May 2025 In Memoriam: Gail M. Brown

Craft in America warmly recognizes the recent passing of Art Historian Gail M. Brown. Among many things, Gail was an enthusiastic curator of contemporary craft and an educator whose (60+) exhibitions work spanned over 25 years across all regions of the U.S.A. Craft in America’s Center especially recognizes her as a longtime annual supporter of our overall organization. We also honor her generosity in donating her sizable art book collection to our growing Craft Library—her donated contributions have since helped create a Special Collections mini-collection of rare and unique exhibition catalogs and paper ephemera. Craft in America remains grateful for Gail’s contributions and impact within the Arts, and we send our condolences to her family and friends. As an effusive collaborator and proponent of the Arts, Gail M. Brown will be sorely missed. 

Winter ‘25 FEATHER EXHIBITIONS : ART LIBRARY DISPLAY

This winter / spring the Craft in America Center is exhibiting innovative feather-based artworks by Boris Huang, a Taiwanese-Hawaiian featherwork artist and Chris Maynard, a biologist/birder feather artist. Our Education Coordinator, Sam Sermeño, has curated an interactive library display to accompany technically distinct and cross-cultural approaches to feather art. During the exhibition opening, the Center was fortunate to have  both artists present. Maynard gave an in-depth presentation on his work and Huang gave a detailed feather lei demonstration which will be featured in our Craft Video Dictionary, a new learning resource for craft and art techniques across mediums.

Several of the displayed magazines and books highlight long standing featherwork art forms, from Mardi-Gras to Hawaiian lei-hulu art traditions shared by renown matriarchs. This collection explores the dynamism of feather work’s niche art culture, craft techniques, and its deep impact on different regions’ community expression; from the ornately feathered and beaded regalia and parade culture of New Orleans, to several schools of Hawaiian indigenous featherwork traditions, to more contemporary and fiber-cut dimensional feathered installations.

We hope you enjoy browsing this selection of reading materials, and please know that the invitation to browse our library remains open-ended. Thanks to generous book donations and ongoing curatorial scholarship, our library warmly welcomes the curious passerby, armchair art historian, artists & creatives across all mediums and practices.

Royal Hawaiian Featherwork (2015) dives into various museology research, curatorial insight, and cultural critique of what is considered the origin of Hawaiian featherwork among royalty ranging from the 18th to 19th centuries. This book pays homage to the hand-techniques required in constructing these various feather cloaks and adornments. Ample parts of this book share accounts and research about the cultural recognition of fetherwork’s craft and how this featherwork secured Hawaiian chiefs spiritual protection and prosperity for centuries. According to most art historians, few royal feather artworks (known as nā hulu ali‘i) are known to survive outside of various art museum and private collection settings. Viewers will learn much about the surveyed seventy+ rare examples of royal featherwork capes and cloaks (‘ahu’ula), feathered royal staffs (kāhili), helmets (mahiole), feather leis (lei hulu manu), and various feathered deity iconography (akua hulu manu) in paintings and other paperworks. Deeply rooted in cultural significance, this book explore how various featherwork are detailed, along with their recorded historical-social functions; many of these items were central to Indigenous Hawaiian diplomacy, from securing political alliances and agreements, to battlefield armor and regalia, used as their own form of martial currency, to eventual trading and foreign visitor cultural gifts. This dense volume also serves as the catalogue accompanying one of the first Hawaiian featherwork exhibitions on the U.S. mainland, via the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (2015). 

The House Of Dance And Feathers: A Museum By Ronald W Lewis (Rachel Breunlin and Helen Regis, 2009).

This book was published nearly a decade before Ronald W. Lewis, an illustrious New Orleans culture-shaper, passed away. Lewis helped assemble the “House of Dance & Feathers” museum found in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. Readers will enjoy the museum displays, festival and parade photos, interview excerpts and insider knowledge sourced from the posthumous Lewis himself and close knit communities. This work highlights and honors the different worlds Lewis inhabited, and these communities’ cultural impacts on Black history and New Orleans’ social fabric; recognizing New Orleans’ various Bone Gangs, Parade Krewes, Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs’ continued legacies amidst decades of change.

Feather Lei as an Art (2005) by the late and renown Elder Mary Louise Kaleonahenahe Kekuewa and her daughter Paulette Nohealani Kahalepuna.

