Craft in America Launches Craft Video Dictionary
5/13/24
Craft in America has launched the first-ever Craft Video Dictionary (CVD). The CVD is an online resource that gives the public a direct, close-up view of craft processes and techniques. Instead of words and images, CVD definitions are conveyed via video. Clear and concise, these videos are edited to focus on the artists’ movements and the transformation of materials. The project was initiated with support from The Decorative Arts Trust through their Prize for Excellence and Innovation in late 2020.
The first rollout of this new reference tool includes an initial batch of one hundred video definitions. This initial collection of videos begins to flesh out the ins and outs of art and craft making across a range of materials and media. Two hundred videos will be posted in total later this year.
The CVD includes techniques as demonstrated by artists with expertise in ceramics, metal, wood, fiber, glass, and more. Each video captures an artist manipulating material with their hands and tools through methods that are traditional, historic, and also very much still alive. “The CVD videos are intended to clearly define a craft technique, rather than demonstrate a how-to process. We hope this project will be useful to educators, museums, and everyone interested in craft,” says CVD project producer Denise Kang.
Thus far, 14 artists have been filmed across Southern California, and many of them are teaching artists at colleges in the region. The CVD includes definitions of terms ranging from sgraffito, which is a ceramics process, to glass blowing, and from cabinet making and joinery, to spindle turning, and blacksmithing.
By providing an intimate lens into the artist’s studio, CVD video definitions provide a sense of how the objects in our world come to be and what their craft entails. On creating the videos, CVD Project Director Emily Zaiden noted, “each artist during filming was able to take a step back from their second nature process and think about what someone unfamiliar with their craft might need to see and understand their work.”
See full, original article on Woodworking Network by Dakota Smith.
Craft in America Announces New Exhibition
By Dakota Smith
April 26, 2024
LOS ANGELES, CA — The Craft in America Center has announced Building Blocks: Process and Wood, a group exhibition highlighting Southern California woodworkers who use tradition to create contemporary interpretations.
Craft in America is organizing an exhibition of woodwork and furniture-based sculpture made by the artists who were consulted and filmed for the new Craft Video Dictionary (CVD) definitions. The exhibition will consist of approximately two dozen recent works made by six artists in the field who are based across the Los Angeles basin. Ranging in styles and perspectives, these artists are unified by formal innovation coupled with a unique understanding of materials and techniques.
The Craft Video Dictionary is a new digital tool for understanding how objects are made. Launching in early 2024 with an initial exemplary array of video definitions that span media, material, process, and discipline, the CVD will continue to expand and develop over time. New, additional video definitions will be added at later intervals in 2024 and beyond. Especially for those who are not makers or artists, the CVD provides a chance to gain awareness about the crafting of objects, in real time. These educational videos are intended to clarify, elucidate, document, and explain craft techniques.
Participating Artists: Reuben Foat, Martin Alexander Hernandez, Ryan Taber, Lauren Verdugo, Larry White and Maxwell Wilson
Original post here.
Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026
Americans For The Arts Teams Up With Handwork 2026 To Celebrate Legacy of America Craft in Lead-up to U.S. Semiquincentennial
Craft in America Announces Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026
LOS ANGELES – Handwork 2026 will be a year-long collaboration among organizations, educators, and makers to celebrate the diversity of the crafts that define America, bringing compelling stories and underrepresented art and artists into the spotlight.
Craft in America announced the launch of Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026, a national Semiquincentennial initiative to showcase the importance of the handmade, both throughout our history and in contemporary life.
Handwork 2026 will be a year-long collaboration among organizations, educators, and makers to celebrate the diversity of the crafts that define America, bringing compelling stories and underrepresented art and artists into the spotlight.
The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the national museum dedicated to American craft, is the lead partner for the initiative and will host the core exhibition for the project.
Americans for the Arts, a non-profit organization for advancing the arts and arts education, is the Awareness partner for this project.
Original post here.
Happy Earth Day! Art from Craft in Schools 4th graders and Calder Kamin
Earth day is just a few days away! Our Craft in Schools program had a blast hosting reclaimed/reuse artist and sustainability advocate Calder Kamin for our Winter field trips. Our young, neighborhood artists from Mrs. Dror’s Rosewood Elementary 4th grade class were especially inspired by Calder’s work, artist conversations, and reclaimed-art hands on projects. As a group we repurposed marker caps to create a vibrant jump rope (photo at very end, below).
