP7/082008, bleached maple, 20 x 19 x 26". Currently exhibited in CCCD’s "Soul's Journey: Inside the Creative Process" exhibit
April was designated by the City of Asheville as "Woodworking Month" last year. The following are events happening throughout the month: Collectors of Wood Art (CWA) will hold their annual forum here in Asheville April 2-4. The CWA Forum is an annual event that brings together those interested in contemporary wood art. Members, as well as non-members, attend presentations by artists, curators, critics and collectors discussing the creation, collection and conservation of wood art, historical aspects of contemporary wood art and other topics relating to wood art. Keynote lecture by Martha Connell April 2nd at 7pm Connell has been the owner and director of Connell Gallery in Atlanta since 1985. She has also curated a number of museum exhibitions dealing with art quilts, figurative ceramics, studio furniture and woodworking, including an exhibition of turned wood that traveled in Europe as a cultural presentation of the United States through the USIA Arts America Program. Connell has served as a juror for many craft shows, including the Philadelphia Craft Show and Smithsonian Craft Show. She is currently on the Board of Governors of Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. Asheville Hardware and Asheville Woodworking School are featuring many free demos and a line-up of woodworking classes. Call 252-8088 for more information. Asheville Woodworking School occupies 2,000 square feet in the lower level of Asheville Hardware at 91 Biltmore Ave. Folk Art Center's Focus Gallery March 28 - May 19 will feature the work of wood artists, Desmond Suarez and David Datwyler. Desmond Suarez, of Sabbath-Day Woods in Canton, NC, creates handcrafted, Shaker-inspired furniture made with Appalachian hardwoods. David Datywler is an artist from Spartanburg, SC who specializes in sculptural and figurative wood turning. The Folk Art Center is located at Milepost 382 on the Blue Ridge Parkway in east Asheville. For more information, visit www.craftguild.org or call 828-298-7928. The Carolina Mountain Woodturners will present a woodturning demonstration in the Folk Art Center's auditorium on Saturday, April 11 from 10am to 4pm. This free demonstration is open to the public. For more information, call 828-298-7928 or visit www.carolinamountainwoodturners.org. Blue Spiral 1 is featuring the "National Wood Invitational" through April 25th including twenty artists: An exceptional array of objects created using a variety of techniques from seventeen of the country's leading artists working in the medium -- including carved sculpture, turned vessels, and wall installations. Call 1-800-291-2513 or visit www.bluespiral1.com for more information. Grovewood Gallery hosts "Turning to the Future: A Fresh Look at Wood Art" through May 11, 2009. Grovewood Gallery has the honor of hosting a show for the American Association of Woodturners - an international, non-profit society dedicated to the advancement of woodturning. This juried exhibition will include turned and carved wood as well as wall mounted pieces and free standing sculptural forms. Call 253-7651 or visit www.grovewood.com for more information. Country Workshops in Marshall is offering a "Rustic Windsor Chair Tutorial" from March 30, 2009 to April 3, 2009. The rustic Windsor chair made in this course utilizes a large, comfortable seat and a four-piece sculpted arm-bow. Making this chair serves as an excellent introduction to Windsor chair making. Call 656-2280 for more information. West Virginia University Ceramics 2009 China Program
FEW SPACES LEFT FOR BOTH SUMMER AND FALL!!! WE NOW HAVE SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE FOR BOTH SUMMER AND FALL!!! WE HAVE ALSO ADDED A SECOND SUMMER PROGRAM GEARED FOR K-12 EDUCATORS AND UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ON THE QUARTER SYSTEM!!!! Through a unique linkage, the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute, and West Virginia University have teamed to offer a comprehensive study opportunity for the serious advanced or professional ceramic artist/potter. The Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute is considered to be China's finest ceramics art and design school. In fact West Virginia University is the only western university with a campus in China. We have teamed to offer a study and travel program in the Peoples Republic of China where students will have the opportunity to study with some of China's most prominent teachers and ceramic artists. China's roots in ceramic art history are strong and deep. For thousands of years, Chinese artisans have developed and mastered techniques and artistry that has set the standard of excellence in ceramics throughout the world. High fired porcelains, underglaze and overglaze techniques, celadons, copper reds, temmoku, yaoware carving, ash glazes and tri-colored lead glazes are just a few of the contributions made by Chinese artisans over the centuries. Summer Semester I - 2009 * 5 1/2 Week Program May 24 - June 30 This fee covers International airfare, in-country travel, all lodging, food (an exception being during the Beijing travel portion of the program), materials, and 6 graduate or undergraduate transferable credits from West Virginia University. Summer Semester II - 2009 *4 Week Program geared for K-12 Educators & University Students on the Quarter System! June 15 - July 15 This fee covers International airfare, in-country travel, all lodging, food (an exception being during the Beijing travel portion of the program), materials, and 6 graduate or undergraduate transferable credits from West Virginia University. Fall Semester 2009 * Semester long Program September 7 - December 14 This fee covers the entire cost of International airfare, in-country travel, all program fees, insurance, living accommodations and 12 transferable credits from West Virginia University. 2009 Spring Semester Ceramics Residency Program in China Late February-June* If you or anyone you know may be interested in any of the 4 programs, more information and applications are available at: art.ccarts.wvu.edu/international_programs/china_program CONFERENCES
The Furniture Society 2009 Conference
"Industrious: The Design, Craft & Commerce of Furniture Making" June 10- - 13, 2009 Appalachian State University, Boone, NC For more information visit www.furnituresociety.org PUBLICATIONS
