The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design (CCCD) sends you a monthly ENEWS to keep you current with our programs, exhibits and events, as well as other "happenings" in the world of craft. For the first time, we are asking that you show your support for our programs by making a donation. No donation is too small! Thank you for your support and enjoy our complimentary ENEWS.

Sincerely,

Dian Magie
Executive Director

"Western North Carolina has a rich history of furniture making and chairs being just one of the functions a furniture designer/maker might produce. This exhibition however is not about the history, but more about what is currently produced with a nod to history. The contemporary designer, craftsman, or artist has come from a variety of backgrounds. Some are self-taught, some have apprenticed with a "master" and some have taken the academic route and have attended colleges and universities. Their inspiration for what they produce is as varied as their backgrounds. Some explore function or if it is comfortable, some start with the material they choose to work with, some have exceptional technical skills, and some have their own unique design or art language to express themselves with.

So chairs are not just about sitting and comfort, but as much about the artist /designer/ maker and their personal expression in their work."

                -Wayne Raab

Wayne Raab was born and raised near Buffalo, NY. He earned his Bachelors of Science degree in Art Education from State University College of NY at Buffalo and his Masters of Fine Arts degree from the School for American Craftsman at Rochester Institute of Technology. Wayne set up the Professional Crafts Woodworking program at Haywood Community College were he taught for over 32 years. Though he thinks he has learned more about woodworking from his many students over the years, he has had the opportunity of studying with many woodworkers and teachers, like Doug Sigler, Jere Osgood, Bill Keyser, and Tage Frid. Recently he retired from teaching and is doing his own designing and woodworking on speculation and commission work.

While jewelry and blacksmithing are both grounded in metal, there is a curious gulf between the two fields. Just as George Bernard Shaw quipped that England and America "are two countries separated by the same language," Jewelers and blacksmiths remain foreign cousins in spite of their shared medium. Different Tempers will explore these two realms of metalsmithing to highlight their distinct properties as well as their commonalities. Showcasing the work of fourteen prominent and mid-career metalsmiths, the exhibition will reveal the engaging range of metal work emerging from both the jeweler's bench and blacksmith's forge. The traveling show, which opens September 2009 at the Center for Craft, Creativity & Design, will be accompanied by a catalogue with essays exploring the vital issues related to these two creative spheres.

The Penland School of Crafts Annual Benefit Auction is a gala weekend in the North Carolina mountains featuring the sale of more than 220 works in books, clay, drawing, glass, iron, letterpress, metals, painting, photography, printmaking, textiles, and wood. The Penland auction is one of the most important craft collecting events in the Southeast and a perfect opportunity to support Penland's educational programs, which have helped thousands of people to live creative lives.

Activities take place on the Penland campus in Mitchell County, North Carolina. Meals and live auctions take place in an air-conditioned tent.

Friday, Saturday, and weekend tickets are all still available. Make your reservations today! Admission
Weekend: $375 Friday only: $200 Saturday only: $250 Absentee bidding: $25

The legacy of Black Mountain College continues to influence contemporary culture in multiple realms. This conference aims to investigate its history as well as the multiple paths of influence, actual and possible, identifiable in the contemporary world and beyond.

Co-hosted by The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, and The University of North Carolina, Asheville

Keynote Speaker: Dorothea Rockburne
An alumna of Black Mountain College, Dorothea Rockburne is a highly influential contemporary artist. During the sixties she was involved in Judson Dance Theatre performances with artists such as Oldenburg and Rauschenberg. From 1965 (with the exhibition "E.A.T." at Leo Castelli) until today she has shown internationally. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a NEH grant, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Department of Art, in 2001.

For more information contact The Black Mountain College Museum & Arts Center at bmcmac@bellsouth.net or call 828.350.8484.

About the Conference: The three-day conference will bring together dynamic voices from the field and beyond to discuss craft's changing role and will feature keynote presentations, interactive panels and sessions. The star-studded line-up of presenters include Dr. Richard Sennett, professor of sociology at New York University and the London School of Economics, and author of The Craftsman; Rob Walker, columnist for the New York Times Magazine and author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are; and Garth Clark, esteemed curator, scholar, historian and gallerist.

Quiltfest is an open judged show with over 400 quilts on display. There are classes (by Frieda Anderson and Judy Niemeyer), a silent auction, quilt appraiser Teddy Pruitt will be present, and much more.

For more information go to www.quiltfestjax.com

Admission: $8 daily; $15 multi-day pass
Location: Prime Osborn Convention Center, 1000 Water St., Jacksonville, FL

Co-sponsored by Surface Design Association, Studio Art Quilt Associates and San Francisco State University Textiles

Surface Design Association, Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc. and the Textiles concentration of the Art Department at San Francisco State University announce the upcoming conference, tour, and workshop program called "Reinvention". The location will be Seven Hills Conference Center, San Francisco State University Campus. Program dates for the conference are Friday and Saturday, March 19 - 20; Sunday, studio bus tour and de Young museum tours on Sunday, March 21; and three-day workshops on Monday - Wednesday, March 22-24.

The program is intended for fiber studio artists, textile designers, art quilters, instructors, and people interested in the fiber field and looking for inspiration. Attendees must be members of either Surface Design Association (surfacedesign.org) or Studio Art Quilt Associates (saqa.com). Other interested parties are invited to join and attend.

