Animals

Visit Our Handmade Menagerie

Beautiful Bugs
Magnificent Mammals
Pigeons Incognito

americancragmag.org
April / May 2019
 Vol. 79, No. 2
April/May 2019
On the cover
Raku Inoue often
works with materials
from his own garden.
He made the digital
montage White Tiger
(2018) from roses and
chrysanthemums as
a tribute to his late
stepfather.
Photo: Raku Inoue
page 30
Above
The chick in Elizabeth
Goluch’s Song Sparrow
Nest (2017) is the star
of the show, but the
bug-obsessed metal-
smith couldn’t help
adding an eight-
legged critter.
page 26
Photo: Ben Goluch
Departments
08
From the Editor
Birds of a feather.
10
Enter Here
With animals as their
muse, artists respond
in felt, clay, wood, and
animal matter itself.
12
Zoom
Elliott Kayser’s bovine-
themed ceramic contempla-
tions and Dani Ives’ needle-
felted animal portraits. Plus:
Shows with a sense of place,
exploring artists’ use of natural
materials, handy goods for pets,
and new books, including
The Sculpture of Robyn Horn.
24
Material Matters
Dana Warrington transforms
porcupine quills into works
of art, one meticulous step
at a time. By Jodi Rave
26
Material Matters
Elizabeth Goluch celebrates
some of the animal kingdom’s
least-loved members.
By Robert O’Connell
28
Personal Paths
Paper artist Rogan Brown
examines the smallest slices
of life. By Erik Hane
60
Ideas
At a small fiber mill,
the process is personal.
By Megan Guerber
64
Wide World of Craft
Natural beauty and an
art-friendly climate draw
makers to Tucson, Arizona.
By Kate Mooney
80
One Piece
Brooke Weston’s Dolores.
Features
30 38 44 50 crafted lives
From Flora Unnatural Aqua Man Wildlife
to Fauna Selection Preserve
With pine cones, petals, In fiber, wood, and Raven Skyriver’s flaw- JoAnna Poehlmann’s
and other plant parts, clay, Laurel Roth less sculptures pay apartment may look like
Raku Inoue fashions Hope reflects on homage to the marine a natural history muse-
delicate creatures des- humanity’s effect ecosystem. um, but her habitat fuels
tined for decomposition. on the environment. By Robert O’Connell her living, breathing
By Joyce Lovelace By Deborah Bishop art practice every day.
By Diane M. Bacha

Photo: Peter Kuhnlein

Raven Skyriver’s
Hatchling (2018)
encapsulates the
wonder and vulner-
ability of ocean life.
page 44
 



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from the editor
The Avian Influence
teresa faris believes
animals deserve the utmost
respect. So she’s a vegan, she
doesn’t use animal parts in her
artwork, and the creative part-
ner she calls her “greatest teach-
er” is an umbrella cockatoo
named Charmin.
The metalsmith isn’t sure
how she arrived at her rever-
ence for the animal kingdom;
maybe it’s the Sami ancestral
knowledge in her DNA. “I’ve
always had these beliefs,” she
says. In any case, her views
have been cemented by her
bond with Charmin. Now liv-
ing in Madison, Wisconsin,
Faris was an undergrad in Osh-
kosh in 1993 when she rescued
the cockatoo, abandoned in a
toilet-paper box outside her
apartment.
Today, bird and human are
so close they practically read
each other’s minds. With one
glance at the lie of Charmin’s
feathers, Faris knows whether
the bird is relaxed, scared, or
under the weather. Charmin
knows that when Faris and
her husband grab their drum
and guitar, there’s fun ahead.
8 american craft apr/may 19
“She’ll sing along; I’ll come up
with a joik [Sami folk song], and
she’ll get in on it,” Faris says,
adding, “She’s a really good
dancer.” Most important, Char-
min, as she has for 12 years, lets
Faris know when she’s finished
carving a wood piece with her
beak and it’s ready for the artist
to incorporate into jewelry. So
far, the two have collaborated
on more than 100 works.
The connection between
them took years to develop.
In the early days, “confronted
with this being who didn’t have
the whites in her eyes,” Faris
couldn’t read avian cues. A
veterinary emergency in 1996
changed everything. Charmin’s
foot had been caught in a bird
toy; she’d bitten off her toe to
break free and lost a lot of blood.
“It was shocking,” Faris recalls.
“I came home, and she was bleed-
ing, and it was horrific.” Faris
rushed to the raptor center – she
didn’t know where else to go –
and maxed out her credit cards
so Charmin could be stitched
up. When she brought the bird
home, she had to watch her
carefully for several days to
Collaboration with a
Bird V, #2 (2016),
includes wood bits
carved by Charmin,
metalsmith Teresa
Faris’ companion of
more than 25 years.
make sure she didn’t tear
the sutures and start bleeding
again. Faris slept on the floor,
and Charmin stayed close,
perched on her shoulder. That
was “when I started to under-
stand how she expressed pain
and gratitude and everything
else,” Faris recalls.
In 2006, their relationship
deepened; this time, Faris was
ailing. She’d fallen gravely ill,
and despite endless biopsies and
bloodwork, doctors couldn’t
identify her illness. They
thought maybe Faris had con-
tracted some rare disease from
her bird, and they ordered her
to keep Charmin in a cage and
avoid all contact. Able to see
but not touch Faris, Charmin
was filled with anxiety. Faris
ordered wooden chew toys for
the bird, and as she lay on the
couch watching, Charmin
“would obsessively carve these
things,” she says. The bird
“almost used her beak like a
lathe,” spinning rectangular
wood pieces until they were
little dowels or beads, she says.
Over the six months Faris
was confined to bed, when the
two were in the same room but
barred from contact, a ritual
developed that continues to this
day. Charmin would carve a
wooden piece and, apparently
satisfied with its shape, would
climb to the top of her cage and
toss it out. “I would wake up
and see that she’d gifted me
with something.” Twelve years
later, Charmin still announces
she’s got a nugget to add to the
jewelry by flinging it out of her
cage or bringing it directly to
Faris. Either way, they’ve got
an understanding. And Faris
takes no piece before its time.
How long will this artistic
partnership last? The vet puts
Charmin’s age at somewhere
between 27 and 80; there’s no
telling how much time is left.
In the meantime, Faris says,
“I’m just really thankful for all
the lessons she’s taught me
about perseverance and trust.”
Photos: Teresa F. Faris
Monica Moses
Editor in Chief
 ®

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Will Hopkins
Creative Directors
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Associate Editor
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American Craft Council
Membership Manager
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 Animal as Metaphor
With animals as their muse,
artists respond in felt, clay, wood,
and animal matter itself.
Ó
“Rogue taxidermist”
Kate Clark stretches
real hides over sculpted
clay to create animals
with haunting human
faces. Her goal with
sculptures such as
Asserting His Influence ˝
(2015) is to remind Ellen Jewett considers
people of our inescap- herself an explorer,
ably wild origins, to albeit encumbered by
awaken the fierceness responsibility, physical
within. The self-taught limitations, and material
Brooklyn artist has things. Animals also
channeled her vision have encumbrances,
into other creations, imagines the Vancouver
such as a mask for Island artist, who runs
rapper Desiigner’s a small-scale animal ref-
“Panda” video. uge with her partner.
The bear in The Burden
of Motion and Ambition
(2017) is loaded down
with baskets, banners,
and branches. “No being
is truly free,” Jewett
says. “Having to survive,
after all, is a burden.”

˝
Pennsylvania artist
Kristen Egan is fasci-
nated with life and
death – and the blurry
lines between them. Nest
Frog 1 (2018) joins an
amphibian and a bird, a
creature of water and
one of air, in a relation-
ship that might be threat-
ening or protective.
“Life must devour life in
order to continue living,”
Egan points out. “Matter
and energy continuously
cycle between forms.”
wu
achuk

her
k
Red U

Mus h
Noa
 enter here

m ay
Ma
a ry
G

´
Animals don’t talk or
dress or drive, so we
can project on them
whatever sense of
style we like. Each of
Elizabeth Levine’s
Studio Pets reveals
itself as she forms and
glazes it; eye shadow,
lipstick, stripes, and a
diadem bedeck Rae Rae
(2016). The New York
City artist imagines her
dapper earthenware
pets having as much fun
in the studio as she does,
“indulging in their own
creative process, dipping
their tails and feet into
the glazes and paints.”

Ellen Jewett

an
rm
iebe Ï
L
xie Moxie Lieberman envi-
Mo
sions her stressors as
needle-felted creatures
gnawing at her flesh.
The Seattle artist calls
her 2010 Hungry series
“an outward expression
of my internal unease,”
asking the question
“What’s eating you?” As
it turns out, Lieberman
says, “the answer for me
is ‘me.’ ” Self-doubt was
never so cute.

american craft apr/may 19 11

A timely survey of shows, views, people, and work

On Our Radar exploding when Kayser “We’ve voluntarily stepped State University. There he

Elliott Kayser opened the kiln too soon;

it’s the serene figure in
the pasture, the wholesome
symbol on packages of cheese,
the embodiment of sustenance
and plenty. For Elliott Kayser,
the cow is also a deep well of
exploration into culture, place,
and the disconnection of mod-
ern life from nature.
“I never set out to be ‘the
cow guy,’ ” the artist, 33, says
of the bovine theme he’s pur-
sued intensely for five years
now. “But I have to follow the
inspiration. I feel really pas-
sionate about it.”
Sculpted in clay and some-
times bronze, Kayser’s scaled-
down, anatomically faithful
cattle are placed in startling
situations. Delilah (2015), a
sweet heifer, appears marked
he reassembled the pieces.)
The cows in the Herd Immu-
nity series, started in 2016,
are covered in pustules, a meta-
phor for how we view illness
within a population. The tile
mural Stock Market (2017)
shows livestock in holding
pens, awaiting slaughter.
The pieces remind us of our
primal connection to these
animals, even if the reality
makes us uncomfortable.
“I know my work is political,
charged. I do have things I’m
trying to say with it, but I try
not to be preachy and prosely-
tize. I want to find the middle
ground, have a dialogue,” Kay-
ser says. “A lot of people don’t
understand – am I glorifying
the cow as subservient? It’s
not about that at all.” Rather,
he invites us to consider how,
with the advent of industrial
farming, we have become
detached from the resources
we depend on.
away from the land,” the artist
says, “and it makes us vulner-
able. We’re losing knowledge
that has been part of all of
human history.”
Born under the earth sign
of Taurus in the year of the
ox, Kayser is “totally a dirt
person,” having worked in clay
since he was 10 years old in his
hometown of Portland, Ore-
gon. A country boy at heart,
he attended the New York
State College of Ceramics at
Alfred University, where he
first started visiting farms and
talking to farmers, driven by
a desire to reconnect with the
land. After graduating in 2007,
he spent a few years working
on farms in exchange for room
and board, through the World
Wide Opportunities on Organ-
ic Farms program. In 2010,
ready to get back to clay, he
took a job at a tile company in
Ann Arbor, Michigan, and lat-
er entered the graduate pro-
gram in ceramics at Arizona
researched the role of cattle in
American history – the Califor-
nia Gold Rush, the creation of
the railroad system, the domes-
tication of the landscape – and
realized “the power of the cow
as a symbol.” Since earning his
MFA in 2017, he’s been a resi-
dent artist at the Mesa Arts
Center in Arizona, where his
wife, Jenneva, is the ceramics
studio manager.
“My generation is transient.
We’re expected to relocate for
opportunity, and it’s hard, dis-
ruptive,” he observes. “I’ve
met aging farmers who say,
‘This is my family’s farm, and
my kids don’t want it.’ The thing
that roots them is not a viable
option for the next generation.
And that has caused pain.” Still,
the recent discovery in Borneo
of the world’s oldest known
cave drawing – a 40,000-year-
old image of a bull – suggests
to Kayser that our relationship
to cattle is eternal. “It feels so
integrated into being human.”
~joyce lovelace
kayserceramics.com
Kayser’s work is in “Animals
Among Us,” to April 28 at Red
Lodge Clay Center, Montana.

Portrait: Courtesy of the artist / Other photos: Elliott Kayser

up as cuts of beef. (The sculp- Joyce Lovelace is American
ture emerged from an accident, Craft’s contributing editor.

The cow is Elliott left:

Kayser’s muse. With Herd Immunity
his sculpture, he aims to (Angus), 2017,
spark dialogue about our ceramic, underglaze,
fraying connection to feldspathic chips,
the land and to the ani- 7.5 x 12 x 4 in.
mals we rely on.

12 american craft apr/may 19

 Altered Landscape,
2018, ceramic, under-
glaze, 10 x 20 x 20 in.

Back to
the Land
Assembly line:
Elliott Kayser sculpts
figures out of solid clay
on a pipe armature, cuts
them apart to make plas-
ter press molds, then
uses those to form mul-
tiple identical cows,
a process he likens to
industrial farming.

Cattle call: People ask

him if he loves cows.
“Initially I was like,
‘No, I just see them as
a great symbol.’ But I
do really love them. I
like being around them.
They’re curious and
playful and gentle.”

