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PILCHUCK GLASS SCHOOL 2023 Catalog

PILCHUCK GLASS SCHOOL 2023 Catalog

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Craft Happenings: Summer 2023

Make craft part of your summer plans with these 25 events and exhibitions happening across the country, organized by the month in which they start.
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.

A World of Vessels

From the earliest stages of human development, the vessel has been integral to our survival and daily sustenance, our grasp of abstract concepts through metaphor and imagination, and our understanding of the secrets of the cosmos.
The Making of June

Lisa Dingle didn’t grow up around watercraft. “We were not boaters, we did not boat,” she says. Still, she was drawn to wooden boats. After she and her husband, John, bought their home in Southport, Maine, in 2006, she began researching them in earnest. It took 10 years to convince John, who was concerned about the upkeep, that they should get one. They decided theirs should be a new boat, custom-made.
The Queue: Juan Barroso

Juan Barroso’s vessels carry stories of immigrant labor, both within their forms and painted on their surfaces. In The Queue, the Tennessee-based artist shares why he makes functional vessels, the delayed gratification of pottery, and his favorite artists working in clay.
The Queue: Margaret Cross

Margaret Cross’s jewelry holds memories and remains, connecting the living and the dead. In The Queue, the Brooklyn-based artist shares her emotional experiences creating mourning jewelry, the tool that has become an extension of her arm, and the death-related art projects that bring her closer to her loved ones.
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.
Love Letters in Thread

Bahamian artist Gio Swaby creates what she calls “love letters to Black women” by making life-size portraits in embroidery and piecing—boisterously colorful images that, in the words of Gio Swaby: Fresh Up exhibition organizers, “highlight and celebrate the subjects’ use of fashion as unapologetic self-definition and self-expression.”
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

Virgil Ortiz crafts a futuristic vision of the past with traditional Cochiti pottery. In The Queue, the Cochiti Pueblo, New Mexico–based ceramist and fashion designer shares his favorite ceramists who work on a grand scale, the science fiction series that inspires his work, and how Cochiti pottery carries tradition and history.
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.
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.