Blog
-
The Ceramist and the Superheroes
When dug out of the earth, the clay at Cochiti Pueblo, New Mexico, appears reddish brown, the chunks like dusted chocolate truffles. Virgil Ortiz, who was born and lives in this community of the Cochiti people, situated between the cities that Spanish colonizers named Albuquerque and Santa Fe, has been digging into this rich earth since his childhood. -
Remembering Well
When Minhi England’s husband, Jesse, was terminally ill with peripheral nerve sheath cancer, the couple was forced to have heartbreaking conversations about what Jesse wanted to have happen to his body after he died.
-
Craft Adventures
Craft and travel go together. There’s a long history of artists hitting the road in search of a “master” from whom to learn the secrets of a given craft. Today Instagram and other digital media are increasingly bringing faraway craftworks and secrets home to us. -
The Queue: Margaret Cross
-
What’s in a Vessel?
Five artists describe the construction of their extraordinary vessels and reveal what they hold. -
Inside the Birchbark Canoe
America has historical amnesia. Citizens today often struggle to face uncomfortable facts of history, such as the genocide of Native Americans, their internment in residential boarding schools, and slavery. -
The Queue: Virgil Ortiz
-
Tiny Treasures
The vessels are ornamented bronze, finished with basketry details: coils and weaving in natural materials like sweetgrass, seagrass, bamboo, and grapevine. -
The Queue: Douglas Molinas Lawrence
Douglas Molinas Lawrence carves, chips, grinds, and scorches blocks of wood into masterful vessels. In The Queue, the Knoxville, Tennessee–based woodworker tells us about his favorite woodworking tools, a Japanese tsubo vessel artist, and an inspiring craft institution close to his home. -
Craft Happenings: Spring 2023
Spring is right around the corner, and the craft season is in bloom. Here are 25 events, exhibitions, and festivals happening across the country, organized by the month in which they start. -
Making History
The living room of craft artist and educator Karen Collins’s Compton, California, home is stacked with the dioramas she has constructed over the past 27 years. -
The Queue: Suzye Ogawa
Suzye Ogawa’s small bronze baskets hold big stories—of Japanese American culture, basketry traditions around the world, and the abundance of fibers in nature. In The Queue, the Fort Bragg, California–based metal artist shares her favorite jewelers, the special tools that make her work possible, and the appeal of unknown craft artists. -
The Objects We Keep
People talk to their laptops, name their cars, invest meaning into such ordinary things as a particular baseball cap or coffee mug. It is a fact of life that we have relationships with all sorts of inanimate objects. -
Remembering: Lloyd Herman
Independent curator, museum director, and American Craft Council Honorary Fellow Lloyd Herman died on January 5, 2023. He was one of the foremost authorities on the contemporary craft movement in America and traveled the world lecturing on the topic of American craft.