New breed: For a

recent public art project,
he interpreted a differ-
ent farm animal, creat-
ing eight 300-pound pig
sculptures for the Rose
Fitzgerald Kennedy
Greenway in Boston.

below:
Distilled,
2019, bronze,
10 x 25 x 4 in.
zoom
Product Placement
Dani Ives
as an educator at dicker-
son Park Zoo in Springfield,
Missouri, Dani Ives spent 10
years handling an eclectic crew
of critters, including hedgehogs,
chinchillas, snakes, rats, turtles,
owls, and pigeons. Ives, who
has a bachelor’s degree in biol-
ogy, would tote the animals
to schools, teaching students
about their behavior and roles
in nature.
Nowadays, instead of han-
dling animals, the 34-year-old
uses her biology background
to realistically render their
likenesses in needle-felted art-
work, including commissioned
pet portraits. Ives, who now
lives in Rogers, Arkansas,
calls her technique “painting
with wool.” In the “half-and-
half” pictures she posts on her
Instagram page – half an ani-
mal’s digital portrait, half its
felted image – it’s often difficult
to tell which side is the photo.
Ives, who excelled in paint-
ing during high school but
14 american craft apr/may 19
Wrens and Cherries,
2018, wool on linen,
12 in. dia.
never thought of art as a career,
learned about needle-felting
from a zoo co-worker in 2011.
The technique uses a needle
with barbs on the end to repeat-
edly stab wool into a fabric base,
pushing fibers into place.
Over the course of a couple
years, Ives went from creating
3D figures like cacti to her
current 2D work. Initially she
felted her own canvases, but
they were too soft. After notic-
ing art presented in an embroi-
dery hoop, it occurred to her to
try that approach, using a felt
(and later, linen) background.
“That’s when I was really
able to hone details,” says Ives.
“Artistically, what I’m drawn
to is making things look like
they do in real life.”
To achieve that goal, she
always starts with the eyes,
Fast
Friends
True romance:
Ives and her husband,
Brandon, who both
grew up in Mountain
Home, Arkansas, met
in preschool. They
started dating in junior
high, went to the same
college, and married
in 2008.
Love him tender:
Ives’ favorite animal
when she worked at
Dickerson Park Zoo
was a parrot named
Elvis. “He would run
his beak over my skin
or my hair to groom me,
and I would brush his
little feathers.” Leaving
Proceeds from 2018’s
him was especially dif-
Photos: Dani Ives
Swarm benefited
ficult, but she later
an organization dedi-
immortalized Elvis
cated to protecting
in a felted portrait.
pollinators.

Mourning Dove
and Peaches, 2018,
wool on linen, 8 in. dia.
Jet, 2017, wool on
linen, 8 in. dia.
which she calls the key to
the animal’s psyche. “Having
spent so much time with ani-
mals makes me want to bring
out their personalities. I also
think my science background
allows me to see things more
accurately and portray those
details in my art.”
For each piece, Ives uses
dozens of shades of wool.
Lighter-colored pets are par-
ticularly challenging, she says,
and she might blend several
shades of off-white, tan, and
cream to create the fur. Her
process is exacting, she says,
but also forgiving. “If you put
down a color you don’t like,
you can pull it back up.”
By 2015, Ives had built
her part-time hobby into a
steady stream of pet portrait
commissions, and she decided
to leave the zoo to become a
full-time artist. Her work –
which has since expanded
to include human portraits
(not yet available for commis-
sion) and larger pieces, such as
a 24-by-30-inch hippo portrait –
has attracted an enviable num-
ber of fans. One time-lapse vid-
eo she posted on Instagram
last year, in which she is filling
in a dog’s nose, topped 7 mil-
lion hits.
With that kind of interest,
it’s not surprising that her
available commissions sell
out in seconds. She also holds
needle-felting workshops and
sells online how-to courses.
Her first hard-copy book –
Painting With Wool: Sixteen
zoom
Helly, 2017, wool
on felt, 8 in. dia.
Baby Flamingo,
2018, wool on
linen, 8 in. dia.
Artful Projects to Needle Felt –
was just published by Abrams.
As she adds to her body of
work in a medium that is often
perceived as more hobby than
art, Ives hopes to elevate the
technique. “I’d love to see fiber-
art paintings in a show or muse-
um, next to and competing with
traditional paintings.”
~diane daniel
daniives.com
Diane Daniel is a writer based in
Florida and the Netherlands.
american craft apr/may 19 15
zoom

Goods
Best in Show
˝
As an artist, Carin
Mincemoyer works
in sculpture and instal-
lation; as the founder
of Habifab, she crafts
poplar playhouses for
small pets. Rabbits may
be perfectly content in
a cardboard box, the
Pittsburgh maker notes,
but their human counter-
parts are much happier
living with something
Zack Bowen
sleeker, such as this
modernist abode. Plus,
´
a portion of Habifab’s Maine company Billy
Lyndsey Drago
profits goes to animal Wolf has helped
wouldn’t settle for
rescue and adoption fashion-conscious
just any coat to keep
agencies. dog owners keep
her pup warm; she
habifab.com their pets in style,
wanted something
that matched her own with durable, sustain-
Americana style. So ably sourced wares
she threaded her sew- such as these collars
ing machine and made made of found indigo
one from a vintage blan- mud cloths.
ket. Since 2010, her billywolfnyc.com

Carin Mincemoyer

Ï
Most cats and dogs
love nothing more than
a good snooze – unless
it’s cuddling up to their
humans’ shoes. Leeling
Ho of New York City
company Napping Jojo
cleverly combined those
two loves in a bed that
any pet will take to.
Handmade in the US
of sherpa and faux
suede, the Moccasin
pet bed might just be
the stuff pets’ dreams
Lig
ht & are made of.
Corn nappingjojo.com
er Stu
dio

˝
A happy dog’s energy
brightens up the home;
the mess that can
result isn’t as much
fun. Cask & Hide’s
founder, Californian Courtesy of Katris
Indi Hampton, has a ´
solution that will keep Inspired by the Tetris designed in Silicon
your floor tidy without video game and their Valley and made in
sacrificing style. Her love for pets, the team Taiwan, offer not only
wipeable waxed-canvas behind Katris creates plenty of surfaces where
placemat helps contain modular cat trees of cats can perch and rule
Indi Hampton

the spills (and some- corrugated cardboard, over the household, but
times drool) that often a sturdy and scratch- also ideal niches for stor-
accompany dinnertime. friendly material. The ing books and shoes.
caskandhide.com stackable shapes, katriscat.com

16 american craft apr/may 19

zoom
zoom
The Short List
Strength
Training
The Sculpture of Robyn Horn
University of Arkansas Press, $65
equally fearless and
contemplative, Arkansas
artist Robyn Horn chops,
carves, and chisels wood into
geometric wonders that often
appear to be in motion despite
their heft. This book illustrates
the evolution of her three-
decade career with more than
Intersection: Art & Life
By Kevin Wallace
Schiffer Publishing, $30
once upon a time in the
pre-industrial world, Kevin
Wallace writes, “even the lowli-
est peasant was surrounded by
the handmade.” Driven by prac-
tical need – vessels for food,
furniture for the home, clothing
for protection from the ele-
ments – artists and craftspeople
made the essentials of everyday
life. “The hand of the maker
How to Survive and Prosper
as an Artist: Selling Yourself
Without Selling Your Soul
By Caroll Michels
Allworth Press, $25
“when i listened to my
inner voice, I moved forward,”
writes Caroll Michels, a former
artist and current artist’s advo-
cate, in How to Survive and
Prosper as an Artist. “When I
didn’t, I stumbled.” It’s a sim-
ple but heartfelt sentiment,
one that imbues this seventh
edition of a book originally
18 american craft apr/may 19
200 of her gravity-defying
works – in both modest and
monumental scale – in chrono-
logical order.
Essays by Henry Adams,
Cindi Strauss, Rachel Golden,
Janet Koplos, and Joyce
Lovelace (American Craft’s
contributing editor) cover her
life, work, and influences. Per-
haps even more illuminating,
was always in contact with
the hand of the user,” Wallace
writes. But as mass produc-
tion took hold, things changed.
Gradually, art and the hand-
made became precious and
rarefied, the province of roy-
alty, rich industrialists, and
museums. Artistry became
disconnected from utility,
daily life, and relevance.
Wallace, the director of the
Beatrice Wood Center for the
Arts, conceived Intersection to
released in 1983 with renewed
urgency and relevance.
The occasion for the latest
update is the widespread
notion that artists might find
their economic salvation by
selling themselves, adapting
the techniques of advertising
and marketing. “For those who
understand the inner workings
of the art world and the myste-
rious and varied reasons why
art sells,” Michels counters, “the
simplistic and gimmicky empha-
sis on ‘branding’ is insulting and
however, are the photos of
Horn at work. In one, the
sculptor stands strong and
secure, wielding a chainsaw
with a 4-foot blade as if it
were a butter knife. Take
the physical feat of creating
such work into account, and
Horn’s oeuvre becomes even
more thrilling.
~megan guerber
right that wrong, to reconnect
us with the primordial impor-
tance of the handmade. A crash
course in the themes of art his-
tory, the book features more
than 280 photos, along with
insights by more than 150 con-
temporary makers, including
Michael Janis, David Huang,
Kay Sekimachi, the de La Torre
brothers, and others familiar to
readers of this magazine. It’s a
timely and compelling survey.
~monica moses
crass.” Instead, she advances the
idea that art is a unique industry
and that its practitioners have
unique power.
In 12 well-organized chap-
ters, the book covers the dis-
crete elements of building
an artistic career – everything
from pricing your work to prac-
ticing self-care to taking advan-
Photos: Mark LaFavor
tage of online opportunities –
but it never loses sight of a basic
tenet: “Artists, by the fact that
they are artists, have power.”
~robert o’connell
zoom
Shows to See
Regional Roots:
Midwestern metal
and clay artists light up
shows in St. Louis and
Canton, Ohio. A gift
brings a collection of
Southwestern art to Boise,
and in Washington state,
Native artists interpret
historic works in glass.
CA / Pomona
American Museum of Ceramic Art
Silver Splendor:
The Works of Anna Silver
to Aug. 25
www.amoca.org
In the 1970s, Anna Silver trans-
ferred her vocabulary of color,
layering, and gestural mark-
making from painting to ceram-
ics. Although she’s known for
her clay totems, cups, bowls,
teapots, and other vessels
ablaze with abstract imagery,
this look back at her 50-year
career also includes recent
works in glass and rarely dis-
played preparatory drawings.
CO / Denver
Denver Art Museum
Serious Play: Design
in Midcentury America
May 5 – Aug. 25
denverartmuseum.org
Rocket-fueled by postwar pros-
perity, refined mass-production,
a baby-boom focus on child
development, and an optimism
meant to counter Cold War
anxiety, midcentury designers
often took a lighthearted
approach. This show, co-
presented with the Milwaukee
Art Museum, offers 200 exam-
ples of cheerily conceived tex-
tiles, ceramics, furniture, toys,
and other artifacts of the era.
20 american craft apr/may 19
Anna Silver
at AMOCA
Ó
ID / Boise
Boise Art Museum
Ceramics and Textiles
from the Southwest:
Gifts of the Carley Collection
Courtesy of AMOCA
May 4, 2019 – May 10, 2020
boiseartmuseum.org
Over 20 winters in the South- ˝
Virgil
west, Boise natives Joan H. Ortiz
and John B. Carley collected at the
ceramics, sculptures, and tex- Boise Art
Museum
tile works by Apache, Choc-
taw, Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo,
Tohono O’odham, and Wyan-
dot artists; they donated the
entire collection to the Boise NY / Corning
Art Museum in 2016. Among Corning Museum of Glass
its delights on view here: black New Glass Now
vessels by San Ildefonso Pueb- May 12 – Jan. 5
lo artist Maria Martinez, intri- cmog.org
cately woven Navajo rugs, and This survey of innovative work
an early 20th-century jar from breaks all the news in glass,
the Acoma Pueblo. with 100 cutting-edge objects,
installations, videos, and per-
MO / St. Louis formances by 100 artists from
Craft Alliance Center more than 25 countries.
of Art + Design
Hidden Treasures:
Enveloped Metalwork
to May 12
craftalliance.org
Metalsmiths have long tucked
FL / Melbourne messages and hidden details Jack da Silva
Ruth Funk Center for Textile Arts into their work, some of them at Craft
Alliance
Forced to Flee never meant to be visible. For
Center of
May 25 – Aug. 24 this show, co-presented by Art + Design
textiles.fit.edu Midwest Metalsmiths, artists
Artists from 10 countries con- were invited to consider this
front the worldwide refugee tradition; viewers can see (or
crisis in 36 works that illumi- not see) how they interpret it.
nate its costs: sundered families,
profound personal and material
loss, stress on host countries,
and a desperate need for inter- NY / New York City
national solutions. The show Ï National Museum of
Eva Zeisel at
was organized and juried by the Denver the American Indian
Studio Art Quilt Associates. Art Museum Ancestral Connections
May 4 – ongoing
americanindian.si.edu
Personal and cultural histories,
traditional ways of living and
thinking, and the landscapes of
on
home are among the deep wells
illi
from which 10 contemporary
rm
e
tV
Scot Native artists draw inspiration.

