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Heck Yes Craft
Heck Yes Craft
Remember making paper snowflakes as a kid? Take that process, add a pinch of geometry, a dollop of scientific method and a heaping spoonful of talent and you get these incredible paper creations by artist/scientist/engineer Matthew Shlian. Some are delicately cut patterns in paper; others are intricately folded sculptural objects. I'm fascinated by the way Shlian's identities as artist and scientist come through in his artworks: his work is "experimental" in that it springs from curiosity rather than a vision of a final product. Learn more by visiting his website, and be sure to check out some of ...
Heck Yes Craft
Meg Little loved to doodle as a teenager, and you can see it in her work today: vibrant rugs that look like they've been lovingly sketched with colored pencil. See a sampling of the rugs she's been making for 20 years above. But visit her website too, to see the whole gamut and to read a wonderful selection of thoughts about life, human needs, creativity, and the handmade. Here's a sample passage: "For thousands of years now, we've been using the same symbols: spirals, squares, dots, rings, to communicate, powerfully, below consciousness. They address a homesickness that can't ...
Heck Yes Craft
Todd Graham, recent winner of a best-in-show award at the 2011 Baltimore Fine Furnishings & Fine Craft Show, works under the name Tree Theory. His Danish-modern inspired furniture is crafted from locally-sourced scrap wood and other recycled materials. I love the way he lets the wood shine through, and the woven screen on Symmetry Entertainment Center is an excellent touch of texture.
Can't get enough craft? Neither can we. Heck Yes Craft is a series of visual blog posts with a simple ...
Heck Yes Craft
Japanese quilt artist Noriko Endo's quilts are like an impressionist dream. She assembles thousands of minute fabric pieces to form her remarkable "confetti naturescapes." Her Impressionist Quilts exhibit runs June 16-August 6 at The ArtQuilt Gallery NYC, and she will also speak at the gallery on June 20th.
Can't get enough craft? Neither can we. Heck Yes Craft is a series of visual blog posts with a simple mission: to show off amazing work. Come back every Friday for more. ...
Heck Yes Craft
I'm a reluctant traveler. If you offered me an all-expenses-paid jaunt to Tahiti, I'd hem and haw and fret about what to bring and who'd keep my cats company while I was gone. That said, when I leave my nest, I invariably make enriching discoveries.
Case in point: metalsmith Amy Tavern, whom I met on a recent trek to the Penland School of Crafts, where Tavern is a resident artist. Survey her work, and you'll see a remarkably fertile mind at work. Tavern is young, but the range of her work - with its primitive edge and just an inkling of ...
Heck Yes Craft
I have to think that optimists (or anyone who tends to see the best in things) will fall particularly hard for Jennifer and John Walsh's beautiful contemporary jewelry. The Bozeman-based metalsmiths take materials that you could call "everyday" - such as river stones, worn silky smooth, or bits of splashy coral - and see the best in them, giving them their utmost attention as centerpieces in their stylish rings, brooches, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. The result is totally wearable and totally wonderful work.
Can't get enough craft? Neither can we. Heck Yes Craft is a series of visual ...
Heck Yes Craft
I'm pretty sure if I were left alone with Penelope Rakov's Penny Candy Necklace I would end up breaking a tooth. Seriously: The Philadelphia-based studio glass artist's murrini jewelry is so deliciously detailed and colorful, it gives new meaning to the term eye candy.
But the slideshow above is really just an appetizer. Visit Rakov's website, where she explains the labor-intensive (yet oh-so-rewarding) process of making murrini glass (meticulous types will not want to miss this). Then, check out this great profile of the artist by Art Star gallery and boutique owner Megan Brewster, a ...
Heck Yes Craft
Edgy and innocent: The contradictory combination of those two qualities never fails to delight me. That's why I love Rachael Wong's kooky glass pieces. They mimic the first toys babies play with (though in more splendiferous colors and patterns - hooray). But, for heaven's sake, they're made of glass, so don't you dare use them at the day care center! Rachael Wong makes mischief, and I love that.
Can't get enough craft? Neither can we. Heck Yes Craft is a series of visual blog posts with a simple mission: to show off amazing work. Come back every Friday ...
Heck Yes Craft
For the Friday before July Fourth, I can't find anything more fitting than the found-object, folk-art-inspired work of Ramona Otto. The self-taught California artist has made more than 80 American-flag-based pieces. I'm a sucker for familiar forms that reward a closer look. Spend a minute appreciating the surprising intricacy of American Childhood, a cheerful composition of the most prosaic plastic trinkets - Happy Meal toys, action figures, board game pieces, and other castoffs of our consumer culture. Happy Fourth.
Can't get enough craft? Neither can we. Heck Yes Craft is a series of visual blog posts with a simple ...
Heck Yes Craft
Robin Wade shares Florence, Alabama with the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Rosenbaum house. The son of an architect in the 50s and 60s, Wade grew up with a lot of Midcentury Modern influence, but also ended up visiting and often walking/biking by the Rosenbaum house during his childhood (Professor Rosenbaum was a friend of Wade's parents). Combine those subliminal childhood influences with Wade's fascination with Nakashima and Asian design, and you get these wonderful benches and desks made from choice cuts of reclaimed lumber. Natural edges and modern shapes let thick slabs ...
