Blog
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Craft Happenings: Fall 2023
Step into fall with these 23 craft exhibitions and events around the country, organized by the month in which they start. -
Craft Happenings: Summer 2023
Make craft part of your summer plans with these 25 events and exhibitions happening across the country, organized by the month in which they start.
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Wild at Heart
For this issue, the Crafty Librarian dove into the nearly 4,000 artist files in the ACC Library & Archives and discovered that these two artists in particular spent their careers developing and showing their wild sides. -
Second Skins
Elle Barbeito transforms the skins of invasive Burmese pythons into materials for furniture and fashion. The first time she skinned a Burmese python, she made each move carefully. “Layer by layer, I could see all the connections within it. It was fascinating, and a little gross, but also really beautiful at the same time.” -
The Hammer Price
Last July in Los Angeles, a stoneware vessel depicting Popeye the Sailor Man, made in 1987 by artists Magdalena and Michael Frimkess, sold at a Bonhams auction for $65,895. Everyone was shocked, especially the auctioneer. “That was several times the estimated range,” says Jason Stein, Bonhams’s director of Modern Decorative Art and Design. “In the early ’90s, when I got my start, it would have sold in the low thousands or even upper hundreds.” -
The Queue: Alison Elizabeth Taylor
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Fantastical Microcosms
While hiking in the desert earlier this year, So Young Park found the creative jolt for her metalsmithing in glass. While visiting Boston in the early 2000s, the artist saw the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, a display of famed models of cut flowers and leaves so scientifically accurate they were originally studied in botany classes. Park was especially struck by the cross sections and isolated views of plant parts, from ovaries to stamens, that revealed otherwise hidden geometries. -
Remembering: Jack Earl
Ohio ceramic artist and ACC Fellow Jack Earl died on June 17, 2023 at the age of 88. He was known for his figurative porcelain work, equally philosophical and whimsical, that reflected his outlook growing up and living in the Midwest. -
The Queue: Zahra Almajidi
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Dazzling Pictorials
Tyrrell Tapaha sits in front of a large Navajo loom in their living room, building up a section of woven lightning; the weaving comb packs the wefts in meditative rhythm. -
Origin Stories
While hiking in the desert earlier this year, I found a perfect little cube of charcoal in the middle of my path. It stood out against the sandy ground, a deep rich black in stark contrast to the golden-brown surrounding it. I picked it up and examined its shape and texture, waffling about whether I should carry it with me in my palm or put it in one of my pockets, potentially crushing it and having charcoal dust settle into the seams. -
The Queue: John Hermanson
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The Sounds of Summer
With the window open on a warm afternoon, you might hear someone practicing piano down the street, chirping birds gathered in a tree, cars honking at an intersection, or children laughing over a game of soccer in the park. Perhaps you’ll also hear wind chimes, their soft rhythmic ringing letting you know a refreshing breeze is on the way. -
West Coast Craft Showcases the Color and Creativity of California
Exuberant maximalist aesthetics and California comfort dominated last weekend’s West Coast Craft, the twice-yearly craft fair whose Summer 2023 iteration took place June 10–11 at windy Fort Mason in San Francisco.