OH / Canton
Canton Museum of Art
Drafting Dimensions:
Contemporary Midwest
Ceramics
May 3 – Jul. 21
cantonart.org
Sometimes artists have to reach
beyond a single medium to say
what they want. The six cer-
amic artists in this show also
use drawing, painting, and print-
making in their work to sharpen
their messages or designs.
VT / Shelburne
Shelburne Museum
Johnny Swing: Design Sense
to Jun. 2
shelburnemuseum.org
Johnny Swing uses sketches,
prototypes, and specialized
tools to design his coin furniture
and large-scale lighting, with
examples of all these on view.
Guided by narration Swing
recorded for the show, viewers
can follow his process from ini-
tial idea to finished object.
da Silva photo: Courtesy of the artist / Ortiz photo: Courtesy of the Boise Art Museum
Lesley
Baker at
the Canton
Museum
of Art
Ó
Johnny
Swing at
Shelburne
Museum
WA / Bellevue
Bellevue Arts Museum
Ron Ho: A Jeweler’s Tale
May 10 – Sep. 15
bellevuearts.org
Ron Ho’s books, tools, and
workbench – along with his
writings, paintings, and other
treasures from his life – summon
the spirit of this Northwestern
gem among jewelers, who died
in 2017. More than 25 works
from Ho’s 50-year career reveal
a creative explorer whose path
Paul Specht
was illuminated both by his
Chinese heritage and his belief
in jewelry’s storytelling power.
WA / Tacoma WI / Milwaukee
Museum of Glass Milwaukee Art Museum
Translations: An Exploration Charles Radtke: Contained
of Glass by Northwest Native Apr. 19 – Aug. 25
Carvers and Weavers mam.org
to Nov. 10 The cabinets, tables, and
museumofglass.org chairs of Charles Radtke
The museum partnered with reward close examination:
the Evergreen State College He is famous for his attention
Longhouse, an indigenous arts to detail and for incorporating
and culture organization in hidden surprises, such as intri-
Ï nearby Olympia, to organize cate interiors and secret com-
Ron Ho at
the Bellevue
this show. Three generations partments. This is the first
Arts Museum of artists from carving and retrospective of his work.
weaving families visited the
˝
Ho-Wan-Ut
museum hot shop, where,
“Haila” Old guided by glass artists Dan
Peter at and Raya Friday of the Lummi
Museum
Nation, they created objects
Duncan Price
of Glass
inspired by archival works
of Northwest Native art. The
result: about 40 glass transla-
tions of baskets, sculptural fig-
ures, bentwood boxes, and
other traditional objects.
Rex Rystedt
american craft apr/may 19 21
zoom
Spotlight
From Nature
WI / Racine
Racine Art Museum
From Nature:
Contemporary Artists
and Organic Materials
to Oct. 6
ramart.org
craft and nature have
always intertwined; humans
have transformed animals, min-
erals, and plants into art at least
since the Stone Age.
Lena Vigna, Racine Art
Museum’s curator of exhibi-
tions, began to consider that
ancient connection in a new
light about five years ago, while
gathering art for shows. Struck
by how some artists use natural
objects without altering them
much – or at all – she realized
that a show centered on such
works could offer “a new lens
for exploring the natural world.”
So she set out to curate one.
“For this exhibition, I want-
ed work that would capture
the imagination and give peo-
ple new ways to see things that
they may take for granted in
their daily lives,” Vigna says,
citing “the beauty of a stone’s
surface, the structure of porcu-
pine quills,” and even “the way
hog gut can seem luminescent.”
RAM’s strong emphasis on
craft made the task of putting
the show together both easier
and a bit trickier. The museum
has an abundance of work made
of natural materials – baskets,
furniture, ceramics, and glass
among them. Add to that the
steady arrival of new works,
and “there is a constant stream
of inspiration,” Vigna says.
22 american craft apr/may 19
Carolyn Morris Bach’s
sterling silver and gold
Fish Goddess Necklace
(1992) features bone
in the pendant.
But for this show, she had to
narrow her focus, specifically
seeking objects by artists who
use natural elements more or
less in their original state.
The result is a display of
art jewelry, vessels, furniture,
sculpture, and other works
that, like nature itself, encom-
passes both the sublimely
beautiful and the decidedly
down-to-earth. Some pieces
might incorporate rocks, shells,
Lillian Elliott and
Pat Hickman’s
Opening (1984),
of branches, sticks,
animal gut, and paint,
looks at once modern
and ancient.
twigs, and feathers. Others
are made with gut or fish skin,
which several museum staff
members initially found off-
putting, Vigna says. “Their
reactions were dramatic” –
shuddering, grimacing – “and
inadvertently became this great
metaphor for how deeply con-
nected organic bodies can be
on a visceral level.”
Museum staff had to sur-
mount some physical challenges,
A 2001 vessel by Fran
Reed doesn’t hide the
fact that it’s largely
made of Copper River
salmon skin.
too. A 10-by-4-foot sculpture
by Dorothy Gill Barnes had
to be coaxed through the muse-
um’s elevators and doorways.
And because the show runs
for more than six months and
includes many fragile objects,
a number of them will be
swapped out about midway
through, requiring lots of swift
but careful moves.
Vigna finds “From Nature”
compelling on visual, textural,
and philosophical levels. Feath-
ers in the works of Arline Fisch,
Michael Bailot, and Doug Stock,
for instance, might be experi-
enced simply as opulent flour-
ishes, or they might function
as a reminder of the historical,
cultural, and biological links
between humans and birds.
“It feels somewhat idealistic,
but also very necessary, to
encourage people to take time
to appreciate the environment
and what it offers: renewal,
spontaneity, shelter, contem-
plation,” Vigna says. “It’s an
opportunity for visitors to
engage with different view-
points, perspectives, and
modes of making. And it’s a
reminder that nature unifies
people over time and place.”
Photos: Jon Bolton
~barbara haugen
Barbara Haugen is American
Craft’s shows editor.
material matters

Porcupine quillwork
medallion, 2017, por-
cupine quills, brain-
tanned smoked deer
hide, Rit dye, silver
bell, 4.5 in. dia.

Slow Art
Dana Warrington transforms
porcupine quills into works of art,
one meticulous step at a time.
story by Jodi Rave

quillwork is a rare,
time-consuming practice
that requires patience, persis-
tence, and incredible skill. The
needle-sized quills first must be
removed from the animal, then
cleaned, dyed, separated, soft-
ened, and flattened before each
is individually woven into a fab-
ric or leather backing. Each
quill varies in thickness, tex-
ture, length, and color.
Dana Warrington, however,
is more than up to the task.
The artist, 39, has only been
working with quills since 2011,
but he’s already making a liv-
ing from his work. A member
of the Prairie Band Potawatomi

Pow Wow photo: Chad L. Reed , Illumacraft Image Photography

and Menominee nations, he
lives in Cherokee, North Caro-
lina, with his wife and their two
daughters, 13 and 11.
Like many Native crafts-
people, Warrington’s move
into artistry began in the pow-
wow dance arena. He grew up
on the Menominee reservation
in northern Wisconsin, and,
“like most ‘rez’ kids, I started
[dancing] when I could walk,”
he says. The artist has long
admired the majestic imagery
of people in their finest regalia
dancing among the spirits of
their ancestors: “Powwow
regalia is 100 percent wearable
art.” While many of the danc-
ers craft their own regalia, “I
guarantee you that 99 percent
of [them] don’t look at them-
selves as artists,” he says.
“The talent in Indian Country
is phenomenal.”
Warrington began beading
as a teenager, largely out of
necessity. If he wanted to
dance, he needed a worthy out-
fit. And if he wanted his regalia
ready in a timely fashion, he
realized he would have to bead
it himself. It was familiar terri-
tory for him, since his mom
and grandmother also beaded.
“We’re around it, and we see
it,” he says of his community’s
artistic culture.
But the raw, natural beauty
of the quills captivated him,
and soon he was no longer sat-
isfied wearing beaded dance
regalia like most other dancers;
he wanted to stand out. “With
my quillwork, it was a desire
to be different,” he says.
He completed his first
quilled earrings and scarf tie in
2012. From there, he was quick-
ly driven to do more. He decid-
ed to sell some of his quilled
earrings at a powwow to defray

24 american craft apr/may 19

 Dana Warrington
at the 2015 Hunting
Moon Pow Wow
in Milwaukee. He dis-
covered his art form
through dance, as he
sought to set himself
apart with his regalia.

top right:
Walking in Their
Footsteps, 2018,
brain-tanned smoked
deer hide, porcupine
quills, Rit dye, silver
bells, trinkets, men’s
size 10

right:
Quilled cuff, 2018,
porcupine quills,
brain-tanned smoked
deer hide, Rit dye,
1.25 x 6.25 in.

the cost of materials. To his sur-

prise, he sold a box of them in
less than 15 minutes, suggesting
a large demand for quillwork.
Warrington’s success has
taken him away from the com-
petitive dance arena, a trade-
off he’s learned to live with. “I
don’t regret it,” he says, “but I
miss it like crazy.” These days
he can spend more than 250
hours creating a single piece
of quilled art such as a cradle-
board (to carry infants), which
can sell for $10,000.
The art world is starting to
notice. He won Best of Show at
the 2017 Eiteljorg Indian Market
& Festival and several prizes at
the Santa Fe Indian Market.
Warrington doesn’t plan to
rest on his laurels. He believes
he’ll live to be at least 80, which
gives him the next 40 years to
work with mentors and grow
creatively. Ready for a chal-
Men’s powwow-style
lenge, he’s already begun mix- headband, 2015, brain-
Object photos: Dana Warrington

ing quills with silver work. tanned smoked deer

“Somehow, my dream just got hide, porcupine quills,
porcupine guard hair,
bigger,” he says. Rit dye

youngbloodartwork.com
Jodi Rave is a journalist and
director of the Indigenous Media
Freedom Alliance.

american craft apr/may 19 25

material matters
Sorry
to
Bug
You
Elizabeth Goluch
celebrates some of the
animal kingdom’s
least-loved members.
story by
Robert O’Connell
bugs give many people
the creeps. The skittering legs,
the small bodies suited to sneak-
ing in windows and lurking
in corners, the periscope eyes
and pincer jaws prompt ento-
mophobes to stomp on them
on sight.
But for Elizabeth Goluch,
the tiny creatures are a source
not of fear but of wonder, of the
mystery that hides in the small
spaces of the world.
Goluch, a Nova Scotia metal-
smith, specializes in replicating
the insect world in exacting yet
fantastical sculptures. But her
larger-than-life creatures have
exoskeletons in hard metal,
much sturdier armor against
a panicked human.
Her passion for bugs began
in childhood. She grew up on
a farm in Ontario, “and in those
days you weren’t supervised
constantly; you got to do things
to entertain yourself. Because
I was close to the ground, I
just looked at everything, and
I noticed all the insects and
found them, really, quite inter-
esting.” Her fascination quickly
found artistic expression.
26 american craft apr/may 19
Goluch recalls her first
drawing as “a page of spiders,
just multiple spiders. I just
kept drawing them.”
As an undergraduate at the
Nova Scotia College of Art
and Design in the 1970s, Goluch
studied painting, though by the
time she graduated she had
become interested in three-
dimensional work. She deferred
that interest for a while, as she
went back to Ontario, got mar-
ried, and turned her attention
to raising her two children.
As they grew up, she returned
to her art – and to NSCAD,
where she took night courses
in basic jewelry techniques
in the mid-1990s. When it
came time to try her hand at
a piece, Goluch knew what
she wanted to make: a praying
mantis “the size of a small cat,”
built with scrap metal in the
NSCAD studio.
“It wasn’t very well crafted,”
she laughs, but it set in motion
the work that would define her
career. She continued learning
through the Metal Arts Guild
of Nova Scotia. “I think it was
by about 1997 that I actually
made the first pieces that were
acceptable, in my opinion,”
she says.
left, below:
In Elizabeth Goluch’s
Carpenter Ants (Work Is
Play) (detail, 2005), a
trio of sterling silver
and gold carpenter ants
carry building tools in
their abdomens.
The pieces she has produced
over the past two decades are
marvels of concept and design,
imagination and technique.
They show their maker’s exten-
sive knowledge of insect anato-
my – to make accurate wings,
feet, and mandibles, Goluch
turns to reference books and
the internet for close-up imag-
es – and contain secret com-
partments or hidden symbols
suggesting the oft-overlooked
work insects do.
Carpenter Ants (Work Is
Play) (2005) is a grouping of
three members of this common
Ants photos (2): Julian Beveridge / Dreams photos (2): Ben Goluch
species, in sterling silver and
gold. Goluch expands their
scale, stretching them to 9 and
10 inches long, and, with careful
soldering and riveting, renders
visible otherwise indiscernible
details. You can see the tiny
claws at the tips of their legs,
the elegant swoop of antennae.
In each of their bulbous abdo-
mens Goluch hides a builder’s
tool – a sly testament to the
ants’ daily activity.
Goluch counts Insect Dreams.
A Firefly’s Tale (2017) among her
more difficult and rewarding

