Craft Happenings: Fall 2023
Craft Happenings: Fall 2023
Nigerian artist Layo Bright’s Adebisi VII, 2020, kiln-formed glass, 11.5 x 11.5 x 3 in., appears alongside glass artworks from a global group of Black artists in A Two-Way Mirror: Double Consciousness in Contemporary Glass by Black Artists at the Museum of Glass. Photo courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago, Illinois.
Step into fall with these 23 craft exhibitions and events around the country, organized by the month in which they start.
August Openings
Recuerdos de Papel / Paper Memories: Contemporary Papel Picado by Beatriz Vasquez
Richmond Art Museum, Richmond, Indiana
August 12–October 7, 2023
In this exhibition, Indianapolis-based Vasquez, who describes herself as a “Chicanx artivist,” expands the delicate, intricate Mexican cut-paper folk art called papel picado (“perforated paper”) into large-scale paper murals, sculpture, installations, and wearable art—all in aid of a colorful and experimental exploration of her heritage.
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri
For this year’s Atrium Project—presenting work of emerging and mid-career Hispanic and Latinx artists—Peruvian American artist Sarah Zapata literally weaves together the multiple strands of her background in fiber works that ask questions about gender, labor, and identity. The pieces allow the viewer to go deeper into the inquiry by incorporating performance.
Eternal Medium: Seeing the World in Stone
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
August 20, 2023–February 11, 2024
An 18th-century snuffbox in the shape of a dog, included in Eternal Medium, is made of white stone flecked with points of black, creating a Dalmatian effect that also resembles a negative image of the night sky. All the works here show how artists through the ages have showcased Rorschach-like fascination with intricately patterned stone.
Sarah Zapata draws upon the history of Womontown, a lesbian settlement in Kansas City, and queer and feminist textile artworks in Latin America and the United States for her installation So the roots be known at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Photo by Ignacio Torres.
Color Culture: Our History and Heritage Through Fiber
Thousand Islands Art Center, Clayton, New York
August 23–November 17, 2023
This exploration of what the organizers call “personal heritage and cultural history through the use of color” is presented in collaboration with the Fiber Artists Miami Association, an artist-led group that promotes education in textile traditions and technical and artistic development in the fiber arts.
September Openings
Climate Awakening: Crafting A Sustainable Future
Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
September 8, 2023–January 13, 2024
Accompanying this assemblage of craft-based artworks addressing climate change and its multiple effects on ecosystems and human beings will be a series of what the organizers call “action events.” These community-outreach gatherings are intended to translate the works’ messages into concrete efforts to help mitigate the effects of the climate crisis.
Chiffon Thomas: The Cavernous
The Aldrich, Ridgefield, Connecticut
September 15, 2023–March 3, 2024
Thomas’s wide-ranging work in collage, sculpture, and installation interrogates gender, identity, and colonialism in the context of America’s Black diaspora. The artist typically combines fragmentary castings of their own body with reclaimed architectural elements and Biblical quotations; this show presents new work featuring the human body fused with that icon of 1960s futurism, the geodesic dome.
Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
September 17, 2023–January 21, 2024
The birth and growth of abstract painting is one of the key themes of artistic modernism. Less well known is the parallel development of abstraction in woven textiles and pre-loom processes such as basketry, knotting, and netting. Here, more than 150 works demonstrate the complex dialogue between these kindred abstractions during the past 100 years.
Included in Climate Awakening: Crafting a Sustainable Future is Susie Ganch’s Remember Me, Katrina, 2015, used coffee lids, 7 x 12 x 1 ft. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Ruth Duckworth: Life as a Unity
September 21, 2023–February 4, 2024
Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois
Duckworth, known primarily as a “British studio potter,” actually spent the latter half of her life—nearly 50 years—living and working in Chicago, identifying herself as a “sculptor with clay,” and being deeply influenced by currents in American art. The Smart presents a comprehensive view of her environmentally focused work, including tile installations and murals, wall works, and sculptures.
Chiffon Thomas’s Calumet, 2022, Bible covers and thread, 14 x 9.5 x 11.5 in., is a part of Chiffon Thomas: The Cavernous at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Photo courtesy of the artist.