The native Hawaiian press Mutual Books released this revised and expanded edition 15 years after the original was self-published by the authors to bring it to a wider audience. Boris Huang’s featherwork mentor– Elder Mary Louise was renown as one of the main Matriarchs of lei hulu feather arts, and various diasporic Hawaiian heritage-arts revival movements. This book generously shares layers of history, cultural insights, spiritual symbology, and technical diagrams and approaches to this traditional art practice. Sharing practical criteria for knowing one’s feathers (hulu manu), to feather preparation stages, to making traditional lei (Wli) or more contemporary Humu Papa lei with feathers, and respectfully storing and preserving these iconic feather adornments and uses.

The Craft Center’s library proudly houses over 2,000 periodicals and decades of various art and craft magazines. Librarian Sam has pulled a handful of articles from Surface Design and American Craft Magazines? featuring featherwork and related cultural art history articles. Readers will enjoy short features about Kate MccGwire’s mind-bending feather installation sculptures (Surface Design, 2014, Jessica Hemmings) to New Orleans contemporary mixed media artists to further explore; such as Charles DuVernay, Pippin Frisbie-Calder, Mapó Kinnord, Seguenon Koné, and the late Sylvester Francis, founder of Backstreet Cultural Museum (American Craft, 2024, Katy Reckdahl and Jennifer Vogel).

The library is open to the public: Tuesday – Saturday, from noon to 6pm.

The Craft in America Center Library proudly houses over 3000 books, exhibition catalogs, and more than 2000 periodicals dedicated to the art of craft and related topics. 

For further Lbrary or Craft in Schools inquiries, please visit our Library page or contact Education Programs and Library Coordinator sam@craftinamerica.org 

Library in the Summer: Woodwork, Design & Craft Video Dictionary

This summer Craft in America invites you to the Center’s woodwork, furniture, and historic design exhibition. Our  Building Blocks: Process in Wood show highlights both regional and international artistry across cultures and time periods, focused on handworked wood fabrication. Complementing this dynamic show, we encourage visitors to learn more about our dynamic and educational  Craft Video Dictionary woodworking videos and library-magazine woodworking displays. 

Library Highlights on Woodworking

Our easy-access craft art library features regularly rotating displays, and our range of materials span from rare books, artist monographs, exhibition catalogs, art-magazines, to craft-techniques/technical manuals.

This summer’s featured woodworking books on display range from the 18th Century  American Shakers woodworking and legacy designs, to American Mid-Century Modern legacy schools of woodworking (a la The Furniture of Sam Maloof, header image), to more internationally renown sculptural/vessel focused approaches to wood fabrication (a la Keiko Hirohashi’s design book Wood Package). We’ve also pulled woodworking periodicals dating back decades, including magazine runs from 1970’s-2020’s American Craft, 1980’s Woodworker’s Journal, 1980’s Fine Homebuilding, Fine Woodworking 1980’s-90’s, Woodworker West (2007-2023), and more — all previewed below!

The American Shakers and Their Furniture in (1982) black and white format, boasts fascinating historic perspectives on this ascetic, minimalist-design oriented religious community’s contributions to woodworking and design over the last 200 years. This book features dynamic, near timeless diagrams, measurements, and instructions for recreating their highly functional and visually stunning wood-based pieces centuries later. Nodding to this lineage, our Woodwork exhibition also features artist Ryan Taber’s Stofa Pattern #2 after Tony Smith’s Batcave 1969-1971 and the Shaker Super Heater, 1820-1830; made from White Pine.

Wood Package, highlights innovative Keiko Hirohashi’s design and surreal woodwork. Much like Martin Alexander’s own cultural woodwork homage and nod to the playful interpretation of wood as both a sculptural and playfully reverent “Florecita” vessel, Hirohashi’s work explores whimsical and diasporic design of wood containers. Wood Package asks each viewer to consider how woodworking forms and their outer layers are just as important (vessels) as to what is housed within.

Come visit us and browse our extensive craft library! With over over over 3000 books, exhibition catalogs, and more than 2000 periodicals dedicated to the art of craft and related topics — there’s something here to delight any curious reader. Come visit us this summer and explore the expansive world of craft art and woodworking!

Woodworking Network: Craft in America Launches Craft Video Dictionary

5/13/24

Full, original article by Dakota Smith on Woodworking Network here.

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.”

Woodworking Network: Craft in America Announces New Exhibition

April 26, 2024

Original post by Dakota Smith on Woodworking Network here.

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

Urban Glass: John Luebtow and Stephen Edwards return to Los Angeles

4/23/24

Read the original article by Kinshasa Peterson on Urban Glass.

