Corey Pemberton is Living Well

“The vision for the show grew alongside his own artistic development,” says Jen Sudul Edwards, the Mint Museum’s curator of contemporary art. While Pemberton gained acclaim as a glassblower through residencies at Pittsburgh Glass Center, Penland School of Craft, and others, his ongoing material experiments and move toward painting have helped him “develop his own visual lexicon,” Edwards says, drawing on craft history, regional traditions, and contemporary objects. 

Newer glass works on view demonstrate Pemberton’s hybrid method, using Italian murrine to create patterned glass canes that reference textile traditions, including designs of Zulu baskets from South Africa and 19th-century American log cabin quilts, which were once used as codified communication on the Underground Railroad.

Pemberton’s solo exhibition, on view through January 31, is part of a larger Charlotte takeover—he’s also an artist-in-residence at the McColl Center, has solo shows at neighboring galleries, and helped organize a vendor market for the Mint through Crafting the Future, a nonprofit he co-founded that connects BIPOC makers with creative opportunities. 

“It feels like a big celebration with an audience and community that really understands me and my point of view, as a person of color from the South, as someone with a strong interest and background in craft,” Pemberton says of the many Queen City opportunities. “There are certain things I don’t have to defend or uphold about my work, because it’s understood here.”