projects. A miniature picture
book composed of thin silver
pages, it traces a firefly’s life
cycle and captures its ambient
Harlequin and Dragonfly photos: Steven Kennard
beauty. Material led to innova-
tion, as it often does for Goluch;
to create the illusion of light,
she blackened the surfaces
through oxidization, then
scrubbed away some of the
darkness around the bugs’
incandescent tails.
Goluch says she never set
out to be an ambassador for
an underappreciated segment
of the animal kingdom, but she
material matters
left, above:
Insect Dreams. A
Firefly’s Tale, 2017,
sterling silver, 14k gold,
3.5 x 3 x .75 in.
right:
Dragonfly (Swamp
Queen), 2008, sterling
silver, 14k and 18k gold,
moonstone, resin,
5.75 x 11 x 10 in.
below right:
Harlequin Bug/Shield
Bug/Cabbage Bug, 2013,
sterling silver, 18k gold,
moonstone, freshwater
pearls, glass beads,
2.5 x 7 x 7 in.
notes that her work sometimes
can make skeptics a little more
open to the idea of a beautiful
bug. Her materials – the gold,
silver, enamel, and gemstones –
naturally attract attention.
“That’s kind of the gateway
through the fear factor that
they have, to seeing the insect
as a beautiful creature, rather
than a scary, horrible part
of nature.”
elizabethgoluch.com
Robert O’Connell is an associate
editor for American Craft.
american craft apr/may 19 27
 Paper artist
Rogan Brown
examines
the smallest
slices of life.
story by
Erik Hane
Micro Magic
“i got into it by chance,”
Rogan Brown says. It’s a funny
way to describe how he started
making his intricate paper sculp-
tures of microbiological forms.
But it’s true: The 52-year-old
didn’t get his start by chasing
a certain technique, but rather
from a love of the natural world,
down to its finest details. As a
child growing up in suburban
England, he’d see “perfectly
manicured gardens and parks,”
but he spent his holidays hiking
in wilder areas; in 2004, he
moved to the Cévennes moun-
tains in southern France. “It
was from there that these sculp-
tures first emerged,” Brown
says. (He now lives in Nîmes,
about 40 miles away.)
Over the past decade,
Brown has made models of
cell structures, microbiomes,
fossils, and anything else you
28 american craft apr/may 19
above:
Outbreak, 2014,
hand-cut paper,
2.5 x 4.75 x .75 ft.
left:
Reef Cell, 2018,
laser-cut paper,
2.75 x 2.75 ft.
far left:
Control X3, 2017,
laser-cut paper,
3.75 x 2.5 x .5 ft.
might find in a petri dish. He
dramatically expands the pro-
portions of the microscopic,
taking the sort of scientific com-
plexity we all know exists and
magnifying it. He’s always seen
nature as a blend of science and
art. “What emerges finally,”
he says, “is surreal science, an
imagined representation from
someone who is quite clearly
not an expert … but who is fas-
cinated by the aesthetic and
conceptual possibilities.”
“Surreal science” is an apt
description. Pieces like Portal
(2015), a kind of narrowing
tunnel, and Magic Circle Colour
(2018), a cytological version
of a coral reef, look like text-
Photos: Rogan Brown
book diagrams brought to life.
“Art is the midwife of science,”
Brown says, noting that before
photography was invented,
naturalists had to draw their

Magic Circle
Colour (2018) is
3 feet in diameter.
A piece like this
can take months
to complete.
observations to show their
peers. His pieces have won him
acclaim – he’s been featured on
the Colossal blog and the cover
of American Scientist magazine –
and a busy, globe-spanning
exhibition schedule.
The precision with which
Brown creates these sculptures
feels as scientific as it does
artistic. He begins by sketching
out the work, then uses a scal-
pel or laser to cut it apart. Next
he mounts the delicate pieces
on spacers that he glues in place
to give the work depth. (Paper,
he says, has “amazing structural
properties – aesthetically
and structurally just right”
for sculpture.)
The labor-intensive process
takes months, but Brown trea-
sures the details. “Sculpture
creates a more powerful, direct
visual experience than 2D work,”
Brown says, “because it is not
the representation of an object;
it is the object itself.”
Most people may not think
of the microbial world as beauti-
ful, but for Brown, that’s the
point. “I aspire ultimately to
make works of art that transport
us from the mundane reality of
day-to-day life,” he says, “and
remind us of the immensity of
the universe that surrounds us
on both the macro and micro
level.” The astonishment that
his work provokes is twofold.
First is the response to the struc-
ture itself, the seemingly endless
curves and crevices and patterns.
Next comes the realization that
similar structures exist in almost
everything we look at.
Although Brown loves the
microscopic, he doesn’t want
to focus on it exclusively. He
plans eventually to work on
larger pieces that will focus on
another everyday marvel: the
human body. In this case, too,
the motivation will be not
personal paths
a technical challenge but an
invigorating idea; he conceives
of the body as a kind of “elabo-
rate, biodiverse ecosystem –
a human reef.”
In the meantime, Brown
will continue to expand and
illuminate the invisible – to
bring to light the small ele-
ments that build up larger maj-
esty. With paper, knife, laser,
and glue, he reveals what he
calls “the sublime intricacy
and variety of nature.”
roganbrown.com
Erik Hane is a writer and editor
in Minneapolis.
american craft apr/may 19 29
From Flora
to Fauna

story by portrait by
Joyce Lovelace Christian Fleury

With pine cones, petals,

and other plant parts,
Raku Inoue fashions
delicate creatures destined
for decomposition.

raku inoue never really

knew his grandfather, who
died when he was very small.
But every summer growing up,
he’d travel from his home in
Tokyo to visit his grandmother
near Hiroshima. “She would
open the door, and this dragon-
fly would come in,” he remem-
bers. “She would say, ‘That’s
your grandpa, reincarnated.’ ”
Ever since, he has thought of
insects as symbolic – even
supernatural – beings.
Today, the 35-year-old
makes his own magical insects

american craft apr/may 19 31


out of plant fragments he
gathers from his backyard
in Montreal and elsewhere.
His palm-sized flights of fancy
delight the eye and imagina-
tion. A firefly with a buttercup
bottom emits a glow of yellow
dandelion petals; a stick-bug,
the kind that mimics a branch
to survive, is made of – well,
a stick, with propeller seeds
for wings. Naturally, Inoue
has done a dragonfly, using
bits of mint – a flowering
sprig body, tiny stem legs,
32 american craft apr/may 19
left:
A local flower
shop calls Raku
Inoue when
it has merchan-
dise just past its
sell-by date.
For Antenna
Beetle (2018),
he took some
alstroemeria
off their hands.
leaf wings – and a belladonna
boutonniere.
Each insect embodies the
colors and textures of a season.
A stag beetle sports feathery
finery of summer wildflowers
and a single deep-blue hydran-
gea petal. A butterfly blazes in
the fiery red and orange of fall
foliage from northern Quebec.
Photos: Raku Inoue
In winter come creatures craft-
ed of conifer needles and pine
cone scales, sometimes with
translucent bodies made of ice.
It melts, and that’s fine. Once
 right:
Stag Beetle,
2017, hydran-
gea, crocus,
mint flowers,
6 x 4.5 in.
Inoue completes an insect, he
photographs it, then immedi-
Blue Butterfly, ately adds it to a compost heap.
2017, hydrangea,
5.5 x 5 in. “This art is ephemeral, not
meant to last,” he says of his
pieces. “I sell them as prints.
They just live their life, then
go back to the earth. As human
beings, we have a tendency to
want to preserve things. I love
my work, love what I do. But
I feel true beauty comes from
the liberty of letting it go.”
His natural hybrids are at
once surreal and strikingly
realistic. We recoil from a spi-
der made of rose thorns and
stems, even as we marvel at its
ingenious design. A seedpod
scorpion provokes a similar
visceral shiver – and an equal
admiration of its intricate con-
struction. With all, there’s an
odd sensation, not quite know-
ing where flora ends and fauna
begins. “I take pleasure in merg-
ing both,” says Inoue. “This
is how I see the world, where
reality and fantasy blend and
become this one thing.” Part
american craft apr/may 19 33
“This art is ephemeral,
not meant to last. I
of that, he acknowledges, comes
feel true beauty comes from the sense of the bizarre
from the liberty of and otherworldly that pervades
the folklore and mythology of
letting it go.” the land where he was born and
raised. “Growing up in Japan,”
he observes, “it’s hard not to
have a fantastical mind.”
When Inoue was 9, he
moved from Tokyo to Montreal
with his mother, who worked
as a translator, and her Cana-
dian husband. He struggled at
first to adapt to a new culture
and learn both French, the
official language of the prov-
ince, and English. “My step-
father would translate my
homework to my mother from
French to English, and she
would explain to me in Japa-
nese,” he recalls. “It wasn’t
fun.” Drawing became a means
of escape. “I lived very much
in a fantasy world, my cartoon
world. I was always into visual
things. Instead of reading the
encyclopedia, I would look at
the images and learn that way.”
His teen years were, he says,
“a dark time. I did heavy drugs.
I was a frustrated kid, rebel-
lious.” He quit high school and
left home, working restaurant
jobs to support himself.
When he was about 22, he
went back to Japan. “It was
my way of cleaning myself up,
because I couldn’t get drugs
there,” Inoue says candidly.
He got a job on a farm, spend-
ing six months picking corn
and digging potatoes. “It was
physical and demanding. I was
an introverted person, always
overthinking inside. At some
point, you have to just go into
action,” he reflects. On a farm,
“you start work when the sun
comes up and go to bed when
the sun goes down. That was
exactly what I needed to have
Photos: Raku Inoue

harmony of mind and body. It

brought me back to my real self,
made me realize happiness is
something you have to some-
times earn.”
For a 2018 series,
Inoue turned to sturdier
materials: tree bark,
oak chips, pine cones.
Though less delicate
than flower petals,
the elements aren’t
permanent; the pine
cones, for example,
shrink as they dry out.

Feeling renewed, he came
back to Montreal and enrolled
at Collège Salette, a design
school. Since leaving in 2010,
he has worked on everything
from graphic art, illustration,
and photography for editorial
and advertising clients to poly-
mer clay sculpture, creative
direction for music videos, and
screenprinted apparel. “I’m like
a chameleon,” he says of his
multidisciplinary career.
A few years ago, he bought
a house with a big backyard.
“My mother always had a green
thumb, this beautiful front yard
with many flowers. I wanted to
make something beautiful out
36 american craft apr/may 19
of my backyard, so I started
planting things.”
Inspired by the traditional
Japanese art of ikebana, he
made flower arrangements,
then one day decided to try
an insect shape. It became a
creative exercise. “I would
wake up in the morning, drink
my coffee, do an insect, take
a picture with my cell phone,
and post it on Instagram.” His
first series, a collection of nine
insects in exuberant spring
colors, went viral, bringing
him media attention and com-
mission offers. No longer just
a hobby, the insects are now
a mainstay of his practice.
Inoue surfs the web for
insect silhouettes, selects his
materials, and goes from there,
letting nature inspire his choice
of color, composition, and
texture. “It’s like doing puz-
zles. You find the right piece,
and then the right place for it.”
He seldom uses glue, instead
just putting it all together in an
hour or so and taking the photo.
“It’s like breathing now. There’s
not much planning. I have the
vision, and I create. That’s it.”
He’s experimenting with
floral art pieces that are a little
more permanent, using poly-
mer clay. “The challenge is
to marry plastic and natural
Leaf Butterfly (2018)
in unassembled and
assembled form.
Building each piece
with an eye to graphic
design “allows me to
present my work with
a certain quality of
thoughtfulness,” the
artist says.
materials in a harmonious
way,” he says. Lately, he’s
also venturing into three
dimensions, sculpting animal
busts: a conifer-needle tiger,
a pine-cone gorilla, a tree-
bark buffalo.
“Art, for me, is a channel
through which I can express
myself in a very free way,”
says Inoue. “A lot of people
say music saved them, or pas-
sion did, or love. Art is the
same. We put our heart into
Photos: Raku Inoue
it, and it fulfills us.”
behance.net/rakuinoue
Joyce Lovelace is American
Craft’s contributing editor.
 Each insect
embodies
the colors and
textures
of a season.