John Luebtow and Stephen Edwards return to Los Angeles for an exhibition and discussion at the Craft in America Center

The Craft in America Center in Los Angeles, which is exhibiting a dual-artist exhibit entitled “Between the LInes” through May 25, will host a conversation with the artists John Luebtow and Stephen Edwards on Saturday, April 27 from 3 PM to 4 PM PST. Both in-person and streamed on Zoom and Facebook Live, the talk will bring together two prolific creators who shaped a legacy of glassmaking in Southern California, and who are regarded nationwide as influential educators and artists. Moderated by Craft in America curator Emily Zaiden, the discussion will provide perspective on the major retrospective of their work now on view at the museum. 

Luebtow and Edwards both create artwork at differing scales, from intimate forms to powerful works in the public sphere. In addition to their artistic careers, Luebtow and Edwards are both well-known educators who have a shared passion for glass with generations of students in California and New York State, where they established programs for learning in the medium, respectively. Their first meeting, in fact, came when Luebtow was Edwards’ high-school teacher, and the two formed a bond that has spanned decades.

Excerpts from Luebtow’s recently published monograph, Glass: A Lifetime of Creating, were featured in the Spring 2024 issue of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly, on sale at newsstands and online. The article can be purchased along with our digital edition. 

The accompanying exhibition, Between the Lines: John Luebtow and Stephen Edwards, is on view at the Craft in America Center through May 25. 

ArtCentron: Stunning Glass Artistry of Two Outstanding Master Glass Sculptors

4/16/24

Read the full article by Kazeem Adeleke on ArtCentron

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA- Transforming glass into exquisite and alluring art requires skill, creativity, innovation, and glass artistry. Currently, the Craft in America Center hosts an extraordinary exhibition that showcases these important elements. Titled Between the Lines, the exhibition highlights the remarkable work of master glass sculptors John Luebtow and Stephen Edwards. It offers a profound exploration of the captivating world of glass artistry from their unique perspectives and techniques.

In addition to showcasing their existing works, Between the Lines features new pieces created specifically for this exhibition. These new sculptures demonstrate the ongoing creativity and innovation of both artists as they push the boundaries of their craft.

John Luebtow is revered amongst his contemporaries for his precision and creativity. His ability to shape molten glass into intricate works of art reveals an exemplary and rare skill. His sculptures often feature intricate patterns and shapes, showcasing his mastery of the glassblowing process.

One of Luebtow’s notable works is “Venus Vitae,” located in Century City, California. This captivating public art integrates glass elements into water features, creating a unique visual relationship between internal and external geometries. At night, when illuminated, the sculpture assumes a spiritual essence, dispelling dark shadows.

Glass Sculpting and the Transmutation of Matter

“Linear Form Series,” is an another important example of Luebtow’s creativity. A Maquette Study for Nestlé/Carnation Commission created in the late 1980s, Luebtow combines wavy glass strands with solid shapes and stainless steel to capture the relationship between light, people, and the environment. This piece reveals not just his deep understanding of form and shape, but also how they exist and interact with their surroundings.

Stephen Edwards approaches glass sculpting with a focus on the transmutation of matter and his medium. He draws inspiration from nature to create massive sculptures that balance structure and fragility. His meticulous process involves using molds carved from styrofoam to cast molten glass, creating surfaces that mimic textures found in nature, such as water ripples and cliff faces.

Vulnerability to Hubris

Edwards’ ability to create exceptional sculptures rich with symbolism is evident in many of the works on display in this exhibition. One of them is “Icarus 2024.” Crafted from cast glass and steel, the sculpture vividly portrays the repercussions of hubris using a saturated red hue. Drawing inspiration from the myth of Icarus, Edwards depicts a figure bursting forth. Adorned with wings on his back, the artist creates the illusion of Icarus poised for flight, heedless of the warnings that his wings, fashioned from wax, will melt if he ventures too close to the sun. The sculpture’s reflection of viewers serves as a poignant reminder of our shared vulnerability to hubris.

Edwards’ impact on the world of glass artistry extends far beyond his own creations. As a teacher and mentor, he has influenced countless aspiring artists, helping to shape the future of the medium. His work can be found in public collections and prestigious institutions around the world, including prestigious institutions. They are in National Art Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution and the Corning Museum of Glass.

Celebrating Glass Artistry of Two Master Glass Sculptors

Between the Lines is a rare opportunity to appreciate the beauty and complexity of glass sculpture through the lens of these two masterful artists. It celebrates their enduring contributions to the world of glass sculpture, inviting viewers to experience the transformative power of art.

