Kadey Ambrose is a basketmaker on a quest to discover her ancestral heritage. Her work investigates the connections between ancient craft, ethnobotanical knowledge, and the ever-evolving innovations of living culture. She holds a BAS in Ethnobotany from The Evergreen State College and a MA in Studio Art from Eastern Illinois University. Kadey is from Fairbanks, Alaska—home to the greatest community in the world.
 
@kadeyweaves

Tabitha Arnold makes labor-intensive textile art. Her work is heavily inspired by her Bible belt upbringing in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After earning a degree in painting at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, she began to create narrative tufted rugs inspired by iconography, propaganda, and social realism.
 
Arnold’s work explores the history of the labor movement, as well as her own direct experiences as a worker, organizer, and artist coming of age during a wave of class-consciousness in America. She recently completed residencies at Glen Foerd in Philadelphia and Còrtex Frontal in Portugal.
 
tabithaarnold.com | @tabithakarnold

Brittney Austin received her Bachelor's from Hampton University in Business Management and her Master's in Knitwear Design from Polimoda Fashion Institute in Italy. She combines her business acumen and technical knowledge of knitwear to design garments with 100 percent sustainable yarns. Brittney aspires to collaborate and develop garments with other knitwear artisans around the world. She believes everyone has a story to tell about knitwear and wants to continue this story-telling through textile design.
 
@bnaustin_

Juan Barroso was born in Oklahoma City and grew up in San Miguel Octopan, Guanajuato, Mexico. He received his BFA in art at the University of Oklahoma and his MFA in ceramics from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. He received the Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist Award in May 2020 and since then has appeared in several publications, including the July 2021 issue of Studio Potter and the November 2021 issue of Ceramics Monthly. His ceramic work is represented by Companion Gallery in Humboldt, Tennessee. Barroso is currently living and working in Jackson, Tennessee.
 
juanbarrosoart.com | @juan_barroso_art

SULO BEE (they/them) is an interdisciplinary maker and metalsmith. They earned their BFA from Texas State University in 2018 and MFA from SUNY New Paltz in 2022 with a focus in Metal and Jewelry. Their work has been exhibited internationally and across the United States. They were a part of One for the Future and Here We Are with NYC Jewelry Week, a 3-month resident at the Baltimore Jewelry Center, and a participant in the invitational residency Pentaculum at Arrowmont School of Arts and Craft. SULO is featured in the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Learning Lab, SNAG JAMS, and Accessory Vanity Fair Magazine.
 
sparklefilth.cloud | @sparkle_filth

Vivian Chiu was born in Los Angeles and emigrated to Hong Kong at the age of three. Her interests in creating objects and the visual arts led her to attend the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA '11 Furniture Design) and Columbia University (MFA '19 Sculpture). With an aptitude for problem solving, Vivian creates optical sculptures out of materials such as wood and photography that attempt to formalize coincidental happenings in repetitive labor intensive processes.
 
Vivian has attended residencies such as Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Sculpture Space, Haystack Mountain School, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Penland School of Crafts, and the Center for Art in Wood. Her work has been exhibited in Hong Kong, Milan, New York, Houston, Colorado, and Philadelphia. She is currently teaching Woodworking at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Craft/Material Studies department.
 
vivianchiudesigns.com | @viv_chiu

Michelle Im is a Korean American artist working in Queens, New York. RATxCHICKS, pronounced as [ratchix], is a project name for her ceramics that is a play on the words rachet and rad chicks. Humor is what drives the ideas for her ceramic decorations as she often pairs motifs that are deliberately out of the ordinary. She graduated with a degree in Biology and Art from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She was named one of Ceramic Monthly’s Emerging Artists of 2022.
 
ratxchicks.club | @ratxchicks

Emily McBride is an artist, craftsperson, and educator residing in Minneapolis. Trained as a glassblower and obsessed with malleability and touch, she uses glass as a sculptural and design medium to create objects of use and non-use. In 2016, she received her MFA in Craft & Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University and in 2009 received her BFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University. In 2022, McBride will be a craftsperson-in-residence at Pilchuck Glass School and attend a residency at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington.
 
emilymcbride.com | @emilymarymcbride

Deshun Peoples is a ceramic artist and designer from Chicago. He primarily makes vessel-based forms that highlight utilitarian function. Though these forms have most often been wheel-thrown pots, through 3-D printing, slip-casting, and other industrial methods of production he is beginning to grapple with what it means to have one's metaphorical "hand" present in a body of work. This exploration has led to sculptural installations that challenge him to further ponder questions of societal value, access, agency, and empathy.
 
deshunpeoples.com | @deshunpl

​​Sarita Westrup is an artist and sculptural basket weaver originally from the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. She graduated from the University of North Texas in 2016 and served as the Textile Coordinator at the Penland School of Craft from 2018 to 2021. She is now living in Dallas and is the current artist in residence at Arts Fort Worth.

saritawestrup.art | @saritawestrup

Gwynne Rukenbrod Smith is ACC’s director of community and creative work and specializes in craft entrepreneurship and creative economies. She has worked with both rural and urban communities, teaching her professional development and creative entrepreneurship workshops across the country over the last 20 years. Gwynne believes in helping artists and small business owners expand their markets and create sustainable businesses, and in the power of a strong craft ecology. Portrait by Nicole McConville Photography.

Osa Atoe is a studio potter living in Sarasota, Florida. She came to ceramics at the age of 34 through community classes and is mostly self-taught. Before clay, Atoe’s main creative outlets were music and self-publishing fanzines, which she still does on occasion. She completed a one year post-baccalaureate program for ceramics at Louisiana State University in 2018. Her work is guided by the influence of historical ceramics and the natural environment. Currently, Atoe spends most of her time in the studio creating monthly collections for her online audience and teaches weekly wheel throwing classes at Sarasota Clay Company.
 
potterybyosa.com | @potterybyosa

Brian Fleetwood, an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, is an interdisciplinary and collaborative jewelry artist based in Northern New Mexico. Brian holds an MFA in Craft and Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University and is currently an assistant professor in Studio Art at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
 
Fleetwood's work examines jewelry's ability to mediate between a body and the space it occupies. Informed by traditional stories and making practices, a background in biology and ecology, and lived experience on the autism spectrum, he uses experimentation with material and process to create work that aspires to behave in similar ways to living things. This work explores the connections between different ways of knowing, acts of making, and the unexpected and complex kinship between us and everything else.
 
formandconcept.center

Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy is a Los Angeles-based independent curator and writer of contemporary art and craft. She most recently served as Assistant Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York. Vizcarrondo-Laboy has also curated exhibitions at the Center for Craft, North Carolina; Collar Works, New York; Jane Hartsook Gallery, New York; Crocker Art Museum, California; Mindy Solomon Gallery, Florida; and Grounds for Sculpture, New Jersey. She has written for publications such as the Journal of Modern Craft, American Craft magazine, Cultured magazine, and multiple exhibition catalogs. She holds a BA in Art History from the University of Florida and an MA from the Bard Graduate Center, New York, in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture.
 
angelikvizcarrondo.com | @angelik.wiki