2022 Emerging Artists Cohort
2022 Emerging Artists Cohort
The American Craft Council launched its Emerging Artists Cohort in 2021 as a new three-month pilot program designed to cultivate the next step for independent craft artists to advance their professional careers. Over the past 2 years, the program has supported 23 innovative artists new to their careers who are expanding craft boundaries and challenging us to new perspectives.
MEET OUR 2022 EMERGING ARTISTS COHORT
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
THANK YOU TO OUR 2022 EMERGING ARTISTS COHORT
APPLICATION JURORS
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.
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.
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.
SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR PROGRAM SPONSORS
The Emerging Artists Cohort is possible thanks to generous support from Fleur S. Bresler, the Windgate Charitable Foundation, and the Harlan Boss Foundation for the Arts.
HELP US CONTINUE SUPPORTING UP-AND-COMING ARTISTS
ACC is thrilled to be providing direct support and career mentorship to artists on their path to professional practice through the Emerging Artists Cohort. As a national nonprofit, we rely on the contributions of our members and donors to provide impactful programs like this one. Please join or donate to help ensure the Emerging Artists Cohort can continue in the years to come.