American Craft Forums
American Craft Forums are a dynamic series of programs, presented in conjunction with American Craft magazine, that brings together the past, present, and future of craft through artist spotlights, deep dives into creative practices, archival explorations, and timely conversations that connect contemporary issues with the handmade world.
Foragers
Making Connections Between Place and Materials
This Craft Forum took place Thursday, July 13, 2023
Presented in conjunction with the Summer 2023 issue of American Craft.
Watch the Forum below or visit our YouTube channel.
Materials carry meaning. When artists forage or gather their own materials and tools as part of their practice, that adds another layer in an already complex dialogue that individuals are having with themselves, and with others in the field. Artist and pigment researcher Melonie Ancheta, fiber and clay artist and one of the 2023 recipients of the Maxwell/Hanrahan Award for Craft Adebunmi Gbadebo, and photographer and sweetgrass basketmaker Donovan J. Snype are not strangers to the significance and responsibility their material choices hold. Oftentimes, it’s the materials themselves that tell the story.
Join us as we continue exploring craft that interacts with and brings us closer to the outdoors in this conversation that focuses on artists who gather the materials that surround us in the natural world. We’ll provide a platform for conversation with those who deeply consider and center foraging materials as part of their practice—exploring the various ways those materials and media are vessels for histories and storytelling, place-making, place-remembering, and efforts toward sustainability; and how the act of foraging requires artists to be in a close relationship with the environment.
Participants
Kimberly Coburn
Moderator
Kimberly Coburn is an Atlanta-based writer and community organizer. In 2013, she founded The Homestead Atlanta: a collective dedicated to fostering regenerative communities through skills-based education. Metrics of success were preserved in Mason jars and carved from hardwood; they were measured in skills shared, ideas exchanged, goods bartered, and resources preserved. After the pandemic dictated an end to in-person programming, Kimberly shifted her exploration of the intersection between craft, the human spirit, and the natural world to the page. Her work has been featured in Salon, American Craft, The Bitter Southerner, Dark Mountain and more.
Melonie Ancheta
Speaker
Melonie Ancheta is a professional researcher, artist and educator from northwest Washington. She is the founder of Pigments Revealed Symposium as well as founder and director of Pigments Revealed International, a nonprofit organization building a global pigment community and fostering pigment education and research. Her artwork has been exhibited at the preeminent Stonington Gallery in Seattle as well as other galleries across Canada and the US. It can also be seen in museums and private collections around the world. Ancheta’s thirty years of research on traditional Northwest Coast Indigenous pigments and paint technology has supported the revitalization of important Indigenous material and cultural knowledge and has been published in Smithsonian National Museum’s American Indian Magazine, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, and elsewhere.
Donovan Snype
Speaker
Donovan J. Snype is an accomplished photographer, cinematographer, and artist. His work is remarkable, beautiful, and candid. He captures the true emotion of the moment. He began photography at the age of 9 when his father let him use one of his discarded cameras and he hasn’t put down the camera since. Donovan learned the craft of Sweetgrass Basket weaving from his mother Henrietta Snype and has had his work featured in the Smithsonian. A native son of Charleston, Donovan has spent years honing his craft and is dedicated to the art and science of video and photography as well as the preservation of Gullah/Geechee culture through his work as an artist.
Adebunmi Gbadebo
Speaker
Adebunmi Gbadebo is a multimedia artist who uses culturally and historically imbued materials to investigate the complexities between land, matter, and memory on various sites of slavery. Centering on deeply resonant materials like indigo dye, soil hand dug from plantations, and human Black hair collected throughout the diaspora. The resulting works tend to carry the stories of ancestors, families, and individuals either long overlooked or too closely surveilled. Born in New Jersey and based between Newark and Philadelphia, Gbadebo earned her BFA at the School of Visual Arts, NY.
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