An Ecuadoran flower
exporter provided the
baby’s breath for Jewel
Beetles (2018).

american craft apr/may 19 37

 Unnatural
Selection
when reckoning with such
intractable issues as climate
change and humankind’s often
turbulent relationship with the
animal kingdom, it helps to
have a sense of humor. Laurel
Roth Hope has that and more.
With the eye of a naturalist, the
curiosity of a scientist, and a
38 american craft apr/may 19
In fiber, wood, and clay,
Laurel Roth Hope reflects on
humanity’s effect on the environment.
story by Deborah Bishop
portrait by Mark Tuschman
self-taught mastery of a range lives in San Francisco’s Mis-
of materials, she illuminates sion District in an Edwardian-
everything from the peculiar era home behind red gates.
practice of designer pets to She grew up one hour north in
the tragic demise of the dodo. a rural town called Two Rock,
With her husband and occa- where solitude helped foster a
sional collaborator, Andy Diaz deep communion with nature.
Hope, 51, and their 1-year-old “There were no kids around,
daughter, Juniper, the artist and I basically ran through
For her Biodiversity
Reclamation Suits for
Urban Pigeons series,
the artist crochets the
plumage of extinct
birds to disguise a
common urban “pest”
as something consid-
ered more precious.
the sheep fields among the
blackberries, taming feral
cats,” recalls Hope, 45. She
Photo: Andy Diaz Hope
began working in computer
animation at 21 but, a few years
later, found greater fulfillment
working outdoors, first in con-
servation and later as a park
ranger for Marin County.
Self-taught artist
Laurel Roth Hope in
her San Francisco home.
She often uses humor to
approach serious issues
such as extinction.
 Beauty, 2011, fake
fingernails, barrettes,
false eyelashes, nail
polish, costume jewelry,
Swarovski crystal, wal-
nut, 5.5 x 3.75 x 3 ft.
Cleaning up the beach one day,
she spied a billiard ball washed
up on the sand, a discovery that
led her to take up carving.
“I found myself fascinated
by these man-made things that
don’t break down for millions
of years and the idea of altering
that process. So I bought a Dre-
mel [rotary tool], taught myself
how to use it, and started carv-
ing animals out of bits of urban
detritus,” says Hope, whose
career has been marked by an
unusual openness to new tech-
niques. In 2005, she and Andy,
who was working as a product
designer, took sabbaticals from
their jobs to focus on art for six
months – which have stretched
to 14 years and counting.
Of particular interest to
Hope is how the long, slow
process of natural selection
has been supplanted, subvert-
ed, and sped up by humans’
desire to control and dominate
their environment, altering
the course of evolution. Man’s
Best Friend, her 2006 – 08
series of pet skulls, most of
polished acrylic that resembles
40 american craft apr/may 19
crystal and amber, includes
breeds that, to their detriment,
have been manipulated for our
aesthetic pleasure. “French and
English bulldogs can’t give birth
or reproduce naturally; Persian
cats have trouble breathing;
Great Danes’ hearts can’t han-
dle their size,” she says, citing
just a few examples.
From 2008 to 2013, the
couple collaborated on a trip-
tych of jacquard wall hangings
inspired by the 15th-century
Unicorn tapestries. The first,
Allegory of the Monoceros (2008),
creates its own iconography
to describe the end of Darwin-
ian natural selection and the
growth of human-centric evo-
lution. Dolly (the first cloned
sheep) gambols; Cerberus –
whose three heads represent
Snuppy (the first cloned dog)
and his genetic and birth par-
ents – guards the foot of a bibli-
cal apple tree with a branch
structure based on Darwin’s
Tree of Life. A reflection, in
part, on the species that lose
out in the new world order,
this tapestry has two narwhals
 Humans
behave much
like animals,
the artist says;
we also use
“plumage” to
attract mates.
in the border; they’re one
of the marine mammals most
likely to disappear due to cli-
mate change.
Birds make especially ideal
models for Hope’s musings on
adaptation, extinction, and
human behavior. “Because birds
are the one non-domesticated
animal that even city people are
likely to see every day, it makes
them particularly ripe for ex-
ploring our relationships with
nature,” she explains. Flight of
the Dodo (2013), a gilded bas-
relief in the Renaissance tradi-
tion, depicts the dodo as a
comical martyr ascending to
heaven. The doomed bird is
borne aloft by seraphim pig-
eons, whose winged adaptabil-
ity allowed them to proliferate,
whereas the dodo, flightless
and guileless, was quickly
wiped out once European colo-
nizers discovered its island idyll.
Photos: Andy Diaz Hope
Hope began her Peacocks
series in 2008 with materials
procured on eBay and the 99
Cents Only store. The birds are
constructed from accoutrements
typically associated with human
Flight of the Dodo,
2013, walnut, gold
and silver leaf,
3.25 ft. dia. x .25 ft.
below:
Allegory of the
Monoceros, collabo-
ration with Andy Diaz
Hope, 2008, jacquard
tapestry, 9 x 6.25 ft.
female “plumage,” such as
artificial fingernails, barrettes,
fake eyelashes, and costume
jewelry. The birds’ postures
are intentionally ambiguous:
It’s not always clear whether
they are mating or fighting.
“A lot of my work looks at the
fact that humans engage in
much of the same behavior as
other animals – competing for
food and a mate – and we also
use our plumage to signal
availability and desirability.
It’s interesting to ponder how
our presentation informs our
perceived value and mating
potential,” she says.
Carved pigeons are the man-
nequins for her Biodiversity
Reclamation Suits for Urban
Pigeons, with markings cro-
cheted in cotton, wool, and silk
thread to resemble vanished
species such as the Seychelles
parakeet, Cuban red macaw,
and ivory-billed woodpecker.
“It’s funny how the things that
adapt to us most easily are
often regarded as pests,” she
muses. “Pigeons are present in
most of the world’s cities and
american craft apr/may 19 41
 Hope doesn’t
consider herself
likened to rats. So I wondered, as much an
‘If you put the suit of a Guada- “animal artist”
lupe caracara on a pigeon, does
it make it more valuable?’ Or
as a humanist.
maybe it comforts us, because,
voilà – there’s biodiversity
again!” The works are in sev-
eral permanent collections,
including at the Smithsonian,
which awarded Hope an Artist
Research Fellowship in 2017.
Another avian-themed resi-
dency was at the Kohler factory
in Wisconsin. The company,
best known for its porcelain
plumbing products, supports
a program that fosters the inter-
section of creative practice and
industrial process. With little
experience in clay, Hope want-
ed to learn how to slip-cast
porcelain starlings for future
projects. Sixty starlings were
released in Central Park in 1890
thanks to a group importing old-
world flora and fauna; Hope
sees a parable of Manifest Des-
tiny in the explosion of what is
now an invasive species, with
a North American population
of more than 200 million – all
competing with other birds for
food and nesting sites. “It’s
such a strange idea: Humans
come to a new country, domi-
nate the landscape and people,
and import what’s familiar
instead of learning about what’s
already here,” she says, “which
we now know is a pretty ter-
rible idea.”
The ceramic birds have
alighted in several projects,
including a circular cluster called
Seraphim Murmuration (2017),
named after the phenomenon

Food #5, Pig, 2009,

walnut, gold leaf,
Swarovski crystal,
11 x 7.5 x 6 in.

42 american craft apr/may 19

 of thousands of starlings swoop-
ing through the sky in intricately
coordinated patterns. A halo of
glazed and gilded starlings circle
a clay gorilla in Reliquary for
Biodiversity (2019), a rumination
on how individual strength pro-
vides no guarantee of biological
success in the Anthropocene
era, when poaching, war, and
Manifest Destiny,
2017, ceramic, habitat destruction threaten the
wood, gold leaf, ape’s existence.
4 ft. dia. x 1 ft. Hope’s work brings to mind
the trenchant thoughts of novel-
ist Jonathan Franzen: “What
bird populations do usefully is
indicate the health of our ethical
values. One reason that birds
matter – ought to matter – is
that they are our last, best con-
nection to a natural world that
is otherwise receding.” Her
creations confront many of the
same issues, and at the end of
the day, she considers herself
not so much an “animal artist”
as a humanist. “It’s interesting
that my work puts me into a
subset of ‘artists that do animal
work,’ ” says Hope. “Rather, I
believe we live in a world with
all kinds of things that affect
each other. But we humans are
so inward-focused that we bare-
ly see anything beyond our-
Reliquary: Gorilla
Hand I, 2013, walnut,
selves. Sometimes it’s a stretch
epoxy, quartz geode, to consider people who don’t
4 x 11 x 7 in. look or act like us, let alone the
rest of the planet. But it’s there
for us to learn about, if we only
take the time, and it’s amazing.”

loloro.com
A frequent contributor to Ameri-
can Craft, Deborah Bishop is a
writer and editor in San Francisco.
Photos: Andy Diaz Hope

american craft apr/may 19 43

 Raven Skyriver’s
flawless glass sculptures
pay homage to
the marine ecosystem.
story by
Robert O’Connell
portrait by
Will Foster

AQUA
Whether in a kayak
or his studio, glass
artist Raven Skyriver
is fascinated by the
endless varieties of
life in the ocean.

raven skyriver grew up
in the San Juan Islands off the
coast of Washington, which
he lovingly refers to as “a great
place to ramble.” It’s a place
of infinite adventure, teeming
with marine life: sea turtles,
otters, whales, and fish. Sky-
river would sail and kayak with
his family, exploring the water
and the multitude of creatures
that call it home. “When you
have an encounter with a wild
creature in a wild place, it’s
46 american craft apr/may 19
always impactful and touching,”
he says. “So those have always
been things that were a strong
influence on my life.”
Skyriver’s love for the
natural world is matched
by his passion for glass. His
sculptures – which combine
observational accuracy, impec-
cable technique, and a dash
of magic – celebrate the world
of water. His frogs and whales
might have heightened hues,
but they also portray the real
creatures with a striking
fidelity, visible in a gummy
spread of toes or a long arc
of underbelly.
His work has appeared in
exhibitions across the United
States, and he has taught at high-
profile institutions such as Pen-
land School of Crafts and the
Corning Museum of Glass. As
a high schooler learning the
medium, though, he didn’t dis-
play a prodigy’s easy expertise.
Studying under Lark Dalton,
opposite:
Anchor, 2017,
off-hand sculpted
glass, 26 x 12 x 6 in.
Off-hand, or free-
blown, glass uses a
blowpipe and tools
to shape hot glass.
left:
Adrift, 2017, off-hand
sculpted and carved
glass, 20 x 27 x 29 in.
left:
Whale photo (overleaf): Rozarii Lynch / Other photos: Peter Kuhnlein
Mahi Mahi, 2017,
off-hand sculpted
glass, 20 x 39 x 9 in.
Skyriver found that his instant
love of glassblowing wasn’t
quite matched by technical
proficiency. “My first couple
pieces, as with most everyone
who starts blowing glass, were
just lumpy things that could
kind of hold some water,” he
says, laughing.
But Skyriver kept at it,
studying Venetian-style glass-
blowing and, eventually, pro-
ducing recognizable functional
vessels. He didn’t realize the
 Skyriver’s
work is both a
celebration and
a warning,
rooted in his
concern for
the ocean.
medium’s sculptural potential,
however, until he began work-
ing with Karen Willenbrink-
Johnsen at Pilchuck Glass
School in 2003. He helped her
with her own naturalistic ani-
mal sculptures and also assisted
her when she was blowing
glass for William Morris,
whom Skyriver eventually
worked for at Pilchuck.
The first sculptural piece
Skyriver tried was a goldfish.
“I hadn’t found my voice or
anything,” he says. “I was
just dabbling … I got to put
some fins on it, which was
fun.” Slowly, he expanded
his repertoire. “I made some
little betta fish, and I made
a bunch of goldfish and some
koi, just practicing technique
and color application and try-
ing to exercise some of those
muscles, that technique that
I was seeing every day work-
ing for Karen and working
on Bill’s team.”

