JD Harrison ✿ Centerpiece for a crafted future-The reopening of Asheville's Center for Craft features a National Craft Innovation Hub, whose centrepiece is a table by Appalachian architect JD Harrison.
Presha’s Coverlet-Jeffrey Keith considers the bedcover made by his great-great-grandmother as a memoir and describes how its threads bind him to the southern mountains she called home.
Dancing with the anvil-Michael Winkler is impressed by the resilience in the USA, emboded in those who continue to work with iron.
Grunge and graffiti repair-In the exhibition Expressive Repair, Lela Kulkarni finds Miron Kiselev, who helps translate graffiti to textiles.
Tying down art in my own public Idaho-Lily Martina Lee is inspired by the regional variations across the mid-West in the way folks secure their load.
Katie Miller ✿ Seattle lightscapes-Melissa Cameron tracks Katie Miller's progress from the barns of Nebraska to a Seattle filled with the light of the Pacific North-West.
Catharine Ellis and the journey of True Colors-We feature weld-dyer Catharine Ellis, from the book True Colors, by Keith Recker who reflects on the principles that underlie his life in colour, thus far.
Melissa Cameron ✿ Jewellery at our feet-The use of found materials can focus our minds on the world at our feet. Melissa Cameron's new work, Marfa TX, turns this moment into singular jewellery.
Kukuli Velarde ✿ A mi vida-Our August laurel goes to Peruvian-born ceramic artist Kukuli Velarde for her poignant effigy, A mi vida. This object reflects the culture of her birth, her maternal love and concern for child victims of anti-immigrant campaigns.
What we can learn from Zapotec culture-Garland in Oaxaca was a chance for us to learn more about the Zapotec values that underlined their mesmerising crafts, and particularly its place in the world today.
The Our Lady of Mount Carmel Grotto in Rosebank, Staten Island-We tend to think of practices like votives as the archaic domain of Eastern cultures, such as Hindu temple offerings or Buddhist rituals. But the ritual continues in the West through the influence of the Catholic church, not only in the mixed communities of Latin America but also in the Italian neighbourhoods of New York. Built with Faith: Italian American Imagination and Catholic Material Culture in New York City by Joseph Sciorra (Queens College) by Joseph Sciorra documents and analyses the relocation of ritual practices from the old world Italy to the new world USA. The extract below tells the story of a unique grotto in New York. The community labour towards this space reflects the festive solidarity of Guendalisaá […]
Cutting knowledge at Harvard-It's interesting to see Harvard University initiate this project on the craft basis of knowledge. This video offers a preview of "cutting" as a way of understanding how we make a world, deconstructing our philosophical concepts into material processes.
A clay voyage across the Pacific—Omnus Terra-While there is talk of building higher walls on the US border, Shannon Garson has found a way of creating exchange across the water, using ceramics.
Nature craft- In what way can craft be in partnership with nature? The traditional story of craft as an art of civilisation involves controlling nature. Fibre is spun, wood is carved, metal is cast, glass is blown and clay is thrown. Making seems to involve an improvement in the otherwise formless quality of materials found in the environment. Natural substances are mastered in order to manipulate them into forms of useful beauty. So what might be a craft of the anthropocene era, where nature and human are seen to be intertwined? How does craft practice reflect an ecological relation to nature, where the process […]
A Korean Sensibility: Something to Prove-Tony Marsh reflects on the ways Korean ceramics students have developed in response to the stimulus of Long Beach, California