Choosing Craft: The Artist's Viewpoint Choosing Craft explores the history and practice of American craft through the words of influential artists whose lives, work, and ideas have shaped the field. Editors Vicki Halper and Diane Douglas construct an anecdotal narrative that examines the post-World War II development of modern craft, which came of age alongside modernist painting and sculpture and was greatly influenced by them as well as by traditional and industrial practices. The anthology is organized according to four activities that ground a professional life in craft--inspiration, training, economics, and philosophy. Halper and Douglas mined a wide variety of sources for their material, including artists' published writings, letters, journal entries, exhibition statements, lecture notes, and oral histories. The detailed record they amassed reveals craft's dynamic relationships with painting, sculpture, design, industry, folk and ethnic traditions, hobby craft, and political and social movements. Collectively, these reflections form a social history of craft. Choosing Craft ultimately offers artists' writings and recollections as vital and vivid data that deserve widespread study as a primary resource for those interested in the American art form. This book is publishing by The University of North Carolina Press and is available at www.uncpress.unc.edu The Craftsman and the Critic When English craftsman, poet, and socialist William Morris advised consumers in the 1880s to "have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful," he prompted a movement for design reform in Britain, Europe, and America. Championing Morris's views, the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston led the quest for "usefulness and beauty" in the United States. As the oldest, continuously-operating arts and crafts organization in the country, it exerted considerable influence. Among the Boston reformers were design critics, whose profession became increasingly important in the nineteenth century. Many of them-including a number of prominent women-were also architects, designers, craft workers, educators, and theorists. Their views on design reform were substantive and often controversial. This richly illustrated book explores the interaction of craft workers and critics as they collaborated to improve the quality of the living and working environment in Boston and across the United States. Beverly K. Brandt examines multiple overlapping topics-the evolution of the profession of design criticism in the nineteenth century; Boston in the "Gilded Age" as a center for reform, epitomized by the Aesthetic and the Arts and Crafts movements; the formative years of the Society of Arts and Crafts (1897-1917); key personalities associated with that organization; the theoretical underpinnings of the Arts and Crafts movement; and a diaspora of Boston reformers who left the city to promote usefulness and beauty across the country and abroad. In an epilogue, she discusses the Arts and Crafts revival which has flourished since the 1970s and contemplates why the search for usefulness and beauty continues to resonate today. This book is available through the University of Massachusetts Press at A Theory of Craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression by Howard Risatti. What is craft? How is it different from fine art or design? Risatti examines these issues by comparing handmade ceramics, glass, metalwork, weaving, and furniture to painting, sculpture, photography, and machine-made design from Bauhaus to the Memphis Group. He describes craft's unique qualities as functionality combined with an ability to express human values that transcend temporal, spatial, and social boundaries. Craft must articulate a role for itself in contemporary society, says Risatti; otherwise it will be absorbed by fine art or design and its singular approach to understanding the world will be lost. Knitting America: A Glorious Heritage from Warm Sock to High Art. This is the history that Knitting America celebrates. The first fully detailed, full-color, comprehensive history of knitting in America from colonial times to the present, the book conveys the social and historical realities that the craft embodied as well as the emotional narrative that unfolded at the hands of the nations knitters. With vintage patterns and designs typical of each era, Knitting America comprises a knitted history of American society. Here are the trends and the shortages, the historical happenings and the social movements, the advertising and economic developments that affected knitting and style. Also included are 20 historic knitting patterns for todays knitters. Beautifully illustrated with vintage pattern booklets, posters, postcards, black-and-white historical photographs, and contemporary color photographs of knitted pieces in private collections and in museums, this book is a treasure of history and craft, an exquisite view of America through the handiwork of its knitters. Makers: 20th Century American Studio Craft (working title) At the first "Think-Tank" convened by CCCD in 2002, of craft faculty, museum director and curators, scholars and critics, the initiative ranked as most important to the advancement of the field was a history of American Craft in the twentieth Century. The journey toward making this a reality can be tracked on www.craftcreativitydesign.org/research/history.php. 20th Century American Studio Craft by Janet Koplos and Bruce Metcalf is with the publisher, the University of North Carolina Press. Long awaited, the book, researched and written under the auspices of CCCD, will include 500+ images and also serve as an undergraduate text. It will be released in 2009. The University of North Carolina Press is making craft history and criticism a focus of the Press. The Journal of Modern Craft, edited by Glenn Adamson, Victoria & Albert Museum, UK; Edward S. Cooke, Jr. Yale University, USA; Tanya Harrod, Royal College of Art, UK, is the first peer-reviewed academic journal to provide an interdisciplinary and international forum in its subject area. It address all forms of making that self-consciously set themselves apart from mass production - whether in the making of designed objects, artworks, buildings or other artefacts. Published three times a year in March, July and November. To place an order/subscription visit www.bergpublishers.com and download order forms or email custerserv@turpin-distribution.com. About Us
The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design is an inter-institutional Center of the University of North Carolina. The mission of the regional UNC Center is to support and advance craft, creativity and design in education and research, and, through community collaborations, to demonstrate ways that craft and design provide creative solutions to community issues. The mission of the nonprofit CCCD is to support the mission of the UNC center through funding, programs, and outreach to artists, craft organizations, schools in the community, region and nation. email: info@craftcreativitydesign.org |