below:
Apex, 2017, off-hand
sculpted and cut glass,
23 x 45 x 15 in.
All that practice paid off. At
36, Skyriver creates work with
a degree of mastery obvious
even to those who know little
of the demands of the medium.
Anchor (2017), a 26-inch-tall
seahorse, features precise ridg-
es, eyes that seem to see, and
fins so lifelike you expect them
to start wriggling. Apex (2017),
a translucent great white shark,
bears battle scars up and down
its hide, with teeth to deal out
damage of its own. Throughout
his portfolio, the level of detail
48 american craft apr/may 19
stuns: a sea turtle’s shell curving
to fit its upper back, a walrus’
back flippers folding up under
its belly.
“The thing about marine
life is there’s no end to the com-
plexity and variety and all the
different biodiversity that’s out
there, from phytoplankton all
the way up to the blue whale,”
Skyriver says. That breadth
brings an aesthetic gift as well
as a technical puzzle. “I’ll pretty
much always work from some
sort of resource – a book, or
I’ll rip something off the
internet – and look at these
two-dimensional images and
coloration and texture and
pattern, and then try to figure
out how I can capture that in
the glass.” Skyriver admits
that trial and error looms large
in his creative process, but
“that challenge,” he says, “is
the fun part.”
Although Skyriver’s re-
sources are two-dimensional
representations, his inspiration
still comes from the living,
opposite:
Awaken, 2016,
off-hand sculpted
glass, 13 x 28 x 11 in.
below:
Right, 2018, off-
hand sculpted glass,
21 x 33 x 10 in.
above:
Wahoo, 2018,
off-hand sculpted
glass, 21 x 39 x 9 in.
breathing world around him.
He has recently returned to
his native Lopez Island to raise
his own family; after living
near Pilchuck school in the
early 2000s – where he met
his wife, fellow glass artist
Kelly O’Dell – and in a cottage
on William Morris’s property
Photos: Peter Kuhnlein
for a dozen years, Skyriver is
glad to be back where he grew
up and to be seeing the environ-
ment through the eyes of his
8-year-old son, Wren. “We try
to get out as much as possible,”

he says. “We go hiking, we
go out on the water to pull
up crab, and then we do trips
too, to the mountains, to try
to get out and go snowboarding
or skiing and go hiking and
camping.” For two of Wren’s
birthdays, the family’s gone
on 60-mile kayak trips.
Skyriver’s work may be a
celebration first, but it also acts
as a kind of warning, a reminder
of what could be lost if we don’t
protect the environment. “A
lot of what I think about is
where our food comes from,”
he says, “our dependence on
the ocean as a resource, and
our interdependence on some-
thing that I think we take for
granted a lot and trash in a
lot of ways.” While that mes-
sage is mostly implicit in his
current work, Skyriver doesn’t
rule out addressing environ-
mental issues head-on. “I
think it’s a little harder sell,
as far as the galleries are con-
cerned,” he says, but adds
that he’s interested in tackling
such issues more directly in
a museum show.
In the meantime, Skyriver
will continue living in the
space between his art and the
world that inspires it. He and
O’Dell recently completed a
Kickstarter campaign to fund
a new studio – “we’re super-
grateful for all the support
from the glass community and
our collector base,” he says –
which will allow them to grow
deeper roots in the island that
inspires them.
He’s inspired
by the
complexity
of marine life,
from blue
whales to
phytoplankton.
Skyriver envisions his stu-
dio serving as the kind of artis-
tic community hub that helped
him get his own start, and eager-
ly anticipates the collaborations
the space will make possible.
“I’m so looking forward to just
geeking out,” he says, “trying
different forms and challenging
myself with all those different
aspects of making.”
ravenskyriver.com
Robert O’Connell is an associate
editor for American Craft.
Crafted Lives
JoAnna Poehlmann’s
apartment may look
like a natural history
museum, but her habitat
fuels her living, breathing
art practice every day.
interview by
Diane M. Bacha
photography by
Adam Ryan Morris

  
joanna poehlmann is known
for her meticulously rendered,
often witty tributes to nature
and the works of old masters,
so it should be no surprise that
her home is brimming with
both. Up a narrow flight of
stairs in an apartment carved
from a Gothic Victorian, she
has built a space where artifacts
and art books are easily at hand,
where she can spend time with
her own work before letting it
leave home.
Poehlmann has traveled
the world but happily remains
in Milwaukee, the city of her
birth. Her apartment, with
views of Lake Michigan, is
an easy walking distance from
the Milwaukee Art Museum.
At 86, she creates daily and
can’t imagine running out of
ideas. Her studio is separated
from her living room by a lofty
50 american craft apr/may 19
hallway that’s a time line of a
long creative career, hung with
shadow boxes, collages, draw-
ings, prints, and watercolors.
She adds new items often.
Elsewhere in the apartment
are artworks, specimens, and
artifacts that speak to her love
of animal life and the natural
world. Prints and drawings
of bugs, birds, and other wild
things fill a wall of her living
room. The taxidermist’s art is
represented, too; stuffed ani-
mals lend a wild but friendly
presence to the rooms and
serve as willing models when
called upon.
Poehlmann’s world is a
tactile, deeply observed one,
and her domestic surroundings
reinforce this at every turn.
You’re working almost
exclusively on your “small
“small museums,” boxes
museums” right now – boxes
you’ve rebuilt and filled with
artifacts. They seem to incor-
porate bits and pieces of every-
thing you’re interested in.
If I ever have a show of them,
it’ll be called “Thinking Inside
the Box.” They’re “cabinets of
curiosity” that I’ve been work-
ing on, and they finally end up
being books in boxes, too. I
give homage to the old masters
and nature in my work, so the
two kind of blend and comple-
ment each other.
Here’s one I can’t even move
because I haven’t glued every-
thing in yet. It’s an homage
to Frida Kahlo. There’s a parrot
feather because she kept parrots,
there’s monkey fur because she
had all those monkeys. Here’s
a Mexican jumping bean, and
some milagros [small charms
often used as votive offerings].
left:
Reliquary: 10 Preserved
Specimens is one of
JoAnna Poehlmann’s
she fills with natural
objects that tell a story.
Included here are a
grouse claw, coral, gar-
ter snake, zebra finch
wing, rhinoceros beetle,
alewife, baby turtle,
tree frog, seahorse,
and shark teeth.
right:
Poehlmann has spent
50 years arranging her
Milwaukee apartment
to her precise liking.
She was ill all the time, poor
thing. And this is her life [picks
up a tiny handmade book with
reproductions of Kahlo’s self-
portraits]. I found 19 of them,
starting way back when she
was a teenager, all the way to
the year before she died.
It looks like so much fun to fill
these boxes.
I’m just having the best time
of my life. I didn’t know this
was going to happen. I thought
I might be out of new ideas as
I got older, but I have a bucket
list that’s so long it’s just
incredible.
Do you use items you already
have, or do you have a concept
and then go out and hunt?
It works back and forth. Some-
thing will inspire me, and I’ll go
out and have to find it. Or I’ll
 “God wants me to be here for as long as I can climb the stairs and my right hand keeps working.”
have it all in my house at one
time. I have all of these books to
look through for my homages,
books of old masters and stuff.
And people bring me things. I’ve
been here 50 years, and you
just collect so much. Artists are
pack rats; we can’t help our-
selves. But we use everything.
Fifty years – that’s a long time
to nest in one place. What is it
about this place that has made
it work for you so well?
I think the hall, where I can
show my work. And I can walk –
I hike 2 miles a day to mass. The
grocery store is on the way
home. The post office is right
there, too, and I use that a lot.
I’m near the lake, and you get
the bird migrations through.
And it has character. They’ve
left the building the way it was;
I just love it. God wants me to
52 american craft apr/may 19
above: be here for as long as I can climb
A long hallway con- the stairs and my right hand
nects the living room
to Poehlmann’s studio. keeps working.
Away from the sun’s
glare, it’s a good spot How do people react when
for drawings, shadow
boxes, and collages they come into your house
spanning decades. and see all the taxidermy?
Well, if they have children, it’s
right:
Pencil Museum for Frida fun because they want to pet
Kahlo (2018) includes them. And that’s fine; I just let
a book of Kahlo self- them do that. They think it’s
portraits assembled by
Poehlmann, a Mexican kind of creepy, some of them.
jumping bean, a vial of Especially the bats. But some
faux monkey fur, and a of them just think it’s great.
parrot feather to signify
Kahlo’s pets.
I’ve heard a lot about the birds
opposite: in your freezer.
With light streaming
through the living- Forty-two now.
room windows, the
artist’s glass collection How do you collect them? Do
is displayed to its best
advantage. people give them to you?
I find them on my walks, and
yes, people give them to me
because they know I draw them.
They’re roadkills, or they
 Children are drawn to the taxidermied animals in the apartment. “They want to pet them.”
Books provide refer-
ence images and inspira-
tion for Poehlmann’s
homages to artists.
opposite:
“Wing chair” assemblag-
es adorn a wall in the
artist’s studio. Below
them are studies of
snakes and morels she
drew on a trip to Door
County, Wisconsin.
crash into windows. Of course
around here, with all the glass
buildings – those tall things,
they’re just all over the place –
so many birds fly into them.
They’re gorgeous buildings,
but not for birds. It’s just
heartbreaking.
Your domestic and your cre-
ative life seem so intertwined.
Is that by design, or did it
just happen?
It was a perfectly natural thing
in all my apartments. Even liv-
ing at home, I’d drive my par-
ents crazy because I wanted to
decorate everything. It’s just
54 american craft apr/may 19
part of living with things that
inspire you and that you love.
All those prints – all of a sudden
I had boxes and boxes of them.
And when I moved here, I
thought: I have these wonderful
high walls. So a friend got on a
ladder, and I’d tell her which one
I wanted where, and she’d do it.
It’s been that way for 50 years.
You’re known for your wit and
your sense of humor and your
lovely plays on words. Where
do you think those come from?
Both parents. And I have a
brother that was so funny. My
dad was great at puns. As for my
left:
Set in a violin-bow case,
Cabinet Meeting Number
VII (2018) showcases
antique insect images.
top:
Poehlmann has a permit
for these bird eggs col-
lected before 1916, when
Congress passed the
Migratory Bird Treaty
Act to protect native
species from extinction.
above:
This chest, with 65
small drawers, is the
perfect spot for art
materials such as dried
pods, pressed flowers,
and other oddities that
make their way into
her work.

mother, it was always such
a treat to hear her laugh. She
had the most wonderful ringing
laugh. You knew you really
were helping her through a
hard day just to make her laugh.
I gave a little talk one time
at the Wisconsin Academy of
Sciences, Arts & Letters, and
I told them that I thought the
seventh sense was humor. It
appears throughout all of the
high arts. Mozart in his operas,
some of them are so funny.
Ogden Nash’s poetry. Oscar
Wilde, the wit there! Shake-
speare, oh my goodness. Chau-
cer! He had me on the floor a
couple times. And Don Quixote.
If they can do it, why can’t I?
I mean, what’s wrong with
56 american craft apr/may 19
Humor is an essential: “Why not lighten the air?”
using humor in the visual arts?
Why not lighten the air?
You don’t use a computer and
don’t drive a car. What is your
advice to people who struggle
with closely observing things
in today’s distracted world?
I would advise taking walks.
A nature break is great for allevi-
ating stress. What can I say? It
keeps my mind clear not to have
the distraction of technology.
And each piece of art you pro-
duce is the result of slowing
down to pay attention.
Yes. It takes time. And it’s so
pleasurable. It’s such a joy. You
see what people don’t see, but
you want them to. That’s why
you put it down. People think
toads are so ugly. I think they’re
so beautiful. God worked just
as hard on those as he did on a
hippopotamus. A little machine
is in there, and it’s working, and
it’s doing its thing, you know?
It’s amazing. Did you know that
only 10 percent of our oceans
have been explored yet? I wish
I lived long enough to see what
they’ll find. Off New Zealand
they’re finding a thousand [spe-
cies] a month – new animal life.
More things to draw.
Yes. There you go.
Diane M. Bacha is an editor
and a freelance arts writer
in Milwaukee.
far left:
Indian temple dolls
perch on a case holding
artist books by Poehl-
mann. Beneath is a
taxidermied fish.
left:
Cabinet Meeting
Number VI (Homage
to Arcimboldo) (2019)
incorporates objects
Poehlmann found on
trips to Florida, along
with Listen Closely, a
little book of her shell
drawings.
above:
A corner of the living
room harbors some of
Poehlmann’s specimens:
a gazelle skull, quail
eggs, and a bird’s nest.
opposite:
Vicente Fox was a
gift. He sometimes
travels to galleries to
appear with installations
of Poehlmann’s work.
Over the mantel is
Poehlmann’s A Painting
for Over the Sofa (After
Matisse) (1980).
ideas

Good Shepherds A small-batch fiber mill treats your wool as if it were its own.
interview
with
Angie and Ashley Shaw
by
Megan Guerber
60 american craft apr/may 19
 ideas

makers often obsess over
the quality of their materials,
but how many know much
All photos: Blue Mountain Farm and Fiber Mill
personal connections with award-winning Angora rabbits above:
their materials. By providing and Angora goats. Two mini- Angie Shaw (second
from left) and her chil-
small-batch processing ser- horses, two Jersey cows, and

dren, Ashley, Madi,

about their origins? Knitters
might assume that a skein
of wool started as a sheep’s
coat, but could they say wheth-
er that sheep is a Dorper or a
Merino and whether it’s called
Bo Peep or Billy the Kid?
Small mills such as the Blue
Mountain Farm and Fiber Mill
in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
are helping artisans make more
vices, they help people turn
the fleece of animals they care
about – a sheep, goat, alpaca,
or bunny – into one-of-a-kind
heirloom art materials.
Since 2014, Angie Shaw,
52, and her three adult children
have worked at the mill, where
they process raw fiber that cli-
ents send them. On their 250-
acre farm, they also raise
their dog, Humphrey, round
out their menagerie.
Each of the Shaws has a spe-
cialty. Ashley, 27, has a degree
in agribusiness and is in charge
of the mill; she and Angie han-
dle the bulk of the mill’s fiber
processing. Tyler, 24, is the
family’s shear pro, when he’s
not running his own hay-crop
business or producing maple
and Tyler, run Blue
Mountain Farm and
Fiber Mill. Between
the mill, tending their
animals, and promoting
their work, it’s a 365-
day-a-year job, but one
they’re devoted to.