As featured in Sightlines on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa at Bard Graduate Center in New York City: Funerary bracelet (bĩgè sĩmba), copper alloy, by a Gan artist, Burkina Faso, 19th century. Photo by Vincent Girier Dufournier.
This nephrite jade–handled khanjar, circa 1660–61, featured in Eternal Medium: Seeing the World in Stone at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, belonged to the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. Photo courtesy of Museum Associates/LACMA.
Face Value: Portraits from the Arthur S. Goldberg Collection
Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts
September 23, 2023–April 7, 2024
Drawn from the collection of a major Massachusetts collector and philanthropist, this assembly of works in one of the most familiar of artistic genres includes paintings and drawings, but goes beyond paper, oil, and canvas to include pieces in ceramic and resin as well. They share space with works from the Fuller’s permanent collection previously donated by Goldberg.
Sightlines on Peace, Power, and Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa
Bard Graduate Center, New York, New York
September 29–December 31, 2023
The Bard Graduate Center presents an exhibition of traditional African iron, brass, bronze, gold, copper, silver, and alloy objects originally organized by the University of Florida’s Harn Museum of Art, including body adornments, scepters, weapons, currency, and amulets, and adds a powerful update: a selection of works including film, ceramics, metalworks, and sculpture by leading contemporary artists from Africa and the African diaspora.
Weaving at Black Mountain College:
Anni Albers, Trude Guermonprez, and Their Students
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center
Asheville, North Carolina
September 29, 2023–January 6, 2024
Instituted by Anni Albers in 1934, Black Mountain’s textile program never garnered the fame of the fine art and literary programs of the legendary experimental school, and retrospective exhibitions have neglected it as well. This show redresses the imbalance, offering the work of Black Mountain students and contemporary artists who continue the legacy of the BMC weavers.
October Openings
Traditional Cowboy Arts Exhibition & Sale
National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
October 6, 2023–January 2, 2024
Fine examples of saddlemaking, bit and spur crafting, silversmithing, and rawhide braiding will be on display in this show of the arts associated with the ultimate Western icon. The exhibition is mounted—no pun intended—by the Traditional Cowboy Arts Association, all of whose members, besides being artists, are real working cowhands.
A New Deal for Quilts
International Quilt Museum, Lincoln, Nebraska
October 6, 2023–April 20, 2024
In the wake of COVID, when many who were housebound turned to quilting for comfort and self-expression, this show looks to another traumatic period, the Great Depression, when New Deal agencies highlighted quilts as symbols of American frugality and perseverance, and promoted quilting as a vocational skill for women. Colorful quilts are accompanied by the stories of the makers.
Rick Dillingham: To Make, Unmake, and Make Again
New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico
October 6, 2023–June 16, 2024
After renowned Santa Fe scholar, author, collector, curator, dealer, and ceramic artist Dillingham died in 1994, his works were distributed far and wide—from New Mexico to London. The New Mexico Museum of Art has gathered the largest collection of his pieces ever assembled and shows them with select artworks and Indigenous ceramics from Dillingham’s personal collection.
Cannupa Hanska Luger: Speechless
Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada
October 7, 2023–June 2, 2024
Luger creates installations recontextualizing Indigenous experience in new contexts, including science fiction. Speechless references cargo cults, which appeared during World War II, when massive influxes of supplies for American troops on Pacific islands inspired Indigenous people to use magic to bring this prosperity to their own communities. Feathers crafted of paper, ceramic audio speakers, and other elements combine in a retro-futuristic take on this phenomenon.
Between Horizons: Korean Ceramic Artists in the US
The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
October 12–December 31, 2023
The 12 makers featured here all came to the United States and Canada from South Korea to pursue graduate degrees in the ceramic arts. At a time when immigration is a hot-button issue in the US, the show highlights the effects of this major geographical and cultural dislocation on their work and their thinking about art and identity.
Cannupa Hanska Luger’s Greed, 2021, ceramic and mixed media, 15 x 26 x 19 in., appears in his upcoming solo show Speechless at the Nevada Museum of Art. Photo courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York.
