NY / Buffalo
Jesse Walp: Ripe
Burchfield Penney Art Center
to Jan. 25
An antidote to the barrenness of winter, Jesse Walp’s voluptuous wood forms suggest extravagant nature: buds, pods, berries, and sprouts bursting with, or into, life. 

MN / Minneapolis
Holiday Exhibition and Sale
Northern Clay Center
to Jan. 4
Salt shakers, urns, plates, bowls, teacups, sculptures: Thousands of works by dozens of NCC artists and guest ceramists are all just the right size for gift boxes. (Or, of course, for you.) 

CA / Emeryville
Anna Mlasowsky: Departures
Bullseye Resource Center Bay Area Gallery
to Jan. 25
Anna Mlasowsky’s work embodies the spirit of experimentation. During a six-month residency at Bullseye Resource Center, the artist invented an array of experimental techniques, including a moldless pâte de verre process, to create her diverse forms. 

IL / Chicago
Amy Reichert: Reinventing Judaica
Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership
to Mar. 8
Amy Reichert trained as an architect, a field in which creativity must flourish within scientific and civic limits. Similarly, her ceremonial objects of precious metals and organic materials respect the Jewish laws and traditions that govern them, while expanding the boundaries of how those objects look and function. 

IL / Chicago
Vanessa Smith: New Ceramic Sculptures; Gordon Powell: Wood Constructions
Perimeter Gallery
to Dec. 31
Vanessa Smith views the world “feet on the ground – up close and personal.” In her crumpled, layered, pleated, and pierced ceramic sculptures, she contemplates natural phenomena such as smoke, coral reefs, and weather patterns, and what lies beneath surfaces. Also on view: Gordon Powell’s abstract wood assemblages. 

NJ / Millville
NJ 350: Through the Lens of Glass
WheatonArts and Cultural Center
to Jan. 4  
Happy birthday, New Jersey! The state turned 350 in 2014. This show traces the glassmaking, both art and production, that has been part of South Jersey history since the beginning. Alongside: a show of more than 50 pieces from Durand Art Glass, made in Vineland, New Jersey, from 1924 to 1931. 

NY / New York City
Maira Kalman Selects
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
to Jun. 14
The Cooper Hewitt emerges December 12 from a years-long renovation with a cornucopia of exhibitions that shows off its vast collections of decorative arts and design. In this one, artist, designer, and author Maira Kalman arranges 56 objects that suggest the story of a life.

OR / Portland
ShowPDX: A Decade of Portland Furniture Design
Museum of Contemporary Craft
to Jan. 31  
In Portland, good design is a concept with legs. The biennial juried ShowPDX draws the best of the Rose City’s furniture design, and here are the best of the best – more than 60 award winners from past shows. 

NY / New York City
New Territories: Laboratories for Design, Craft and Art in Latin America 
Maryland to Murano: Neckpieces and Sculptures by Joyce J. Scott
to Apr. 6; to Mar. 15
Museum of Arts and Design
“New Territories” explores how art, design, and manufacturing meld in Latin America to nourish works that weave traditional practices with big themes: sustainability, urbanization, displacement. In “Maryland to Murano,” Joyce J. Scott’s blown-glass sculptures and beaded neckpieces are shown in counterpoint for the first time. 

WA / Bainbridge Island
Larry “Ulaaq” Ahvakana: Land/Water
Bainbridge Island Museum of Art
to Feb. 22
Watching his mother sew skins in Alaska, Larry “Ulaaq” Ahvakana learned young that art was an integral part of life. His Inupiaq (Inuit) culture, with its oral traditions and deep connection to the natural world, inspires his work in stone, wood, glass, metal, and paper. 

NC / Asheville
Art (fuel); Beast
Blue Spiral 1
to Dec. 31; to Dec. 26
In “Art (fuel),” artists use clay and wood in works that honor traditional processes and materials; for “Beast,” five regional artists created fanciful hybrids and other images of animalia steeped in science and history.

PA / Bryn Athyn
World Nativities Exhibition
Glencairn Museum
to Jan. 11
For Christians, the representation of Jesus’ birth in a manger, surrounded by animals, kings, and shepherds, is a central image. Nativities from across the globe reveal how this scene resounds through disparate cultures, in mediums from clay to cornhusks and coconuts.