Autumn sparks a series of craft festivals aimed at shoppers in a holiday spending mood. One show has risen to the top, and remained there for thirty-one years. What does it take to be the premiere fall fine craft show year after year? The answer in one word: innovation. If there is one aspect craft enthusiasts and artists alike can depend on, it is that there is always something new at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show.

	Leather John Milligan

The show expanded its focus to the international craft arena with a group of Japanese guest artists in 2001. Since then, Finnish, German, Irish, British, and Native American artists have been featured. A group of artists from Israel will participate next year. This year though the spotlight turns to Canada. “Canada has a very active and strong craft council. They have a model program in terms of government support of the artists. As a result, the quality of the work is very high and extraordinarily creative,” says Nancy O’Meara, executive director and craft show manager.

The Canadian Crafts Federation/Fédération canadienne des métiers d’art is wrapping up Craft Year 2007, a nationwide celebration of the more than twenty-two thousand

Wood Michael Allison

professional craftspeople currently working in Canada. The cream of the crop went through a multi-level jurying process, judged by finalists of the Saidye Bronfman Award for Excellence in Fine Craft, Canada’s highest honor for fine craft. Twenty-six selected artists will show their work in Philadelphia for those collectors who could not attend one of the special exhibitions across Canada.

For those not able to attend the Philadelphia show in person, an online auction was started in 2006 and continues this year. During the week of the show, thirty items from participating exhibitors, past jurors and master artists will be offered, all extraordinary one-of-a-kind art objects.

In 2007, the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show attempts to help solve another dilemma. Many of the venerable names in craft are baby boomers, now considering retirement or cutting back their show schedules. So many times, you hear the “graying” generation ask: But who is going to take our place? Where is the next generation of artists? Who has chosen the fine craft world as their spiritual and financial source?

	Jewelry Semiprecious Joanna Gollberg

Can they make a viable business of craft in today’s economy? The Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show steps up with a solution: a new category for emerging artists. The show provides an introduction, of sorts, for new artists to tap into enthusiastic, educated buyers.

O’Meara, speaking for the show, says: “We are one of the first shows in the country and we work hard to maintain our reputation as the leader. With that comes the responsibility to foster the new generation. The nature of creativity is that it is constantly changing and we realize that we need to be constantly innovative as well.”

“The emerging artists category is a great idea. It allows the craft show to highlight exciting new artists and to help them get established in this competitive field,” says juror, studio artist and ceramics instructor John Britt.

“The emerging artists went through the same process as everyone else. For our inaugural year, we are delighted to have found four new rising stars and excited to be introducing their work at our show,” continues O’Meara.

Emerging Artist Wearable Mary Stackhouse

Mary Stackhouse, chosen as the emerging artist in the wearables category, has been in business for three years but this is her first major show. “My mother taught me to sew, and I’m still using my grandmother’s Singer,” she says. Stackhouse was a potter/sculptor, then an arts administrator for twelve years before making the seemingly unlikely leap from clay to wearables. “My last body of work in clay was slab work, books and armor. It’s really not so different than the work I’m doing now except that it’s a movable product instead of a rigid one,” she explains. “I use some of the clay techniques, and the sensibility is the same.”

Stackhouse works fleece into four basic forms: capes, vests, jackets, and tunics. “The fabric, recycled from plastic, like soda bottles, at Malden Mills in Massachusetts, was chosen for its carefree durability as well as its drapery potential and ability to hold shape,” she notes. “I free-associate as I work, so each piece is unique.”

	Emerging Artist Metal Daniel Randall

Emerging Artist Jewelry Jennifer Bauser

The wirework in Flower Brooch 1 is not far afield of Bauser’s caged series, in which she blends soft, feminine freshwater pearls with sterling silver and gold vermeil. But she employs brushed finishes and contains the pearls in cages of swirled or curved wire, resulting in a modern vibe. “The cages started as a design experiment dealing with preciousness, the idea that precious things are locked away or kept behind glass,” says Bauser. “The cages are an architectural form, creating a space, an environment, for the pearl to live in.”

Emerging ceramist Emily Reason describes herself as a traditional potter. “I am really interested in form and function with a contemporary aesthetic. I spend a lot of time on surface decoration,” she says of her

	Emerging Artist Ceramics Emily Reason

functional pieces heavily textured with carvings and dots. Using a six-color palette for glazes, she also likes to contrast glossy and matte textures, although the “glazes appear very soft in porcelain,” she notes. Reason is a resident artist at the EnergyXchange in Burnsville, North Carolina, a unique program for beginning artists that uses landfill gases to fire its outdoor kiln and glass furnaces. “It intrigues me to further explore alternative energy options so that I may be less dependent on conventional fuels as well as reduce my negative impact on the environment,” she states.

“I particularly like the work of Emily Reason, who is an intelligent and talented artist with an impeccable sense of style and form,” says juror John Britt. “Her porcelain forms are blended perfectly with her glazes. And, she is working with alternative fuel sources. What more could you ask for?”

Glass Pablo Soto

	Furniture Michael Puryear

Basketry Mary Jackson

Another of the high-profile artists in the show is Mary Jackson, a basketmaker from Charleston who makes handcoiled sweetgrass baskets from sea grasses, palmetto, pine needles, and bullrushes collected along the South Carolina coast. The low-country tradition of sweetgrass basketweaving was passed on to her by her mother and grandmother, but the craft originated on the west coast of Africa and was brought to America by slaves. Jackson was highlighted in the groundbreaking television series Craft in America, which aired nationally on PBS stations in May. The associated exhibit, Craft in America: Expanding Traditions, also showing Jackson’s work, is currently touring the country, opening next at the Mingei International Museum on October 20, 2007.

	Fiber Decorative Kenneth Robinson

Says pioneering art jeweler and juror Arline Fisch: “The jewelry category is one of the strongest as well as the largest by far and included a great deal of work in alternative materials, including metal clay, glass beads and other glass jewelry, along with a goodly amount of gold, silver and stones. I don’t think there was much work of a minimalist or ‘industrial’ direction. There is still much more interest in rich surfaces and contrasts of color and/or materials.”

No doubt employing some of the metalweaving techniques that Fisch pioneered is Lauran Sundin. She weaves fourteen karat and sterling silver wire into dynamic, contemporary jewelry pieces in which texture is achieved through the twists and turns of the wire mesh. Cornelia Goldsmith’s fine gold designs are rich with stones and surface granulation. As Fisch points out, jewelry with alternative materials is prevalent. Kiwon Wang contrasts paper with pearls, while Holly Anne Mitchell, a recycling visionary, has been remaking newspaper comics into jewelry accented with sterling silver for years.

Paper Amy Genser

Thomas Mann and Marcia MacDonald both incorporate found objects, while Kathleen Lamberti creates new uses for fabric, feathers and leather.

Presented by the Women’s Committee and Craft Show Committee, chaired by Susan Zelouf, the event raises funds to purchase works of art and craft for the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to support educational programs and to contribute to conservation projects. “We are really excited that the business community is coming out to support the show. KYW radio, the top radio station in the market, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, the premier newspaper in the region, are both sponsoring this year’s craft show,” adds manager Nancy O’Meara. Approximately twenty-four thousand people attended
last year’s show over the four-day period. “Visitors can expect to find a wide array of exquisite functional art as well as provocative contemporary art,” says juror Paula Berg Owen. “We selected high-quality work, whether it was high design, artfully traditional, quirky, funky, or elegant.”