The ASU Art Museum and Ceramics Research Center (CRC) in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts present Crafting a Continuum: Rethinking Contemporary Craft, the first comprehensive museum exhibition to highlight their extensive craft holdings, including new international acquisitions in wood, ceramic and fiber. This exhibition and its accompanying catalog provide an international perspective on modern and contemporary crafts and the current level of innovation and experimentation in material studies.
The Museum’s existing craft collection, which was initiated in the late 1960s, focuses on both established and emerging artists who are the driving force behind the model of rethinking craft. Recent acquisitions of work by national and international artists reflect current trends in the field. Established artists in the show include Peter Voulkos, Ed Moulthrop and Dorothy Gill Barnes. Emerging artists include Sonya Clark, Anders Ruhwald, Mark Newport and Alison Elizabeth Taylor. The exhibition includes approximately 100 objects in wood, ceramic and fiber.
In conjunction with the September 27, 2013 opening reception for the exhibition, the Museum and CRC are also hosting “FlashBackForward,” a symposium on the state of contemporary craft, Saturday, Sept. 28 from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. The keynote speaker is Jenni Sorkin, assistant professor of Contemporary Art History at University of California, Santa Barbara, with lectures by artists Wendy Maruyama, Garth Johnson, Christine Lee, Del Harrow and Erika Lynne Hanson.
That weekend, Arizona artist Paul Nosa will join the Museum for a two-day sewing performance featuring his Solar Sewing Rover, a portable sewing machine powered by a solar panel or a bicycle with an electric generator. Nosa will create original images, which are machine-sewn on fabric patches, using word associations provided by guests at both the opening and the symposium. For more information about Nosa’s work, visit http://www.pnosa.com/fr_website.cfm
The exhibition is curated by Associate Director and Senior Curator Heather Sealy Lineberry and Curator of Ceramics Peter Held, with assistance from Windgate Curatorial Fellow Elizabeth Kozlowski.
The catalog that accompanies the show is approximately 200 pages, with color images, a series of essays and brief perspectives dedicated to the existence of craft within a critical context, a comprehensive bibliography, artists’ biographies and an index.
Selected works from the exhibition will travel to five additional venues around the country, beginning in January of 2014 (see schedule below).
This exhibition and accompanying programming was made possible with generous support from the Windgate Charitable Foundation, Nancy Tieken, the Evelyn Smith Exhibition Fund and the Creative Impact Board of the ASU Art Museum
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