ARTS AND HUMANITIES: Celebrating our country’s handicrafts

Aiken Standard
By Dr. Tom Mack
10/9/26

This year, there is one semiquincentennial observance that has slid under the radar in contrast to the more heavily publicized and sometimes controversial programs commemorating our nation’s 250th anniversary. “Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026” is a national initiative honoring our country’s craft traditions since its founding.

The Aiken County Historical Museum, for example, recently sponsored an exhibit titled “The Art of Needle and Thread,” featuring the stitchery of a host of local artisans. Our country’s craft traditions have long included skilled needlework.

Running until January of next year, “Body Matters” at the Columbia Museum of Art showcases an even greater variety of handcrafts, not only in fiber but also in wood, glass, ceramics and sweetgrass. All of the pieces in the current show make reference to their makers, either replicating the human body or offering evidence of the maker’s interaction with the made object.

Let’s examine three particularly noteworthy pieces representing three different media. In woodworking, there is no contemporary artist who matches the work of Bob Trotman of North Carolina. Harkening back to the days of ship’s figureheads and cigar store Indians, Trotman creates larger-than-life works that offer a wry commentary on contemporary life, particularly today’s social media-propelled obsession with self-image and the increasingly pronounced ravages of hyperbolic capitalism.

His 2008 “Person of Interest,” a large-scale bust of a male with receding hairline, comes with interchangeable mouths and pairs of eyes so that one can alter the figure’s expression to fit the occasion. It’s Trotman’s version of the police identikit, a composite picture created by combining facial features to fit the statement of a witness to a crime. In this case, however, it serves, as well, as a general reference to the faces we put on to face the world.

In addition to artists working in wood, the current exhibition includes those who make extraordinary objects from “dirt and water,” a phrase often used by artist Doug Jeck to describe his medium of choice, ceramics.

In the first gallery of this multi-gallery show is a prime example of what the late artist called his “human objects.” Titled “Figure in Transition,” this lifelike ceramic male sits on a low bench, his cupped hands resting on his knees, his brow furrowed in thought. The figure is undraped, vulnerable, inviting the spectator’s vicarious concern.

Textiles are also featured in the CMA’s current keynote exhibition. In this category no work is more imposing than the installation titled “Liminal Contact.” Engineered by Columbia-based artist Sheriden, this immersive piece composed of crocheted textiles is intended to replicate what the artist imagines to be the complicated interior spaces of the human body. Visitors are invited to navigate the twisting passageways between the suspended interlocking loops of yarn, dyed in the colors of blood and bone, that take up a whole gallery.

These three are among the roughly 70 crafted objects on display. “Body Matters,” a visual and tactile conversation between the body and material forms, is on view at the Columbia Museum of Art until Jan. 3.

Original article here.