american craft apr/may 19 61

ideas
syrup. And Madi, 18, who grad-
uates from high school this
spring, is the family’s goat
expert: She takes care of their
flock of 14, makes cheese with
their milk, shears them, and
spins and weaves their wool.
Living amid serene pastures
and caring for fluffy rabbits
and frolicsome goats sounds
idyllic. But considering the
physically taxing, 365-day-
a-year workload (Angie also
works full-time in finance),
it’s no surprise that only 2
percent of Americans live
on working farms or ranches.
Angie and Ashley found
a moment to talk about how
Angora rabbits became their
gateway animal, why shearing
helps fiber-producing animals
stay healthy (even if they don’t
always appreciate the process),
and their love for 4-H.
You two have been interested
in fiber production since
Ashley was in elementary
school. How did that start?
Angie: The Pennsylvania
Farm Show that happens
every year in January. It’s
a huge event, and it takes
place over nine days. There
are educational exhibits and
competitions. It was an awe-
some opportunity and a great
resource and a place to take
my kids. We went every day.
So it really resonated with you.
Ashley: When we were little,
we tried all the sports you can
think of. We did dance, karate,
soccer, basketball, but nothing
really clicked. After attending
the farm show, we joined 4-H,
and it just felt natural.
When did you begin raising
animals for fiber?
Ashley: We started growing
a hobby farm from our animals
that we were raising for 4-H.
The Angora rabbits are what
we started with, and I’ve
62 american craft apr/may 19
had them for years. I tell
people they’re like potato
chips, because you can’t have
just one.
I also had an interest in the
Leicester Longwool sheep, and
I ended up getting my first one
from the youth conservancy
program at the Maryland Sheep
and Wool Festival. You have
to write an essay about your
interest in the sheep and why
you would like to raise them,
and donors choose a youth to
donate a ewe to. That’s how we
ended up with our first sheep,
and then we’ve accumulated or
bred them from there. This past
year, though, we sold our flock.
My sister had an interest
in the Angora goats, so we’ve
been raising those for years
now, too. She’s been working
with different breeders to
help increase her herd, as
well as the fiber production
on her animals.
What advice do you have for
people who want to process
fiber from their own animals?
Ashley: The main thing is we
can only do so much with what
we are given, because the end
product starts on the animal.
So if the animal wasn’t kept
clean, or if the fleece wasn’t
skirted [debris and low-quality
wool removed] or shorn prop-
erly, it affects what we can
produce from it. The cleaner
it comes in to us, the nicer your
end product is going to be.
Also, you might bring Sally
Lou the alpaca’s fleece to us
one year, and we can do one
thing with it, but then the
next year we’ll have different
environmental factors [such
as temperature, humidity, and
sun exposure], and you can get
a totally different fleece from
her. So every fleece, no matter
if it’s from the same animal,
is different.
How many people work at
the mill?
Angie: Ashley and I are pretty
much full-time.
Ashley: We are time-and-
a-half. [Laughs.]
Angie: There are some days
that I’ll start at 3:30, 4 o’clock in
the morning, just to get a jump
on things, and there are days I
come home [from my day job]
and Ashley’s still out there. So
it depends. It is somewhat sea-
sonal. We get more work come
shearing time [in the spring].
Ashley: We also have part-
time employees like my brother,
my sister, and friends.
Who does most of your
shearing?
Ashley: Tyler does, and he does
shearing for other people, too.
We all went to this shearing
school in Washington County
when we were in 4-H. I was
probably 17. All us kids did it,
but he definitely was the best.
So we were like, all right, we’ll
just let you take over the shear-
ing gig. It’s not easy.
What’s so hard about it?
Ashley: It’s very physically
intensive. Since attending
sheep-shearing school, I’ve
gained a much greater appre-
ciation for Tyler and other
professional sheep shearers,
who make the job look easy.
You need to be strong, flexible,
and fit in order to maneuver
an animal naturally and keep
them comfortable while shear-
ing them. With sheep, you sit
them up on their butts in order
to shear their bellies. They’re
not thrilled about it, but the coat
has to come off. And you’re try-
ing to do it in a humane way.
Does shearing also help the
animal, or is it simply done
to harvest fiber?
Ashley: If you didn’t take it
off, especially with the rabbits,
eventually it’s going to kill
them. The rabbits like to clean
themselves, but they can’t
regurgitate like a cat can. So
they’ll just ingest their fiber
and then they can’t cough it up.
Eventually, they’ll get what’s
called wool block, and they
can die from it. Whether it’s
a sheep or a goat or a rabbit,
it’s better for them and their
overall health for the fiber to
come off.
Angie: All our animals are
well cared-for, and if we weren’t
shearing them, caring for them,
having vet checks, and provid-
ing a safe place for them, they
wouldn’t be able to live.
How do you help teach other
people about treating animals
humanely?
Ashley: My sister and my
mom organized Angorapaloo-
za, which is the same idea as
the sheep to shawl [competi-
tions where teams race to shear
a sheep, spin the fleece, and
weave it into a shawl], but
it’s from rabbit to scarf. This
is its fourth year at the Penn-
sylvania Farm Show. There
was a whole uproar about
inhumanely harvesting fiber
from the Angora rabbits, and
major commercial companies
stopped selling anything that
contained angora. So that
was one of the ways that we
tried to promote harvesting
it humanely – that it has to be
done for the health of the ani-
mal – and what you can do with
it once it’s been harvested.
It sounds like a ton of fun,
but also a lot of work.
Angie: My son loves the saying,
“Love what you do, and you’ll
never have to work a day in
your life.”
bluemountainfarms.net
Megan Guerber is an associate
editor for American Craft.
 ideas

The Shaws have raised

Fleece from the Leicester Longwool
lambs (top left), Angora
same animal rabbits, and Angora
can differ from goats, all of which pro-
vide fleece for their
year to year; own high-quality yarn.

weather plays
a big role.

american craft apr/may 19 63

 wide world of craft

Tucson, Arizona

SunShine DayDream
Natural beauty and
an art-friendly climate
draw makers to
this easygoing
Southwest town.
story by Kate Mooney

Much of Tucson’s
allure springs from its
rich heritage and dra-
matic desert setting.
wide world of craft

left:
Tom Philabaum moved
to Tucson in the 1970s,
but his renown has
spread far beyond
Arizona. His gallery
exhibits work by several
dozen glass artists, as
well as his own work.

right:
Ancient petroglyphs by
the Hohokam people
are among the manmade
wonders at nearby
Saguaro National Park,
about 10 miles on either
side of the city.

Philabaum’s Arriba!
(left, 2011) illuminates
a building on the
University of Arizona
campus. His Red
Reptilian Bag Vase
(below, 2018) is part
of a series he’s been
working on for decades.

above:
A piece from
Philabaum’s Precarious
Rocks series stands
near one of his fused-
glass paintings.

with the backdrop of the ago. The Ohio native, who Tucson arts community, around the country. Among
Santa Catalina Mountains and studied with glass pioneer and in February, the Tucson his series are Precarious Rocks,
awe-inspiring desertscapes, Harvey Littleton, moved Museum of Art awarded him stacked baubles inspired by
Tucson, Arizona, inspires to Tucson after visiting his its Ambassador Circle Life- “camping and waking up and Philabaum photos (4): Courtesy of Philabaum Glass

both the creatively inclined
and outdoorsy types. Coupled
with affordable rents and a
laid-back lifestyle, it adds up
to a robust contemporary arts
scene of passionate makers,
with a supportive community
to match.
Glassblower Tom Phila-
baum was drawn to the high-
desert city more than 40 years
cousin and falling in love with
the lifestyle. “It was a spiri-
tual place, all kinds of inter-
esting people, cheap rent,”
he recalls, summarizing the
allure that still attracts people
to the region, whose metro
population hovers around 1
million. (About 536,000 peo-
ple live in the city itself.) He
has become a pillar of the
time Achievement Award.
He opened the Philabaum
Glass Gallery & Studio in 1982
and also taught at the Univer-
sity of Arizona and later at the
Sonoran Glass School, which
he co-founded in 2000. The
gallery and studio remain a hub
for his sculptural works, as well
as a showcase for the work of
more than 30 glass artists from
seeing all these beautiful rock
formations,” and Wall Flowers,
with an iridescent, kaleido-
scopic quality reminiscent of
Arizona sky.
But the craft is no easy
labor, and in December, at
71, he decided to stop blowing
glass, focusing instead on his
abstract fused-glass collage
paintings.

66 american craft apr/may 19


Among the many
Seid photos (3): Wilson Graham / Other photos (2) and overleaf (2): visittucson.org
murals that enliven
Tucson’s streets is this
traditional Mexican
tile mosaic.
Everett Grondin, a native
Tucsonian, is passing down
his craft to the next generation.
A steel fabricator, he also
works under the name DogLix
Designs; he began learning
metalwork at an early age from
his father. He started out most-
ly with commissions, making
custom gates for residents in
the affluent Foothills neighbor-
hood and for local businesses,
but since becoming a part of the
Metal Arts Village, a studio
complex that hosts open houses
every full moon, he has been
creating abstract sculptures.
Working alongside his son,
Everett G. Grondin, he salvag-
es metal from scrapyards —
from horseshoes to headlamps —
making likenesses of cacti and
desert critters with his finds,
along with his whimsical Venus
de Metal, which stands in the
village sculpture garden.
“It’s what you find,”
explains Grondin about his
creative process. “The way
that piece of steel [for Venus]
was being chopped up, partial
arms and no head, it kind of
looked like it was dancing.
Other than the fact that I
found it and had to drag it out
and put it in my truck, it was
really just something I saw.”
In her home studio in
the Richland Heights neigh-
borhood, Carrie Seid makes
mixed-media sculptures that
challenge notions of light
and perception. The Chicago
native’s background is in tex-
tile design, but during grad
wide world of craft
above (3):
Carrie Seid, a Chicago
native, found her artis-
tic calling in Tucson:
sculptures inspired by
the play of light.
school at Cranbook Academy
of Art, she realized she was
drawn to luminosity more
than to pattern. Moving to
Tucson in 2000, she found
inspiration in the powerful
desert sun and began creating
her signature light boxes.
Seid’s works are illumi-
nated by reflective light. She
starts with a metal structure —
for example, strips of alumi-
num flashing that she cuts,
paints, and assembles into a
pattern as though they were
american craft apr/may 19 67
wide world of craft

textile pieces — and covers

it with oiled silk or plexiglass.
As light shines through, the
piece changes colors, like a
naturally occurring mood ring.
Seid is interested in
the emotional use of color –
“If you have a feeling, what
could that look like?” She
names her works accordingly:
Blurst, a portmanteau for
“burst” and “blue,” is made
up of azure rays. Georgia #2
takes the skeletal form of a
bright orange flower, a nod
to O’Keeffe, who also found
her muse in the desert.
Seid, who works as a
creative coach on the side,
is active in the Tucson arts
community; her work can be
seen in public art installations
around the city. “The art
scene here in Tucson is rich,
diverse, and expanding quick-
ly,” she says, noting the revi-
talized downtown, which has
blossomed with art galleries,
live music, and brightly col-
ored murals.
Tradition also plays an
important role, she says:
“The history of Hispanic and
top:
Biosphere 2, an earth
If
You
science research facility,
Native American art in this
lies about a half-hour
area continues to inspire all of north of Tucson. It was

us in the arts, and the natural
beauty of the bizarre desert
formations is a daily reminder
of our connection to the land.
While the art community is
Go
designed by a former
associate of visionary
architect and author
Buckminster Fuller.
above and right:
Downtown Tucson

Hotel photos (2): hotelcongress.com / Biosphere photo: visittucson.org

intimate in scale, it’s incred-
ibly supportive. Tucson is a
place where all boats would
rise together, if we had boats.”
Kate Mooney is a Brooklyn cul-
ture writer whose work has
appeared in Lifehacker, MEL
Magazine, Vice, and elsewhere.
The Historic Hotel
Congress, celebrating
its 100-year anniversary
in 2019, reflects
Tucson’s charm and
idiosyncratic style.
Downtown Tucson has a small American West. Philabaum
but robust arts district of galler- Glass Gallery & Studio is on
ies and museums. Housed in the southern edge of downtown.
the historic Oddfellows Hall,
Etherton Gallery
Etherton Gallery showcases 135 S. Sixth Ave.
historic and contemporary pho- ethertongallery.com
tography, along with fine art,
MOCA Tucson
mixed-media work, and sculp- 265 S. Church Ave.
ture. A few blocks south, the moca-tucson.org
Museum of Contemporary Art
Tucson Museum of Art
(MOCA Tucson) boasts a mix 140 N. Main Ave.
of works from local and interna- tucsonmuseumofart.org
tional artists, while the Tucson
Philabaum Glass Gallery & Studio
Museum of Art is known for 711 S. Sixth Ave.
its permanent collections and philabaumglass.com
traveling exhibitions of Latin
American work and art of the

