Tea Time with Potter Jeff Oestreich: Artist Talk & Trunk Show 

Jeff Oestreich was trained in the austere simplicity of traditional Asian pottery while serving as an apprentice to Bernard Leach in England in the 1960s–70s. He will talk about his time at Leach Pottery in St. Ives and how its legacy continues to influence and resonate with contemporary artists. He will discuss and show his own work and the work of three potters who also apprenticed with Leach:  Kat Wheeler, John Beddings, Roelof Ulys.

In the British tradition, after the talk, tea and scones will be served while attendees can meet the artist.

Libby Buckley, current director of Leach Pottery, will begin the presentation with a brief Zoom conversation about recent developments at the studio, including new buildings and exciting programs. 

Let us know if you plan to attend: rsvp@craftinamerica.org

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Textile Arts LA Artist Talk: Molly Haynes

Join Textile Arts LA at the Craft in America Center for a Textile Talk with Los Angeles weaver and artist Molly Haynes. Saturday, May 27 from 10:30 am -11:30 am

Molly Haynes is a weaver working at the intersection of art, craft, and design. Her tactile sculptures explore structure and materiality—echoing tensions between humans and the natural world. She utilizes unconventional materials such as raw plant fiber, monofilament fishing lines, and salvaged marine ropes to construct undulating forms which blur the line between natural and machine-made.

Haynes earned her B.F.A. in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design and went on to design for the interior textiles industry, where she gained a deep understanding of fibers and the construction of cloth. After several years, she decided to delve into her personal practice to focus solely on handmade works that are free of utilitarian constraints. Her work has been exhibited internationally including New York, Los Angeles, Provincetown (MA), London, and Montreal.  

Free for TALA members; $10 for nonmembers.

Quilt Share Live!

Time to dig out your quilted heirlooms and head to the Craft in America Center for our own spin on Antiques Roadshow!

Quilt experts, artist Joe Cunningham and curator Julie Silber, will lead an on-the-spot analysis of audience members’ quilts made before 1960. Cunningham and Silber will give as much information about each quilt as can be gleaned including, date, region, pattern name, condition and more. They will also present a selection of antique quilts and a few of Cunningham’s own creations.

Join us and learn more about the treasures in your own home!

Julie Silber is a lecturer, author and curator with more than forty years’ experience collecting and studying quilts.  She is the curator of the former Esprit Quilt Collection in San Francisco, and was the guest curator of several major quilt exhibitions including American Quilts: A Handmade Legacy at the Oakland Museum and Amish: The Art of the Quilt, at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Her business, Julie Silber Quilts (formerly The Quilt Complex), specializes in antique quilts: selling, appraising, and writing about them. 

Joe Cunningham has been a professional quilt artist since 1980. After a long apprenticeship in traditional quilt history and technique, Cunningham has developed a unique, personal approach to quilt making. His quilts are in corporate, private and museum collections nationwide. The author or co-author of 12 books on the subject, he has been widely seen on television and video, including his appearance on the Peabody Award-winning PBS Documentary series “Craft in America.” Cunningham travels nationally and internationally to lecture on and teach how to make quilts.

This event is free and open to the public.
RSVP: rsvp@craftinamerica.org.

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Inspired LA: Screening & Artist Talk

Mark Taper Auditorium, Los Angeles Central Library

November 6, 2pm

Craft in America is the Peabody Award-winning series exploring America’s creative spirit through the language and traditions of the handmade. Join us for a special screening of INSPIRATION, one of two new episodes streaming starting November 1 and premiering on PBS December 16 at 9pm (check local listings). 

INSPIRATION reveals the magic and influence of craft. Featuring: Simon Rodia and Watts Towers; three generations of the Saar family: Alison Saar, Betye Saar, and Maddy Leeser; Hmong artists Suzanne Thao, Tousue Vang, Chef Yia Vang, and Mandora Young; textile artist Mary Little; weaver Diedrick Brackens; and potter Ayumi Horie.

Following the screening Los Angeles-based artists Alison Saar, Maddy Leeser, Diedrick Brackens, and Mary Little will engage in conversation and answer questions. 

Please RSVP: eventbrite.com/e/inspired-la-screening-artist-talk-tickets-440008405987

Not My America: Online Artist Talk with Joan Takayama-Ogawa

Join ceramic artist Joan Takayama-Ogawa for an insightful discussion of her decades-long practice. Joan Takayama-Ogawa’s work consistently tackles the critical issues of our times; from the degradation of the ocean and coral to school shootings. She delivers her sculptural commentary with fierce intensity, tempered by levity and visual whimsy. Listen in and learn about how she channels her anger into art. Live streamed October, 7, 2022.

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Reading Craft Book Event—Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Art, Weaving, Vision

Please join the Craft in America Center for an online presentation and discussion with editors Laura E. Pérez and Ann Marie Leimer on their book Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Art, Weaving, Vision. The book was awarded the College Art Association’s Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publishing Grant.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood’s artwork is marked by her compassionate and urgent engagement with a range of pressing contemporary issues, from immigration and environmental precarity to the resilience of Indigenous ancestral values and the necessity of decolonial aesthetics in art making. Drawing on the fiber arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Chicana feminist art, and Indigenous fiber- and loom-based traditions, Jimenez Underwood’s art encompasses needlework, weaving, painted and silkscreened pieces, installations, sculptures, and performance. This volume’s contributors write about her place in feminist textile art history, situate her work among that of other Indigenous-identified feminist artists, and explore her signature works, series, techniques, images, and materials.

