American Craft August/September 2019

IF ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE, then craftspeople are its builders. Yet because craft, like the air we breathe, is such an integral part of our lives, we don’t always notice the vital supporting role it plays. This issue, we’re turning the spotlight on the often overlooked theatrical artisans who make the props, sets, costumes, puppets, instruments, and wigs–yes, wigs – that bring a show to life. On the following pages, you’ll meet luthier Anne Cole, who has been making custom violins, violas, and cellos that have filled the world with music for close to 50 years [Product Placement, page 12]. Wayne White’s name might not immediately ring a bell, but you’ll likely recognize his outrageous puppets and set pieces from Pee-wee’s Playhouse [“King of the Weird Frontier,” page 26]. Brooklyn…

WHEN MEXICAN PUPPETEER Sofía Padilla met Davey T. Steinman, a performance artist who hails from Minnesota, while volunteering at Vermont’s celebrated Bread and Puppet Theater in 2015, they were right in the thick of it, Padilla says, “stomping on clay and doing papier mâché for a 10-foot-long puppet hand.” Perhaps they didn’t realize it then – with glue on their hands and clay on their feet – but that initial collaboration would soon blossom into a romantic partnership and the formation of their own touring puppet theater, Paradox Teatro. Run by Padilla, 35, who also tours with Bread and Puppet Theater, and Steinman, 31, who freelances in video projection and design, Paradox is a bilingual company that strives to overcome language and cultural barriers using music, puppets, and technology. The couple…

WHEN SHE WAS A SEVENTH-grader in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Anne Cole first played a cello, which she borrowed from the school. “This one was all carved up and scratched up,” she says, “just completely vandalized.” Disheartened that anyone would treat an instrument this way, Cole brought it home over winter vacation, took it apart, and revarnished it. “From then on, I told my parents that I was going to be a violin maker,” Cole remembers. “But I had no idea how.” The “how” involved years of informal study: a how-to book from the local library, a violin-making kit given to her for Christmas, and her piano teacher’s next-door neighbor, who let Cole watch as he made instruments. She graduated from the University of New Mexico as a music major “because that was…

Passing it on: Cole taught cello lessons for 30 years. “That’s how I kept my first love going,” she says, “through my second bread-and-butter profession.” Paws and puns: One of Cole’s cats is named Viola. It’s pronounced VIE-ola, not VEE-ola, but the point gets across. Changing directions: For a time, Cole experi-mented with vertical violas designed to be played upright like a cello. “It was the size a viola should be if it’s acoustically designed to be as perfect as a violin,” she says, but there isn’t a sizable repertoire of music written for the vertical version of the instrument.…

CO / Boulder University of Colorado Boulder Art Museum Its Honor Is Hereby Pledged: Gina Adams to Nov. 2 colorado.edu/cuartmuseum Drawing on her Lakota, Ojibwe, and European heritage and a wealth of research, Gina Adams probes the US government’s broken treaties and historical efforts to move Native Americans off their ancestral lands and assimilate them into the dominant culture. Four installations in quilts, ceramics, and other craft mediums call out these actions and the resultant trauma in the hope that healing can follow. ID / Boise Boise Art Museum Sarah Sense: Cowgirls and Indians to Oct. 26 boiseartmuseum.org In Sarah Sense’s hands, Hollywood posters, Wild West show images, landscape photographs, and family memoirs find new lives as interrogators of old stereotypes. The artist uses the basketry methods of her Choctaw and Chitimacha forebears to explore intersections of pop culture and American…

TX/San Antonio McNay Art Museum The Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts mcnayart.org STAGE SETS MAY BE THE MOST eloquent co-stars in any performance to never say a word. Yet as actors, choreographers, lighting designers, and others bring a show to life, sets speak volumes: Does the street where Boy meets Girl inspire joyful gestures or fearful whispers? Is their apartment cozy or nightmarishly claustrophobic? Because sets might not be built and installed until rehearsals are well underway, scene designers create maquettes: usually three-dimensional, dollhouse-size, to-scale renderings of their visions for the cast and crew to refer to. Designers might use wood, paper, wire, metal, string, fabric, plastic, photos, or found objects, incorporating elements of sculpture, collage, and assemblage. Among the 12,000 rare books, costumes, paintings, and other objects in the Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts at…