“Crafting a Continuum” exhibit comes to NEHMA
A knitted superhero suit, combs weaved into wall art and pottery sculpted by blindfolded women are all now on display in the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art as part of its new exhibit, “Crafting a Continuum: Rethinking Contemporary Craft.”
The exhibit, which opened to the public on Jan. 23, is a traveling exhibition from the Arizona State University Art Museum. It replaced NEHMA’s previous upstairs exhibit, “Enchanted Modernities: Mysticism, Landscape and the American West.”
The exhibit features the artwork of more than 60 American and international artists from the 1950s to the current decade.
Adriane Dalton, assistant curator at the museum, said only one piece in the exhibit is completely two-dimensional.
“’Crafting a Continuum: Rethinking Contemporary Craft’ is a unique exhibition for our students because most of the objects in this exhibition are three-dimensional, sculptural objects,” said Katie Lee Koven, the museum’s director.
The exhibit “paints a broad picture of what is happening in craft right now,” Dalton said.
She said “Crafting a Continuum” shows the “blurring line” between craft and decorative art.
“Formally in art history, craft and decorative art fall into separate categories,” Dalton said.
Craft was once loosely defined as an individual craftsman who created art with a medium he was skilled in — most commonly ceramic, metal, fiber, glass or wood, Dalton said.
Decorative art, she explained, was once created by guilds of artists for upper-class buyers to decorate their homes.
“There are no longer distinctions and neat categories,” Dalton said. “It is my opinion that the separation of these categories is less to do with actual creation of works than it is to do with the social perceptions.”
One of the eye-catching artists, according to Lee Koven, is Mark Newport, whose inspiration for his knitted superhero suit and embroidered comic book is to question masculine gender roles.
She said Sonya Clark, who wove together dozens of combs, is also an artist of note.
“Her work is about identity in the sense of being an African-American woman,” Lee Koven said. “Most of her work has to do with hair.”
Pottery sculpted by Claydies, consisting of blindfolded Danish women, is also on display.
“They’re making vessels and dinnerware, but they’re doing it blindfolded as a different way of interacting with the material,” Dalton said.
The exhibit is the inspiration for many of this semester’s events at the museum, the first being the Contextualizing Craft and Design Symposium, which will be held Friday and Saturday.
The symposium will feature many keynote speakers, such as Jenni Sorkin, Del Harrow, Glenn Adamson, Heather Lineberry and others. There will also be two panels about craft and design and a reception Saturday night at the Logan Country Club.
The symposium’s full schedule is located at http://artmuseum.usu.edu/htm/spotlight-news/ArticleID=27474.
“Anyone is welcome to come and stop in for a session and for something that they are specifically interested in,” Lee Koven said.
She said students and community members are welcome to stay for the entire symposium.
This semester’s Museum and Music series will also use “Crafting a Continuum” as inspiration for some of its events.
Everyone can find something they like at the events or the exhibit, Lee Koven said.
“I think students will be very surprised at the serious skill that goes into the making of these objects,” she said. “There’s also a lot of humor and a lot of fun that these artists and makers infuse into their making process and into their ideas conceptually,”
“Crafting a Continuum” will be on display until April 15.
“It’s a really fun exhibit,” Lee Koven said. “Anyone visiting can enjoy something.”
— melmo12@gmail.com