Redefining the practice of weaving, Jimenez Underwood works with repurposed barbed wire, yellow caution tape, safety pins, plastic bags, and crosses Indigenous, Chicana, European, and Euro-American art practices, pushing the arts of the Americas beyond Eurocentric aesthetics toward culturally hybrid and Indigenous understandings of art making. Jimenez Underwood’s redefinition of weaving and painting alongside the socially and environmentally engaged dimensions of her work position her as one of the most vital artists of our time.

The book is available for purchase directly from the Duke University Press or your preferred bookseller.

You can preview the book’s introduction here. And find a discount coupon here.

About the editors

Laura Elisa Pérez is professor in the Program of Chicanx Latinx Studies and the Department of Ethnic Studies, and since 2018-19, is Chair of the new interdisciplinary and transAmericas Latinx Research Center, at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a core faculty member of the doctoral program in Performance Studies and of the Department of Women’s Studies, and an affiliated faculty member of the Center for Latin American Studies. Pérez is the author of Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities (Duke University Press, 2007), a work in which she theorized decolonial aesthetics and decolonial spiritualities. Eros Ideologies: Writings on Art, Spirituality, and the Decolonial was published by Duke University Press in the fall of 2019 and received a Book Award Honorable mention from the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies in 2020. She is currently co-curating with María Esther Fernández a major retrospective of the work of Amalia Mesa-Bains at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive which will open spring of 2023, and editing the exhibition catalog for “Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory.” 

Ann Marie Leimer is Professor of Art at the Juanita and Ralph Harvey School of Visual Arts at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. Her published work has appeared in the journals Afterimage, Chicana/Latina Studies, The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies (JOLLAS), and Religion and the Arts and in the books Beyond Heritage, Border Crossings, Chican@ Critical Perspectives and Praxis, New Frontiers in Latin American Borderlands, Tina Fuentes: Marcando el relámpago, LatinX: Artistas de Tejas, Voices in Concert: In the Spirit of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Los Maestros: Early Explorers of Chicano Identity. She has curated several exhibitions of Chicana/o/x art including “¡Adelante Siempre! Recent Work by Southern California Chicana Photographers,” “Chicano Photographer: The 1970s from a Chicano’s Perspective,” and “Globe, AZ: A Community at the Crossroads.” Leimer serves on the National Advisory Board for Mexican American Art Since 1848, a research initiative inaugurated by Karen Mary Davalos and Constance Cortez in 2016, which hosts a searchable digital platform (MAAS1848.umn.edu) and will produce a multi-volume book, Adjacent Imaginaries.

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Artist Talk: Location Services

The artists Motoko Furuhashi, Kerianne Quick, and Demitra Thomloudis discuss how they explore “place” within the historical and contemporary contexts of craft and the inseparable bond “place” has to individuality, society, and culture. This talk was live streamed on August 12, 2022.

This talk is presented in conjunction with the Craft in America Center exhibition, Location Services: Jewelry Perspectives on Time & Place, on view from June 25, 2022–September 10, 2022.

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There Is No Not: Artist Talk with Tibbie Dunbar

In this virtual artist talk with Tibbie Dunbar she discusses her life and career. Streamed live on July 23, 2022.

This talk is presented in conjunction with the Craft in America Center exhibition, Tibbie Dunbar: Assemble, on view from June 25, 2022–September 10, 2022.

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Artist Talk: Ferne Jacobs–Finding the Feminine Principle at the Bottom of the Well

In this virtual artist talk, Ferne Jacobs will delve into deeper themes embedded within her organic sculptural forms such as femininity, environmentalism, and theological ideas relating to Jewish mysticism.  

This talk is presented in conjunction with the Craft in America Center exhibition, Building The Essentials: Ferne Jacobs on view through June 18, 2022.

Live streamed: May 13, 2022.

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Ferne Jacobs on Lenore Tawney and the artists who influenced her

The Craft in America Center is pleased to present the first ever retrospective of Los Angeles artist Ferne Jacobs. Jacobs has been at the forefront of the revolution in fiber art since the 1960s. This exhibition will span more than fifty years of pivotal work and include approximately 30 artworks created by Jacobs between the mid 1960s and 2022. Jacobs’ never before seen drawings and collages will also be on view. This momentous survey will be on display in Los Angeles, where Jacobs has lived and practiced for decades, yet rarely exhibited her work. It will explore Jacobs’ overall evolution, highlight her unrelenting search for meaning in structure, and provide insight into the impetus for her work. Building the Essentials: Ferne Jacobs is on view at the Craft in America Center from April 2, 2022 to June 18, 2022. The Craft in America Center in Los Angeles is a craft-focused library and gallery offering artist talks, workshops, exhibits and educational programs.

Lenore Tawney images courtesy of Lenore G. Tawney Foundation. Lenore Tawney in her Coenties Slip, New York studio, 1958. Photo: David Attie. Installation of works by Lenore Tawney, Gewebte Formen, Kunstgewerbemuseum, Zurich, 1964. Tawney with Drawing In Air XV (The Crossing), 1998. Photo: George Erml.

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