The juxtaposition of Luebtow’s precise, geometric forms with Edwards’ organic, nature-inspired sculptures creates a dynamic visual experience. It allows viewers to appreciate the beauty and complexity of glass artistry. Above all, it serves as a poignant reminder of the marvels within the natural world and the transformative power of art.

ArtDaily.com: ‘Between the Lines’ opening reception opens today at Craft in America Center

Original article on ArtDaily.com here.

LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Craft in America Center is opening Between the Lines, a two-person exhibition featuring master glass sculptors John Luebtow and Stephen Edwards. These two maverick sculptors have shaped the field of glass through potent artwork and technical prowess. Constantly innovating, they use glass in ways that defy expectations— bending, casting and cutting it into astounding forms that push the material to its limits. Over the decades, both their intimate and monumental works address relationships with nature, spirituality, and family.

Line is the guiding force shaping the form of each work. Line and form relay philosophical signifiers stemming from the artists’ personal experiences and outlooks. Responding to concepts through abstraction, glass becomes a material for echoing dynamics of the natural world.

This exhibition pairs these two luminaries who are also tied by a teacher/student relationship: Edwards was once a student in Luebtow’s high school art classes. Insatiably curious about process, both artists consistently push the boundaries of technical development and have created significant facilities, both of their own and at institutions. In addition to illustrious art careers, the two masters have been instrumental in creating education programs and facilities in glass, and have taught scores of art students; Luebtow at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, and Edwards at Alfred University in New York.

With more than a century of knowledge between them, these objects are a glimpse at how these artists create abstract forms with powerful, transcendent ideas about beauty, conflict, tension, nature and existence.

John Luebtow has become one of the most respected names in contemporary glass sculpture over the past forty years. He developed innovative techniques in glass-making, introducing and incorporating gestural and expressive qualities into impeccably finished sculptural components. He holds a BA from California Lutheran College, and two MFAs from UCLA (one in ceramics and one in glass).

Stephen Edwards built one of the largest hot glass programs in the nation at Alfred University, where he taught for 22 years. Prior to that, an early stepping stone was working as an artist-in-residence at the Penland School of Crafts. Near Penland, he established his first private glass studio in Micaville, North Carolina in 1982. Edwards graduated from Illinois State University with a Master of Fine Arts Degree in 1980.

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 9, 3:00–5:00pm PST Artist talk: Saturday, April 27, 3:00pm PST

Beverly Press: Craft in America Hosts Two Innovative Glass Artists

3/7/24

Original post in the Beverly Press here.

The Craft in America Center will host “Between the Lines,” a two-person exhibition featuring master glass sculptors John Luebtow and Stephen Edwards from March 9 through May 25.

The two sculptors have shaped the field of glass through their own work and their technological prowess. With a constant desire to create and innovate, they both use glass in ways that defy expectations – bending and cutting to give it shape. They walk the fine line of pushing the material to its limits. Over the decades, they have created work that pertains to their relationships with nature, spirituality and family.

Art begins with the line for both artists. It is the guiding force for shaping the form of each work. Responding to ideas through abstraction, glass is a material for echoing the natural world.

The exhibition pairs the two luminaries, who are also tied by a teacher-student relationship. Edwards was once a student in Luebtow’s high school art classes. Insatiably curious about processes, the artists consistently push the boundaries of technical development and have created significant facilities, both of their own and at institutions. In addition to illustrious art careers, the artists have been instrumental in creating education programs and have taught numerous art students – Luebtow at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles and Edwards at Alfred University in New York.

Los Angeles Daily News: See portraits of Black life, as told by puppets, at new LA exhibit

The new “Spirit of Play: Craft and Imagination” exhibit at Craft in America is running through Saturday, March 2.

2/22/24

Full, original article in the Los Angeles Daily News here.

When puppets speak, people listen, says artist, educator and puppeteer Schroeder Cherry.

Cherry uses puppet play to teach people about the U.S. African diaspora. Organizers of his new “Spirit of Play: Craft and Imagination” exhibit, featured at the Craft in America nonprofit center in Beverly Grove, say that Cherry uses the “disarming quality” of play to both educate and engage viewers. His “family of idiosyncratic characters” tackles topics like the history of slavery, and contemporary life in America as a Black person.

The new Los Angeles exhibit — now running through Saturday, March 2 — showcases realistic-looking puppets and assemblage to educate both children and adults about Black culture and history in the U.S.