Heck Yes Craft
Ron Cook has been building early European and early American stringed instruments since the 1970s. His work goes beyond just making an instrument, however. Hand-carved details, recycled, salvaged, and urban forest wood, and perfected techniques yield an instrument that's a playable piece of art. He's in booth 209 at the San Francisco ACC show this year, and you can view more of Cook's work and hear some samples on his website.
Can't get enough craft? Neither can we. Heck Yes Craft is a series of visual blog posts with a simple mission: to show off ...
Heck Yes Craft
Lately I've been trying to focus on the little things in life (this morning it was a Nutella-laden croissant). Maybe that's why I'm so enamored with RouDesigns' wee porcelain vessels; they are very literally "little things." New York-based mother-daughter team Rouska and Roussina Valkova collaborate to create bud vases, bowls and other small objects that are at once refined and organic. I love the minimalism of their pieces, most in white porcelain, some with a splash of bright glaze. See more of their work on Etsy or at www.roudesigns.com.
Can't get enough craft? Neither can we. ...
Heck Yes Craft
Russell Gale's furniture combines modern and contemporary designs with fine woodworking. The result: interesting new furniture with a timeless quality. I was instantly drawn to his Garboard Strake sideboard. It's so woody, with a definite Japanese influence. But I'm not the only one who likes his work. He's been chosen to participate (with his sideboard) in the upcoming "Regeneration: Fine Woodworkers Under 30" show, co-produced by Fine Woodworking and the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship. I'm very excited about the quality of work in this show, and I'm glad that ...
Heck Yes Craft
There are so many conversations - and points of view - about craft's relationship to (and role in) a computer age. A common thread in many is digital technology complementing or otherwise consorting with, oh, let's call it hand technology.
Sculptor Shawn Smith flips those ideas upside down, taking images from the digital world and making them brilliantly real. Each "pixel" in his colorful sculptures, from birds in flight to hyperreal wall mounts, is a piece of hand-cut, hand-dyed wood. Gazing upon the digital-made-physical (albeit on your computer screen), you might wonder if Smith, who received his MFA from ...
Heck Yes Craft
Black hair has long been a thread in the work of Sonya Clark, as an astute statement of material and cultural otherness. In her latest body of work, hair is both medium and message. Clark applies her material of choice to historically loaded artifacts, in a wrenching intertwining. Hair has a corporeal presence that deepens the impact of the work. As curator Namita Gupta Wiggers says in discussing Black Hair Flag (2010), Clark "deliberately places the ‘body' of black slaves into the history of the Confederacy."
Clark's work is the subject of a solo show now at Snyderman Gallery ...
Heck Yes Craft
Visual artist and metalsmith Susan Myers plumbs our thoughts on consumption with her objects crafted from reclaimed sheet metal. Throughout her various series of works she uses discarded silver-plated serving trays, which she finds by scouring yard sales and thrift stores.
In her Disposable series, I love the sleek shapes and new life she gives to these trays, which are formed and folded to be reminiscent of takeout food boxes. For her Silver-Plate series she collaborated with printer Cindi Ettinger to create graphic relief prints on paper from the patterns on the metal surfaces. And in her Aluminum series, ...
Heck Yes Craft
Ever made beads with Sculpey or Fimo? If you have, you know polymer clay is an easy material to use. Alas, it's a hard material to perfect. If you looked closely at your beads, you probably saw fingerprints or fingernail indentations. Maybe, despite your best efforts, your beads were slightly out of round. Or the millefiori pattern you tried got smushed beyond recognition when you compressed it.
Polymer's barriers to entry are low, but its mastery threshold is high. That's why, as I researched a feature on the rise of polymer for our October/November issue, I was so impressed by ...
Heck Yes Craft
I'm a big fan of furniture that's well constructed and lets the beauty of the wood shine. And I love music (and drumming on things). If you put furniture and music together, you get the work of Tor Clausen. One part table, one part xylophone, his work is made to be played. It's a great way to introduce children to music, and more fun than a standard wooden bench or table. Make sure to check out the video below to hear some of his work (I never thought I'd say that when talking about ...
Heck Yes Craft
Last spring, I had the pleasure of chatting with furniture maker/designer Vivian Beer about new bodies of work she was developing - immediately followed by the challenge of writing a story that, in effect, was still unfolding.
Now the wait is over. Vivian has unveiled striking new pieces in a solo show at Philadelphia's Wexler Gallery (through Nov. 26), work that carves out a new direction for the talented young artist, including these substantial-but-still-voluptuous ferrocement benches and cornice stools.
"I feel excited about the ability to build form in a new way," she said at a ...
Heck Yes Craft
At the San Francisco show last weekend I was on the hunt for some Heck Yes paper craft, and I found it in Viviana Santamarina's booth. Viviana's crocheted paper sculptures are unlike anything I've seen. She began the work because she wanted to "give drawing another form," so she first makes pencil sketches on large rolls of paper before cutting the paper into strips and crocheting it together into sculptures. Flat drawings morph into giant wall coverings and human figures in a matter of stiches. And in her pieces, she leaves behind a trace of the process. Tucked ...
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