Toshiko Takaezu // Lenore Tawney
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas
October 14, 2023–March 25, 2024
Ceramist Takaezu and fiber artist Tawney forged a close friendship for half a century until Tawney’s death in 2007, living together and sharing studio space between 1977 and 1981. Crystal Bridges reunites the friends by bringing together seven of Takaezu’s dynamically glazed ceramic sculptures along with two dramatic, large-scale weavings, two drawings, and an assemblage by Tawney.
The exhibition Toshiko Takaezu // Lenore Tawney at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art features new acquisitions by the two legendary craft artists, whose close friendship spanned decades. LEFT: Toshiko Takaezu, Form Blue #31, 1990, porcelain, 19 x 8.25 x 8.25 in. Photo by Edward C. Robison III. RIGHT: Lenore Tawney, In Fields of Light, 1975, linen, 108 x 100.5 in. Photo by Rich Maciejewski.
As featured in Collidoscope: de la Torre Brothers Retro-Perspective at the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts in El Paso, Texas: Einar and Jamex de la Torre, Mitosis, 2008, blown glass, mixed-media art with resin castings and waterjet-cut aluminum frame, 48 x 48 x 9 in. Photo courtesy of the Art Museum of South Texas.
76th annual Craft Fair of the Southern Highlands
Harrah’s Cherokee Center, Asheville, North Carolina
October 19–22, 2023
Contemporary and traditional works in clay, wood, metal, glass, fiber, natural materials, paper, leather, mixed media, and jewelry will be on display in the autumn outing of this twice-yearly fair highlighting the craftsmanship of the southern Appalachians. Some 200 artists occupy two floors of the downtown Asheville venue, and live music and craft demonstrations are also offered.
Collidoscope: de la Torre Brothers Retro-Perspective
Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, El Paso, Texas
October 20, 2023–January 7, 2024
Spiced with the anarchic humor typical of these Mexico-born siblings, and inspired by Mexican folk art, popular culture, religious imagery, consumer culture, and mythology, the 40 mixed-media works on display in this traveling exhibition include blown-glass sculptures and installations, plus lenticulars—pieces whose imagery changes as the viewer moves from side to side.
A Two-Way Mirror: Double Consciousness in Contemporary Glass by Black Artists
Museum of Glass, Tacoma, Washington
Opens October 21
Taking its cue from W.E.B. DuBois’s definition of double consciousness—the sense Black people have of being both self-aware and aware of being seen through a racist lens—A Two-Way Mirror brings together a multinational group of Black artists who work in a notably “reflective” and lens-like medium ideal for interrogating ideas of identity.
November Openings
47th Annual Philadelphia Museum of Art Contemporary Craft Show
Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
November 3–5, 2023
This jury-chosen exhibition showcases the work of 195 artists in basketry, ceramics, decorative fiber, wearable fiber, furniture, glass, jewelry, leather, metal, mixed media, paper, and wood. An added bonus: selected work by student artists from local colleges and universities. There’s a preview gala on November 2.
Stephen Talasnik: FLOE
Museum for Art in Wood, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
November 3, 2023–February 18, 2024
Philly-born artist Talasnik presents a collection of “archaeological artifacts,” constructed of wood, bamboo, and composite materials, testifying to a vanished future Philadelphia, buried by a natural disaster brought on by climate change. Many of the objects evoke the fate of the most vulnerable: the impoverished, the unhoused, and the stateless.
Fooling the Eye: Optics of Vasarely and Kuhn
Cafesjian Art Trust, Shoreview, Minnesota
November 9, 2023–May 5, 2024
Along with paintings by Victor Vasarely, the Hungarian-born godfather of Op Art, this exhibition highlights the complex glass pieces of North Carolina–based John Kuhn, who works with cold glass pieces that he cuts, polishes, assembles, and fuses. The resulting sculpture reflects and refracts surrounding light in the manner of an outsized diamond. The Cafesjian was recently established by Gerard Cafesjian to share his collection of contemporary and modern art with a focus on glass.
North Carolina flutist and woodworker Lee Entrekin will sell his handmade wooden flutes at the 76th annual Craft Fair of the Southern Highlands in Asheville, North Carolina. Photo courtesy of Southern Highland Craft Guild.
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