NORTH & SOUTH: *NEW* Craft in America Episodes Coming to PBS, Part of Handwork 2026

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 28, 2026

[Los Angeles] – NORTH & SOUTH: New Episodes of Craft in America Coming to PBS December 2026 The Peabody Award-winning PBS documentary series Craft in America brings a year of celebrating American craft to a close this December with two new episodes, NORTH and SOUTH. Now in its eighteenth season, the series explores America’s creative spirit through the language and traditions of the handmade.       NORTH and SOUTH premiere on PBS Friday, December 18 and stream starting Friday, November 13. The featured artists reflect the broad diversity of America’s human story, focusing on craft from the northern and southern regions of the country. The episodes invite viewers to learn from time-honored traditions. Artists share family stories, demonstrate traditional and contemporary crafting techniques, and connect to Indigenous and immigrant histories. These stories open a gateway to understanding why craft matters to our nation today. Craft in America is showcasing artists whose work tells unique stories about craft, creativity, and the possibilities of the handmade. This year’s episodes are part of Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026, a yearlong initiative marking the nation’s 250th anniversary and celebrating the diversity of the crafts that define America. They join EAST and WEST, which aired in December 2025, and complete Craft in America’s exciting four-episode event uplifting craft across all regions of the country. Handwork 2026 demonstrates the importance of the handmade throughout our history and in contemporary life, with over 250 partners across the country organizing events, exhibitions, and more. Artists from the Craft in America series are featured in Handwork: Handcrafted Objects that Made America, the official book of Handwork 2026. Visit handwork2026.org to learn more about ongoing events across the nation. “We have produced 37 episodes of our series for 19 years now on PBS,” says Executive Producer and Director Patricia Bischetti. “The significance of the handmade is becoming increasingly relevant right now. Our goal at Craft in America is to continue to explore the connections between craft, our unique history and our country’s vibrant and diverse cultures.” Craft in America is the Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated documentary series discovering the beauty, significance, and relevance of handmade objects and the artists who make them. Previous episodes of the series are available to stream on YouTube and the PBS app. “Craft in America…[has a] knack for telling big stories…about the formation of culture, the purpose of creativity, the idea that the pursuits of beauty and utility are foundational to humanity.”– The New York Times For detailed information on the artists in NORTH and SOUTH, see below.

NORTH investigates the impact of the northern landscape on craft artists. Indigenous canoe practices, reclaimed materials, a craft school in the forest, and more demonstrate how natural and urban environments inspire the handmade in the Great North.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

Eddington, Maine, is the home of Jeremy Frey, a basketmaker and recent recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant. After learning traditional Passamaquoddy basketmaking, Jeremy’s innovations have made him one of the most notable contemporary basketmakers in the country.

Sayaka Ganz takes discarded plastics and metals and repurposes them into animal sculptures in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Inspired by her childhood growing up in Japan, Brazil, and Hong Kong, Sayaka creates complex sculptures of animals and sea creatures, giving new life to abandoned materials.

Returning to Maine, Deer Isle is the home of the Haystack Mountain School of Craft, operating for more than sixty years. This unique, remote craft school gives artists across all disciplines the opportunity to experiment, expand their creativity, and think deeply about what it means to make things, through workshops, classes, and residencies.

In Minneapolis, Minnesota, Tia Keobounpheng works as a fiber artist who weaves complex geometric patterns with thread on wooden canvas. Tia shows how she discovered that she was not just Finnish-American but Sami—the indigenous people of the far north of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia—and brings her journey of self-discovery into her work, transforming her artistic practice.

In Washington state, Suquamish Elder Barbara Lawrence and her sons Nigel and Ian Lawrence tell the history of the Tribal Canoe Journey, an annual tradition that helped revive Native canoe culture in the Pacific Northwest. Black River Canoe Family skipper Willard Bill Jr. and his family take the viewer along the journey with them on the water, showing how the resurgence of Indigenous crafts and practices is impacting the community.

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SOUTH

SOUTH explores craft artists who are building an inclusive and hopeful future. From elaborate costumes of New Orleans masking societies to mosaic stained glass in Miami and the vibrant artist community rebuilding after Hurricane Helene, the episode demonstrates the resilience and creativity of the American South. 

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

In Atlanta, Georgia, Ato Ribeiro creates wooden quilt sculptures from repurposed wood, taking inspiration from his Ghanaian roots. He draws on African-American family legacy as well as Ghanaian culture in his work, referencing kente cloth, adinkra symbols, and Black American history.

The members of the Osceola-Zepeda family in Naples, Florida, are crafters who are preserving Seminole traditions and passing them down to the next generation. Karie, Jessica, and Marissa Osceola and Brian, Pedro, and Corinne Zepeda create patchwork clothes, sweetgrass baskets, beaded jewelry and bandolier bags, and dugout canoes in the Florida Everglades.

Spruce Pine, North Carolina, is the home of Vicki Essig, a fiber artist who raises hundreds of silkworms a year, painstakingly guiding them to spin fabric into patterns and construct wearable art garments with no thread or scissors. She uses her work to communicate important messages about equality and inclusion and to connect to the natural world of North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene devastated her community in 2024.

In Miami Beach, Florida, Sebastian Duncan-Portuondo is a stained glass mosaic artist whose work draws on his family’s Cuban heritage and his own queer identity. He shows his process, making a window, an art wall, a fireplace, and a collaborative community event memorializing the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting.

Finally, the Ninth Ward of New Orleans during Mardi Gras is full of the traditional Black Masking societies, parading to show off the elaborate, three-dimensional costumes they make over the course of a year in an incredible 200-year-old tradition. Shaka Zulu of the Golden Feather Hunters and Edward Buckner of the Red Flame Hunters youth tribe show how they create beaded suits and connect to their communities.

CONTACT

press@craftinamerica.org

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OUR MISSION
To promote and advance original handcrafted work through programs in all media

OUR GOALS
To document the importance of handmade objects and the artists who make them
To provide a gateway to discover, explore and experience craft
To celebrate our nation’s cultures through craft

CRAFT IN AMERICA, Inc. is a Los Angeles-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.