68 american craft apr/may 19

 wide world of craft

SABINO CANYON

N 6th AVE
E 6th
HISTORIC
FOURTH AVE
WAREHOUSE DISTRICT
ARIZONA-SONORA ARTS DISTRICT

N 4th AVE
DESERT MUSEUM

E
N STONE

TO
O LE
AV


E
AVE
S ST E BROADWAY BLVD
CONGRES

DOWNTOWN
E
A AV

TUCSON
N
AD

S 6th AVE
AN

R
SG

W 17th S 4th AVE



MEXICO 60 mi

Historic Fourth Avenue District Warehouse District

North of downtown, the His-
toric Fourth Avenue District
is bustling with boutiques,
bars, and cafés. Don’t miss Pop-
Cycle, a funky shop with local
craft, much of it Tucson-themed.
Stop in at Del Sol International
Shops for wares from the US
Southwest and Latin America.
Map: Michael Kline, dogfoose.com
Pop-Cycle Just west of the Fourth Avenue and nationally known artists. In
422 N. Fourth Ave. District, forming a triangle the Steinfeld Warehouse Com-
popcycleshop.com
between Sixth Avenue, North munity Arts Center, Conrad
Del Sol International Shops Sixth Street, and East Toole Wilde Gallery showcases the
435 N. Fourth St. Avenue, Tucson’s historic ware- work of emerging artists and
fourthavenue.org/listings/
del-sol-international-shops houses have been renovated and offers affordable craft classes.
repurposed as art studios and
Santa Theresa Tile Works Solar Culture
gallery spaces. Solar Culture is 31 E. Toole Ave.
440 N. Sixth Ave.
home to studios, a gallery fea- solarculture.org

santatheresatileworks.com
Santa Theresa Tile Works has turing work by both established
Davis Dominguez Gallery
been around since 1986, offering and up-and-coming Tucsonians, 154 E. Sixth St.
commercial and residential and a nonprofit music venue in davisdominguez.com
installations and workshops a 3,000-square-foot art deco
Conrad Wilde Gallery
open to the public. In the spring space. Davis Dominguez Gal- 101 W. Sixth St., #121
and winter, the Fourth Avenue lery is a powerhouse of contem- conradwildegallery.org
Street Fair fills the area with porary art in a 5,400-square-foot
local and international artisans, warehouse, with work by local
live music, and food.
american craft apr/may 19 69
 SHOWCASE
st. paul exhibitor
Denise Betesh • Booth 507
denisebetesh.com

Agnieszka Zoltowski • 912

loveoru.com

Lynda Bahr Jewelry • Booth 416 Kelly Marshall • Booth 920

lyndabahrjewelry.com KellyMarshall.com
Barbara Glynn Prodaniuk • Booth 306
bgprodaniuk.com

Rosario Garcia Designs • Booth 309

rosariogarciadesigns.com

EXHIBITOR SHOWCASE

Mark Laub Studios • Booth 501

marklaub.com
Hannah Long Jewelry • Booth 1117
hannahlongjewelry.com
S
73
 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

Gabriel Ofiesh • Booth 513 Mary Jo Schmith • Booth 422

gabrielofiesh.com FrontAvenuePotteryandTileCo.com

Toni Seymour Handwoven • Booth 521 Sam Woehrmann • Booth 1017

ToniSeymourHandwoven.etsy.com iamthatsam.com

Thomas Turner • Booth 508 Trace West • Booth 517

thomasturnerjewelry.com TraceWest.com
 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

Sharon Stillman Ceramic Sculpture • Booth 323 Sana Doumet • Booth 1008
stillmanstudio.com sanadoumet.com

Susan Bradley Designs • Booth 407

952-473-7004

EXHIBITOR SHOWCASE

Judith Kinghorn • Booth 414

judithkinghorn.com
Cathy G. Vaughn • Booth 205
tracery157.com copperabstractions.com
S
75
 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

Barbara Heinrich Studio • Booth 816 Conni Mainne • Booth 417

barbaraheinrichstudio.com connimainne.com

Wendy Stauffer • Booth 201 Leones Design • Booth 326

fussjewelry.com leonesdesign.com

Ceramic Art by Jeff Pender • Booth 1016 Keith Lewis Studio • Booth 801
jeffpender.com keithlewisstudio.com
 MARKETPLACE
The American Craft Marketplace showcases artwork, galleries, events, products and services.
To place a Marketplace ad, please contact Joanne Smith | 612-206-3122 | jsmith@craftcouncil.org

Idyllwild Arts
Summer Program
Immerse yourself in a specialized,
intensive opportunity with
passionate, practicing, and
professional artists of all levels.
Wherever you are in your artistic
life and pursuits, Idyllwild Arts
encourages you to advance and
cultivate your passion. Join us for
exciting workshops in a wide
range of media from Painting,
Former Jewelry Store For Sale
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Printmaking, Mixed Media, Poetry, Custom cabinets, 2 UL rated safes, workshop.
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summer@idyllwildarts.org Contact Rich Aldrich (413) 243-1739
idyllwildarts.org/summer rich.aldrich01238@gmail.com
“Yellow Jacket Swarm” by Charity Hall

Craft with
Confidence
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Creativity
on the
Go Wayne Art Center
Call for Entries
Craft Forms 2019: 25th International Juried
Exhibition of Contemporary Fine Craft
December 7, 2019 - January 31, 2020
Entry Deadline: September 13
Awards: $8,000
Entry Fee: $45
Visit: craftforms.org
Classifieds
Classified advertising is $3.95 per word, minimum 20 words. Name and address
count as words. Example: “A.B. Smith” is three words. Full payment must
accompany order, mailed to American Craft, 1224 Marshall Street NE, Suite 200,
Minneapolis, MN 55413. Or contact Joanne Smith at jsmith@craftcouncil.org
when placing classified ads using credit card payment. Deadlines: March 29, 2019,
for the June/July issue and May 31, 2019, for the August/September issue.

Ad Index
108 Contemporary ..........................19
American Craft Council . 2, 23,58–59
American Craft Council
St. Paul Show Section .........S70 – S76
Artful Home .........................Cover 4
Artisphere ..................................... 78
Cleveland Institute of Art ............... 17
Corning Museum of Glass ............... 4
Duncan McClellan Gallery ....Cover 2
Florida Craft Art……………............19
Grand Marais Art Colony ................ 4
Gravers Lane Gallery.............Cover 3
Haystack Mountain
School of Crafts .............................19
John C. Campbell
Folk School .................................... 17
L’Attitude Gallery .................Cover 3
Marketplace .................................. 77
Max’s ..............................................9
Morgan Contemporary
Glass Gallery..... .............................17
Myra Burg ....................................... 7
North House Folk School ................ 4
Penland School of Craft................. 78
Penland School of
Craft Auction ................................ 79
Penland School of Craft Gallery ......9
Peters Valley School of Craft ......... 23
Pilchuck Glass School.................... 23
Rago Arts and
Auction Center............... ................. 3
Ruth Chandler Williamson
Gallery/Scripps College..................79
Schaller Gallery......................Cover 3
Seasons on
St. Croix Gallery...............................4
Tansey Contemporary ......................1
The Clay Studio .............................. 7
The Grand Hand Gallery .......Cover 3
The Society of Arts
and Crafts/CraftBoston .................19
Touchstone
Center for Crafts ........................... 78
Visual Arts Center
of Richmond ................................. 78
Weyrich Gallery/The Rare
Vision Art Galerie ................Cover 3
White Bird Gallery............ ....Cover 3

A Funding Source
This activity is made possible by the voters
of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts
Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a
legislative appropriation from the arts and
cultural heritage fund.
american craft council header tk

The American Craft Council is a national, nonprofit public educational

organization that traces its inception to 1941. Founded by Aileen Osborn Webb,
the Council aims to promote the understanding and appreciation of contemporary
American craft. Programs include the bimonthly magazine American Craft, annual
juried shows presenting artists and their work, the American Craft Council Awards
honoring excellence, a specialized library, conferences, workshops, and seminars.
1224 Marshall St. NE, Suite 200, Minneapolis, MN 55413
Phone (612) 206-3100; (800) 836-3470 Fax (612) 355-2330
council@craftcouncil.org, craftcouncil.org
Membership Services: (888) 313-5527
Magazine: letters@craftcouncil.org, craftcouncil.org/magazine
Library: library@craftcouncil.org, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Monday – Thursday,
9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Friday
Shows: shows@craftcouncil.org, (800) 836-3470
The American Craft Council is committed to justice, inclusiveness, and
equity. Drawing on craft’s rich legacy of openness and its deep roots in all
cultures, the Council will work to create opportunities for creative
people from all walks of life.

Board of Trustees
Charles E. Duddingston, Chair
Minneapolis, MN

Robert Duncan Kathryn LeBaron Amy Schwartz

Lincoln, NE Lincoln, NE Corning, NY
Libba Evans Thomas Loeser Josh Simpson
Winston-Salem, NC Madison, WI Shelburne Falls, MA
Carl Fisher Robert Lynch Gary J. Smith
Tacoma, WA Washington, DC San Francisco, CA
Ken Girardini Wendy Maruyama Michael J. Strand
Sykesville, MD San Diego, CA Fargo, ND
Miguel Gómez-Ibáñez Lydia Matthews Stephanie Syjuco
Weston, MA Brooklyn, NY Oakland, CA
Harriett Green Jean W. McLaughlin Christopher R. Taylor
Columbia, SC Little Switzerland, NC Seattle, WA
Ann Hatch Lynda Bourque Moss Lucille L. Tenazas
San Francisco, CA Billings, MT Beacon, NY
Charlotte Herrera Rebecca Myers Folayemi Wilson
Webster, NY Baltimore, MD Chicago, IL
Ayumi Horie Bruce W. Pepich Patricia A. Young
Portland, ME Racine, WI Silver Spring, MD
Sarah K. Khan Carol Sauvion Marilyn Zapf
New York, NY Los Angeles, CA Asheville, NC
Lorne Lassiter
Charlotte, NC

Life Trustees
Leilani Lattin Duke Sara S. Morgan
Pacific Palisades, CA Houston, TX
Marlin Miller Barbara Waldman
Reading, PA San Francisco, CA

American Craft Council Staff Leadership Team

Sarah Schultz, Executive Director

sschultz@craftcouncil.org

Gregory E. Allen Gena Johnson Scott Pollock

Director of Finance Director of Senior Director of
and Administration Development Programs and Public
gallen@craftcouncil.org gjohnson@craftcouncil.org Engagement
spollock@craftcouncil.org
Pamela Diamond Melanie Little
Director of Marketing Show Director
and Communications mlittle@craftcouncil.org
pdiamond@craftcouncil.org
one piece
Hide Away
it seems impossible, given
the intricacies and subtleties
of the finished products, but
Brooke Weston often doesn’t
plan her pieces beforehand.
Instead, the 37-year-old Los
Angeles artist improvises her
way through them, beginning
with a piece of taxidermy and
finishing with a half-animal,
half-architectural sculpture that
often straddles the line between
wonderland and nightmare.
80 american craft apr/may 19
Dolores (2016) began as
a taxidermied antelope, but
when Weston acquired it,
she immediately saw other
possibilities. “I couldn’t help
but imagine this miniature,
toylike animal roaming in a
fairy-tale kingdom with castles
and fairies,” she says. She cut
a hole in the hide – that mate-
rial would go on to make a
crown on the animal’s head –
and outfitted the interior
with a tiny purple sofa, a hand-
painted portrait of the antelope
itself, and a diamond-paned
window reminiscent of Rapun-
zel’s tower. A spiral staircase
leads up to the exposed room;
amanita mushrooms (the clas-
sic red-and-white toadstools
known for their hallucinogenic
properties) pop up below.
Weston sees the finished piece
as a magical cottage brimming
with hidden treasures.
Brooke Weston,
Dolores, 2016, taxi-
dermied antelope,
clay, plaster, wood,
paint, mixed media,
2.5 x 3 x 1.5 ft.
The artist’s understanding
of “fairy tale” is more Brothers
Grimm than Disney, though;
her pieces are shot through
with darkness and danger. The
unexpected juxtaposition of
lifeless animal and dollhouse-
scale whimsy accounts for some
Photo: Brooke Weston
of the effect, but so, too, do
the tinted fur and the sense
of endless nooks and crannies
where menacing creatures
might lurk.
 CONTEMPORARY
CRAFT
GRAVERS LANE GALLERY “Epiphany” by Charles
8405 Germantown Ave. LaFond at Weyrich
Philadelphia, PA 19118 Gallery/The Rare
(Historic Chestnut Hill) Vision Art Gallerie.
(215) 247-1603 Stoneware, Cone 6
graverslanegallery.com oxidation, overlay
“Holding on to What’s glazes with quartz
L’ATTITUDE GALLERY Left” by Jacquline crystal as filial.
460-C Harrison Ave. Hurlbert at White Bird 10 x 10 x 10.5 in.
Suite 8A Gallery. Ceramic sculp-
Boston, MA 02118 ture. 24.5 x 7 x 5.5 in.
(617) 927-4400
lattitudegallery.com

SCHALLER GALLERY
210 State St.
St. Joseph, MI 49085
(269) 983-7404
schallergallery.com

THE GRAND HAND

GALLERY
619 Grand Ave.
St. Paul, MN 55102
(651) 312-1122
thegrandhand.com

WEYRICH GALLERY
THE RARE VISION ART
GALERIE
2935-D Louisiana NE
Albuquerque, NM 87110
(505) 883-7410
weyrichgallery.com
“White Orchid” by Elisa
WHITE BIRD Adams at L’Attitude
GALLERY Gallery. Alabaster.
251 N. Hemlock St. 5 x 6 x 9 in.
Cannon Beach, OR 97110
(503) 436-2681
whitebirdgallery.com