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Found Objects
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Anne Peabody's monumental tornado installation, constructed of thousands of wood and glass objects, explores how disaster can transform people's lives. ...
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Our flagship show in Baltimore is now in full swing! We’re all holding our breath, but so far we’ve been spared by the snowstorm, except for a smattering of flurries this morning. Keep your fingers crossed for good weather through the weekend!
Now that I’ve had a chance to take in more of it, I’ve been struck by the wonderful balance between the old and the new at our Baltimore Show. As you wander your way through the aisles, you can find 30-year show veterans like David Bacharach and Seymour Mondshein next to up-and-coming crafters exhibiting their wares in Baltimore for ...
ACC Shows
At every American Craft Council show, the ACC gives out Awards of Excellence to a group of exceptional exhibitors, who are selected by guest jurors. It's a thrilling event: Show-goers gather with jurors and ACC staff, then everyone marches off in a grand parade to surprise the winners in their booths.
This year in St. Paul, ceramic artist Mark Pharis was the juror. Pharis, a one-time student of Warren MacKenzie, is an esteemed professor at the University of Minnesota, where he has taught in the department of art since 1985. He has exhibited and taught across the country, and his work ...
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Somewhere between an Olympics medal ceremony and “Candid Camera” falls the annual Awards Walking Tour at the American Craft Council's Baltimore Show. Each year, we invite two specialists in the craft field to jury the show, selecting six Award of Excellence recipients and two winners in the Booth Design category. This year's jurors were Jane Milosch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Josephine Shea, curator of the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House, a historic home near Detroit.
On Friday afternoon at 2pm, show attendees gathered together with the jurors and Council staff for a walking tour of the award winning ...
Heck Yes Craft
There's magic in boxes and frames, those defined spaces that seem to say "just this and nothing more." In the right hands, they can transform the everyday into the exquisite - just look at Andrea Haffner's amazing wall hangings. In her pigmented resin compositions, natural objects become extraordinary still life subjects. The light catches the resin from both sides, giving each piece a rich, almost-living glow.
Did I mention that Haffner also makes jewelry in this style? The visual part of my brain nearly short-circuited at the Baltimore ACC show this past spring: Her resin pendants - ...
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For a first-time visitor, the American Craft Council’s Baltimore Show can be somewhat overwhelming - in the best possible way. I experienced that today when I entered the Baltimore Convention Center for a sneak peek at the exhibitors in our 34th annual show. I was immediately struck not only by the sheer number of artists, but also by the eclectic variety of the work on display. It’s an incredible sensory experience to encounter exquisitely handcrafted goods in such a range of colors, shapes, textures and materials. I found it hard to make any progress through the show - I kept ...
Heck Yes Craft
Boris Bally's sophisticated reinvention of reclaimed street signs and found objects will rattle your mind. Bally transforms traffic signs into everything from entirely modern furniture to sleek jewelry and home decor items -- and even flatware! My favorite piece is a necklace created with 100 handgun triggers from Pittsburgh's "Goods for Guns" program. It's Bally's spin on the talismanic charms of aboriginal cultures, and he says, "this urban 'mojo' protects the wearer from the gun violence so prevalent in today's culture."
Can't get enough craft? Neither can we. Heck Yes Craft is a series of visual blog posts ...
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Monumental site-specific sculpture constructed out of tree saplings and branches. ...
Product Placement
Erica Gordon of Steel Toe Studios didn't plan to be a blacksmith. An artist, yes: Her father is a full-time woodworker who makes spoons, her sister does ceramics, her mother is an avid supporter of the arts. Gordon's been hustling at American Craft Council shows since she was 8 years old. But it was Penland School of Crafts that turned her into a blacksmith, she says.
After earning her BFA from the University of New Mexico, Gordon received a two-week work-study scholarship to the North Carolina craft mecca in 1997. She listed jewelry as her first choice for a class; blacksmithing ...
On Our Radar
Kate Cusack gets some of her best creative inspiration at supermarkets, 99-cent stores, or wherever products are displayed in bulk. Seeing household items stacked together makes her visualize them afresh, out of context, as something other than what they are, or do.
"Whenever I see anything in multiples, it's exciting," says the 30-year-old, Brooklyn-based artist, who divides her work between jewelry, sculpture and costumes for theatrical productions. "What's interesting to me is the use and transformation of materials."
In Cusack's hands, plastic food wrap magically morphs into a series of towering, luminous Marie Antoinette-style wigs for a window display
at Tiffany's Fifth ...
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Kramer redefines trash through his organic inventions of reclaimed hardwoods, coffee stirrers, street sweeper bristles and other found objects. ...
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Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts ...
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Still buzzing from one of the most exciting presidential elections in recent (or even not so recent) memory, I jumped a plane out of LaGuardia on Thursday morning and headed to Chicago for what what would surely be one of the most exciting SOFA Chicago exhibitions in years. (For the uninitiated, SOFA is an acronym for Sculptural Objects and Functional Art.) Celebrating its 15th year, SOFA Chicago is now not only one of the longest running weekend long (from November 7th to 9th) shows featuring contemporary arts and design but can now proudly proclaim ...
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