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John Iversen |
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In its twenty-five
years of presenting contemporary crafts in the nation’s capital,
the Smithsonian Craft Show has established itself as a preeminent
showcase for the finest one-of-a-kind work being created in America,
from jewelry to furniture, ceramics to fiber, basketry to leather.
Every year the show’s organizers solicit the latest from craft
artists across the country, recruiting a distinguished jury to make
the final selection. This year the one hundred twenty exhibitors were
chosen from around twelve hundred applications. As one juror quipped,
“It is easier to get into Harvard than to get into this show”
—to which one artist re-quipped, “Now I should apply to
Harvard.”
The jurying process has been streamlined in the past several years,
with an electronic system in place that makes the gargantuan task
a good deal easier. That said, the competition is stiff. This year’s
judges—contemporary craft dealer Helen Drutt English, from Philadelphia;
Gerhardt Knodel, vice president and director of the Cranbrook Academy
of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; and Michael Monroe, executive
director and chief curator of the Bellevue Arts Museum near Seattle,
Washington—had to make difficult choices.
In the end, thirty percent of the chosen will be showing at the Smithsonian
for the first time—which says a great deal about the depth of
creative vitality in the field of craft arts in the United States
today. “We sought to get the best quality,” juror Drutt
English notes, “reveal innovative ideas, and bring to the fore
the central theme of how artists work.” Among the first-timers
is Amy Roper Lyons of Summit, New Jersey. While Lyons has attended
a number of craft shows, she describes the prospect of showing at
the Smithsonian as “extremely exciting.” She looks forward
to the connections she will make with visitors and fellow jewelers.
“For artists who work alone in their studios, to go to a show
like this—it’s thrilling.”
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Anna
Millea |
James Nadal |
Joh Ricci |
Lyons will be
showing brooches made of eighteen karat gold and enamel with stone
accents. These brooches, which can be worn as pendants, reflect her
long-time love of nature, including insects found in her garden. A
recent yearlong stay on the coast of Ireland where she explored the
tide pools led
to several exquisite pieces based on marine creatures, including anemones,
crabs and nautiluses. “They have quite vivid sea life that you
wouldn’t expect in such a cold place,” she explains.
Korean-born Chunghie Lee, who lives in Providence, Rhode Island, is
another newcomer to the show. Traditional Korean wrapping clothes,
called pojagi, inspire her work. “In old times, fabric was so
precious that after a woman made clothing for her family they did
not discard the scraps,” Lee explains. The scraps were made
into wrapping material used for weddings and other occasions.
Lee has had, in her words, “a wonderful opportunity to introduce
the pojagi to the western world” through teaching workshops
here and abroad, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London
and the Evtek Institute of Art and Design in Finland. At the Rhode
Island School of Design she teaches a course titled Pojagi and Beyond,
which explores how the technique can be reinterpreted for a modern
world.
Lee’s own wearables, wall works and sculptures are patched together
with crepe organza and other fabrics in a manner akin to the “nameless
women” of Korea. She also incorporates their images in the fabric.
Lee hopes that visitors to her booth at the Smithsonian show will
appreciate the resonant spirit of her work as much as its lively combinations
of colors and textures.
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Tim
& Kathleen Harding |
Bill
Durovchic |
Mary
Lynn O’Shea |
Reached at his
studio in Easthampton, New York, jewelry artist John Iversen expressed
his pleasure at returning to Washington. “This is my sixth or
seventh time—it’s always a hoot to get in,” he says.
Iversen appreciates the support for the craft arts that he finds in
Washington: “It really creates a momentum.” He enjoys
the blend of the “big collector crowd” and the general
public.
This year, Iversen will be showing his signature organic designs,
“nature-inspired” brooches, pins and other ornaments in
enamel and other materials. He hopes to have his new pebble collection
ready for the show, a return to one of his first collections from
twenty-five or so years ago, but utilizing an expanded vocabulary.
Tim and Kathleen Harding have made the trip to Washington from their
home in Stillwater, Minnesota, more than a dozen times, looking forward
to the cherry blossoms, spring greenery and warmth. For this couple
who has attended most of the high-end shows across the country, the
Smithsonian is
a “top priority” every year. “You sell to people
from across the country and the world—as far away as Israel,
Tokyo, Great Britain,” Tim Harding reports, noting that the
show coincides with the tourist season. And then there is the occasional
celebrity visitor, such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court
justice, who came to the show a few years ago.
The Hardings
fabricate one-of-a-kind garments, typically very colorful lightweight
jackets and vests for women—not casual wear but rather meant
for special occasions. They utilize a technique that is a complex
form of reverse appliqué. The pieces are made from opaque and
sheer silks, which they create themselves. Their booth will add to
the festive appeal of the show.
Donald Friedlich from Madison, Wisconsin, will be attending the Smithsonian
Craft Show for the twenty-second time. In honor of the twenty-fifth
anniversary, he is receiving a special award in recognition of being
the artist who has shown the most times (“a really nice surprise,”
he says). “The show
and I kind of grew up together,” he states, noting that it was
the first fair he attended after graduating from the Rhode Island
School of Design in 1983, the inaugural year of the Smithsonian.
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| Lisa
Holt & Harlan Reano |
Mary
Frisbee Johnson |
Jiyoung
Chung |
How does Friedlich
keep making it new? “Each of us has a different artistic drive
and pace of change,” he observes, “and some of us are
constantly pushing ahead but in an incremental manner.” The
main motivation for that evolution in his case, he states, is to answer
his own questions and satisfy personal artistic curiosity. “I
find that if an idea is really good it almost literally haunts me
for several years.”
For the last ten years Friedlich has been focused on incorporating
glass in his jewelry. Starting about a year ago, he became interested
in the interaction between jewelry and the clothing with which it
is worn. His current body of work is a series of magnifying lens pendants,
in sphere and cylinder shapes, that are designed to magnify the clothing
against which they rest. “The weave of the fabric,” Friedlich
explains, “becomes the image of the jewelry.” He considers
these glass and gold pieces the most conceptually-based work he has
ever created.
Like his fellow seasoned exhibitors, Friedlich relishes visiting Washington
in April. He usually tries to spend an extra day or two in the capital
to visit the National Gallery of Art and other arts and culture venues.
He also keenly anticipates regarding firsthand the response to new
work. It is one thing to imagine in his studio how a piece will work;
it is another to witness a dozen women trying on a necklace. Based
on the enthusiasm he expresses regarding a recent residency at the
Kendall School of Art in Grand Rapids where he experimented with state-of-the-art
computer-aided design manufacturing programs, Friedlich will continue
to grow as a jewelry designer and return again to the Smithsonian.
Opportunities
for interactions between artists and visitors will be enhanced this
year with the addition of a series of “booth chats,” informal
talks given by craft artists. With intriguing titles like How to Handle
Pyromania in a Constructive Manner (presented by metal artist Marne
Ryan), these craft-side conversations are bound to add an educational
and maybe an entertainment element to the show.
It merits remembering that the Smithsonian Craft Show has another
motive for its existence, besides providing craft artists with a special
venue to display their work every April. Since its first showcase
twenty-five years ago, the Women’s Committee, which oversees
the show, has granted every penny of its profits to the many educational
and research programs undertaken by the Smithsonian every year.
For an institution that has faced its share of political and fiduciary
issues in the recent past, the Smithsonian Craft Show can be considered
a true feather in its collective cap of annual arts and culture presentations.
As juror Michael Monroe remarked, “We need to embrace the work
of the hand and the mind, the work of the creator and problem solver.”
That is an admirable mission that this show has been fulfilling for
a quarter century. Many happy returns.
