American Craft December - January 2017

why does art education matter? I pondered that question as we put together this issue on learning and the future. Art is no longer on the schedule at many schools, as Joyce Lovelace and Mark Richard Leach point out in their sampling of organizations that are stepping in to fill the gap (page 66). So what have we lost? What’s at stake? For me, and I suspect many others, art has brought selfknowledge and, ultimately, selfacceptance. Making things has helped me embrace who I am – something I didn’t actually realize until I read a passage in Deborah Bishop’s story about Yuni Kim Lang (page 74). Born in Korea and raised mostly in China, Lang struggled to fit in, even among her Korean American classmates at Parsons School of Design. “They…

History in the Making Your article in the current issue of American Craft was a brilliant history of the craft movement as well as the publication [“Read. Roar. Repeat,” Oct./Nov.]. I enjoyed every line, and it stimulated me into thoughts of my own on the subject – some disagreement, but mostly I thought you were right on the mark. It’s early to comment on the Moses era, but I’m still reading and like a lot of what I read. Your article in the latest issue was just terrific and had a perspective on the past that is hard for younger writers to attain. Congratulations. ~Arthur Mason via email You have now presented one of my favorite articles ever in American Craft. And I did not know that Maginel Wright Barney named the…

woodcarver julian watts never touched the stuff as a sculpture major at the University of Oregon, where he earned his BFA in 2012. “The program was more experimental and cerebral than technical or craftbased,” says Watts, 27. “Some of my installations involved healthy quantities of pink goo,” he adds with a smile. “But I think I was mapping out my future direction.” Watts’ immediate journey after college was back home to San Francisco, where he found work in a furniture woodshop specializing in tables. Performing rote tasks at first, he mastered increasingly sophisticated techniques and eventually was able to trade hours for studio space within the shop “and finally return to making some kind of art.” Watts began collecting free scraps of wood from around the shop, inspired by a two-day spoon-carving…

VAST LANDSCAPES HAVE HELD Liz Cowee’s interest ever since she was a young child in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Ultimately, she would channel that pas -sion into a jewelry business. But there were detours along the way. After graduating from high places that inspire her. school in 1999, she was accepted at the University of Vermont but decided to defer her education for one year to join Up with People, a touring musical ensemble. “In high school I was drawn to the performing arts, so when I had the chance to join the tour, I did it wholeheartedly.” She traveled with the group internationally for a year and, in retrospect, says the experience helped her learn to adapt to different people and situations, a skill she has put to good use every…

The Handmade Life: A Companion to Modern Crafting By Ramona Barry and Rebecca Jobson Thames & Hudson, $40 SO MANY HOW-TO BOOKS LACK contemporary and historical context; so many fine art and craft books, in turn, don’t invite in the amateur. The Handmade Life demolishes this false binary with the kind of satisfying thump a 4½-pound book makes when dropped triumphantly on the table. Co-authors Ramona Barry and Rebecca Jobson are writers and curators, designers and artists, and, perhaps above all, makers who recognize that “our best selves are often found while sitting at the bench focused absolutely on the task at hand – magically melding mind and body in the process.” An extension of their longtime collaboration, this volume explores more than 30 materialbased topics, from working with leather or clay to…

CA / Pomona Pomona College Museum of ArtRose B. Simpson: Ground to Dec. 17 pomona.edu/museum Rose B. Simpson curated and co-stars in this show, in which her large clay sculptures mingle with objects from the college’s collection of Native American art to emphasize their common lineage and to suggest questions about their shared future. NE / Lincoln International Quilt Study Center & MuseumAmish Quilts and the Crafting of Diverse Traditions to Jan. 25 quiltstudy.org Amish quilts, sometimes considered a dark (in color) backwater of American quiltmaking traditions, take their place squarely in the many-hued mainstream in this show of quilts that don’t necessarily “look Amish,” curated by historian, scholar, and fifthgeneration Mennonite quiltmaker Janneken Smucker. NM / Santa Fe Museum of International Folk ArtThe Morris Miniature Circus: Return of the Little Big Top to…