Craft Forums
American Craft Forums are free online conversations that bring the community together to explore new ways of thinking about craft. Tying into the themes of each issue of American Craft, these discussions feature diverse voices working together to move the craft field forward.
FORUM DETAILS
Object Stories From the Craftscape
This Craft Forum took place Tuesday, June 17, 2021
Presented in conjunction with the Summer 2021 issue of American Craft.
Watch this Forum below or visit our YouTube channel.
In this American Craft Forum, we presented a series of short talks, or “object stories,” by craftspeople, craft artists, and scholars. In choosing their own stories to tell, they revealed the possibilities of thinking about objects through the lens of what writer, curator, and educator Namita Gupta Wiggers refers to as the Craftscape.
For the last 30 years, most recently as the founding director of the MA in Critical Craft Studies program at Warren Wilson College, Wiggers has been chipping away at traditional Western-based approaches to viewing, appreciating, and talking about the objects we admire in museums—and those we live with at home. Turning that monolithic art–historical approach on its head, Wiggers encourages us to think about the object not as the end-point, but as a catalyst for conversations on process, cultural and material histories, the importance of the land, biography, and narrative.
Welcome to the Craftscape.
Read more about the Craftscape in the Summer 2021 issue of American Craft. “Unearthing the Craftscape” by Anjula Razdan also features an object story by craft scholar and metalsmith matt lambert.
Participants.
Namita Gupta Wiggers
Moderator
Namita Gupta Wiggers is a writer, curator, and educator based in Portland, Oregon. She is the founding director of the MA in Critical Craft Studies, Warren Wilson College, the first and only low-residency program focused on craft histories and theory.
Andres Payan Estrada
Speaker
Born in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, Andres Payan Estrada currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He is an artist and curator whose practice focuses on issues revolving around contemporary craft along with material and object practices with a focus on ceramics.
Dr. Tiffany Momon
Speaker
Dr. Tiffany Momon is a public historian and Assistant Professor at Sewanee: The University of the South, and founder and co-director of the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive, a black digital humanities project that centers black craftspeople, their lives, and their contributions to the making and building of America.
Courtney M. Leonard
Speaker
Courtney M. Leonard is a Shinnecock artist and filmmaker whose work explores marine biology, Indigenous food sovereignty, migration, and human environmental impact.
Jovencio de la Paz
Speaker
Jovencio de la Paz is an artist, weaver, and educator. Their current work explores the intersecting histories of weaving and modern computers. Rhyming across millenia, the stories of weaving and computation unfold as a space of speculation.
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