Shows to See: February/March 2016

Shows to See: February/March 2016

Published on Saturday, February 6, 2016. This article appears in the February/March 2016 issue of American Craft Magazine.
Author Staff
Beatrice Coron Fuller Craft Museum

Béatrice Coron at Fuller Craft Museum; Photo: Etienne Frossard

Arms & the Artist

This winter, makers take on the consequences of war in work that prompts reflection and healing; find notable shows at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma and San Francisco’s Museum of Craft and Design (read more below), along with exhibitions at California’s Monterey Museum of Art and the National Quilt Museum in Kentucky.

AR / Conway 
Baum Gallery, University of Central Arkansas
Finding Shelter: An Exhibition of Contemporary Fiber Art 
to Feb. 18
Ideas about comfort, safety, solace, and protection are right at home in these 35 works by 13 artists, among them Nnenna Okore, Amanda Salm, and Lindsay Ketterer Gates.

CA / San Francisco
Museum of Craft and Design 
Art & Other Tactics
to Mar. 20
In four sections, this show considers craft as a transformative and sustaining practice for artists who have served in battle zones: “The GI Bill and the Greatest Generation: Opening the Flood Gates for Craft,” “Korean War Veterans and the 1950s,” “Hidden Scars: Artist Veterans Who Served in Vietnam,” and “Craft, Expression, and the Military Today: Recent Years.”

CA / San Jose
San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles
Earth Stories
to Feb. 28
Twenty-four artists from around the world chose stories about people or groups seeking to restore and protect the planet, then interpreted those stories in their quilts. The show honors the 25th anniversary of Studio Art Quilt Associates.

FL / Miami
Pérez Art Museum Miami
Carlos Alfonzo: Clay Works and Painted Ceramics
to Apr. 24
Carlos Alfonzo arrived in the United States in 1980 in the Mariel boatlift from Cuba. In the following decade, he produced an abundance of large paintings, sculptures, and molded ceramics, as well as public murals of hand-formed clay tiles. This show marks the quarter-century since his death at 40 in 1991.
 
MA / Brockton
Fuller Craft Museum
Paper and Blade: Modern Paper Cutting
Feb. 20 – Jul. 24  
Slashing and snipping, piercing and layering, papercutting artists create line, depth, and texture in their two-dimensional medium. This survey brings together work in this relatively unsung art form by some seminal practitioners, including Annie Vought.
 
MA / Salem
Native Fashion
Now to Mar. 6
Native American traditions, concepts of beauty, and identity inform nearly 100 items of clothing and accessories by designers working over the past 50 years, including an ensemble by Project Runway contestant Patricia Michaels.
 
MD / Baltimore
Imagining Home
to Aug. 1, 2018
The museum’s new Patricia and Mark Joseph Education Center includes an interactive gallery space, which debuts with this show of more than 30 works that take visitors home – wherever and whatever that may be. Paintings, sculptures, textiles, and photographs express notions about what a home is and what it’s like to be there.
 
NY / New York City
Beauty – Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial
Feb. 12 – Aug. 21
Extravagant, intricate, ethereal, transgressive, emergent, elemental, and transformative: These are the categories in which 250 works by 62 designers are organized, in this fifth iteration of the museum’s every-three-years blowout.
 
WA / Tacoma
Healing in Flames
to Apr. 30
Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan in the museum’s Hot Shop Heroes program last spring and summer created the work in this show, giving shape and voice to their feelings about war and life in the military – from camaraderie to trauma and loss. As one artist participant put it, “When you come here … there’s other things to think about than that pain.”
 
WI / Neenah
Transcending Time: A Survey of Works in Glass by Italian Maestro Lino Tagliapietra
to Feb. 14
Lino Tagliapietra’s career in glass began in his boyhood, nearly 70 years ago. In the ensuing decades, he has been showered with awards and recognition, influenced generations of fellow glass artists, seen his work shine in major collections across the globe, and created countless masterworks, including the 50 on view here.