Jon Spayde

Jon Spayde is a writer, editor, and performance artist in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Stories authored by Jon Spayde

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.”
Tiny Treasures

The vessels are ornamented bronze, finished with basketry details: coils and weaving in natural materials like sweetgrass, seagrass, bamboo, and grapevine.
Standing in the Room Together

When visitors to The Clay Studio in Philadelphia enter the Figuring Space exhibition, they’ll encounter a sort of community in clay—a gathering of life-size human figures.