These 4th graders related to Calder’s message of ecological stewardship and environmental values. Calder shared her artist’s journey and ethos for using recyclable materials to address and reduce waste problems through her art residencies. We had lively classroom conversations around the recurring theme of transforming the human made problem of waste into art– because “nature never wastes, that’s why I(Calder) reuse!” In turn, these 4th graders shared about their student-led recycling club and how they repurpose everyday objects for creative and inventive projects. Environmental care and creativity~ what fun!
Each student illustrated a creative, heartfelt thank you card to Calder for our Craft in Schools visits– including illustrations which we were green-lighted to web publish. Please enjoy and share this special collection of inspired art! For more of Calder Kamin’s original work, visit her artist website at www.calderkamin.com; or checkout our 3-d virtual tour on Winter 2023-2024’s Spirit of Play Exhibition page.
Student Illustration Gallery
Submissions Now Open for 2024 Minnesota Center for Book Arts Prize
The MCBA Prize, presented by Minnesota Center for Book Arts, honors excellence in new work from across the dynamic spectrum of book art. In 2022, they received 154 submissions from 17 different countries, from Chile to France. This year’s international competition will culminate in an exhibition in MCBA’s Main Gallery and a live virtual event revealing the winner.
Award benefits include:
1 WINNER
$2,000
4 FINALISTS
$500
20–30 SEMI-FINALISTS
Included in an exhibition in MCBA’s main gallery
ALL ENTRIES
Published on mcbaprize.org
Visit the MCBA Prize website to learn more about the submission and selection process. Since the prize’s inaugural year in 2009, hundreds of prize entries, finalists, and winners have been catalogued on their site, capturing the breadth and beauty of book arts at different snapshots in time.
MCBA Prize submissions are open from April 1 to May 31, 2024.
Fiberart International 2025 Open Call
The open call for the 2025 Fiberart International exhibition will be open through June 30, 2024.
The 25th edition of the Fiberart International will be organized and presented by Contemporary Craft in partnership with Brew House Arts and will be on view at Contemporary Craft, May 30 – August 30, 2025, and at Brew House Arts, June 20 – August 30, 2025.
This call is open to exceptionally talented artists at any stage of their career, who are located within the United States or abroad. All work must be either fiber in content or executed in a fiber technique.
The complete prospectus can be found here.
de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility Exhibition at the McNay Museum
March 1, 2024 – September 15, 2024
Located in the Tobin Exhibition Galleries
de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility presents works that explore culture on both sides of the United States-México border. Brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre live and work in the Guadalupe Valley in Baja California, México, and San Diego, California. After developing individual artistic practices they began to collaborate in the 1990s after discovering a shared passion for blown glass. de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility highlights their distinct maximalist aesthetic through four galleries of glass sculpture, lenticular prints, video, and installations.
The brothers use motifs from Aztec mythology, Catholic iconography, popular culture, and art history to build symbolically loaded imagery. Their mixed media works playfully incorporate humor and satire into critiques of consumption and indulgence. de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility embraces contradiction and multiplicity, inviting the viewer to form their own opinions and responses.
de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility is organized by the McNay Art Museum and co-curated by René Paul Barilleaux, Head of Curatorial Affairs, and Lauren Thompson, Curator of Exhibitions, with assistance from Mia Lopez, Curator of Latinx Art.
The brothers recently completed a separate site-specific installation at the McNay, de la Torre Brothers: Latin Exoskeleton. On view through Sept. 15, 2024, the work transformed the AT&T Lobby wall through a combination of tromps l’oeil wallpaper and lenticular images. Their presentations at the McNay are their first exhibitions in San Antonio.
The de la Torre brothers were featured in the Pilchuck Glass School segment in the COMMUNITY episode.
More images and information here.
Wayne Art Center’s 2024 CraftForms Call for Entry
Wayne Art Center is seeking submissions for the 29th International Juried Exhibition of Contemporary Fine Craft, in the following mediums: basketry, ceramics, decorative fiber, furniture, glass, jewelry, metal, mixed media, paper, wearable art, and wood. Work created utilizing CAD/CAM technologies and 3D printing tools also is eligible.
Selected works will be on display in the Davenport Gallery of Wayne Art Center in Wayne, Pennsylvania from December 7, 2024 through January 25, 2025. This year’s juror Jo Lauria will present $10,000 in prize awards. For more information and to see last year’s artists, visit www.craftforms.org.
Here is the direct link for CaFe.