The theme Reinvention is described as follows: "Life in the arts is a constant process of invention and reinvention. Techniques change, new materials emerge, inspiration evolves along with the world in which we work. Artists reinvent themselves as they mature or change creative paths. It's an exciting time to be a creative individual and change is in the air."

Highlights of the Planned Program

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Marci McDade, editor, Fiberarts magazine, Reinvention: Transforming the Face of Fiber Janet Koplos, editor, American Craft magazine, Reinventing American Craft

SPEAKERS FROM MUSEUMS: Jill D'Allesandro, assistant curator, de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA, "From Micronesia to Paris, All in a Day's Work" Stefano Catalani, curator, Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, WA, the work of the fiber artists featured at Bellevue Arts Museum Jane Przybysz, executive director, San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, San Jose, CA, "What Makes Fiber Art?"

There are many exciting panels and workshops as well.

Conference brochure and registration will be available at saqa.com and surfacedesign.org after September 20th, 2009.

Choosing Craft: The Artist's Viewpoint
Edited by Vicki Halper & Diane Douglas

Choosing Craft explores the history and practice of American craft through the words of influential artists whose lives, work, and ideas have shaped the field. Editors Vicki Halper and Diane Douglas construct an anecdotal narrative that examines the post-World War II development of modern craft, which came of age alongside modernist painting and sculpture and was greatly influenced by them as well as by traditional and industrial practices.

The anthology is organized according to four activities that ground a professional life in craft--inspiration, training, economics, and philosophy. Halper and Douglas mined a wide variety of sources for their material, including artists' published writings, letters, journal entries, exhibition statements, lecture notes, and oral histories. The detailed record they amassed reveals craft's dynamic relationships with painting, sculpture, design, industry, folk and ethnic traditions, hobby craft, and political and social movements. Collectively, these reflections form a social history of craft.

Choosing Craft ultimately offers artists' writings and recollections as vital and vivid data that deserve widespread study as a primary resource for those interested in the American art form.

This book is publishing by The University of North Carolina Press and is available at www.uncpress.unc.edu

*This book was supported by CCCD with a Craft Research Fund Grant

The Craftsman and the Critic
Defining Usefulness and Beauty in Arts-and-Crafts Era Boston
By Beverly Brandt

When English craftsman, poet, and socialist William Morris advised consumers in the 1880s to "have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful," he prompted a movement for design reform in Britain, Europe, and America. Championing Morris's views, the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston led the quest for "usefulness and beauty" in the United States. As the oldest, continuously-operating arts and crafts organization in the country, it exerted considerable influence.

Among the Boston reformers were design critics, whose profession became increasingly important in the nineteenth century. Many of them-including a number of prominent women-were also architects, designers, craft workers, educators, and theorists. Their views on design reform were substantive and often controversial.

This richly illustrated book explores the interaction of craft workers and critics as they collaborated to improve the quality of the living and working environment in Boston and across the United States. Beverly K. Brandt examines multiple overlapping topics-the evolution of the profession of design criticism in the nineteenth century; Boston in the "Gilded Age" as a center for reform, epitomized by the Aesthetic and the Arts and Crafts movements; the formative years of the Society of Arts and Crafts (1897-1917); key personalities associated with that organization; the theoretical underpinnings of the Arts and Crafts movement; and a diaspora of Boston reformers who left the city to promote usefulness and beauty across the country and abroad. In an epilogue, she discusses the Arts and Crafts revival which has flourished since the 1970s and contemplates why the search for usefulness and beauty continues to resonate today.

This book is available through the University of Massachusetts Press at
www.umass.edu/umpress/fall_08/brandt.htm

*This book was supported by CCCD with a Craft Research Fund Grant

A Theory of Craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression by Howard Risatti.
Published by Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

What is craft? How is it different from fine art or design? Risatti examines these issues by comparing handmade ceramics, glass, metalwork, weaving, and furniture to painting, sculpture, photography, and machine-made design from Bauhaus to the Memphis Group. He describes craft's unique qualities as functionality combined with an ability to express human values that transcend temporal, spatial, and social boundaries. Craft must articulate a role for itself in contemporary society, says Risatti; otherwise it will be absorbed by fine art or design and its singular approach to understanding the world will be lost.

*This book was supported by CCCD with a Craft Research Fund Grant

Knitting America: A Glorious Heritage from Warm Sock to High Art.
Published by Voyageur Press. Author: Susan M. Strawn, foreword by Melanie Falick. www.voyageurpress.com
The patterns and fabrics of American knitting are an intricate, and intimate, part of the nations history, reflecting the styles and the interests, the concerns and the comforts that touched every homebody, every newborn and newlywed, every homesick patriot in the field.

This is the history that Knitting America celebrates. The first fully detailed, full-color, comprehensive history of knitting in America from colonial times to the present, the book conveys the social and historical realities that the craft embodied as well as the emotional narrative that unfolded at the hands of the nations knitters. With vintage patterns and designs typical of each era, Knitting America comprises a knitted history of American society. Here are the trends and the shortages, the historical happenings and the social movements, the advertising and economic developments that affected knitting and style.

Also included are 20 historic knitting patterns for todays knitters. Beautifully illustrated with vintage pattern booklets, posters, postcards, black-and-white historical photographs, and contemporary color photographs of knitted pieces in private collections and in museums, this book is a treasure of history and craft, an exquisite view of America through the handiwork of its knitters.

Makers: A History of American Studio Craft At the first "Think-Tank" convened by CCCD in 2002, of craft faculty, museum director and curators, scholars and critics, the initiative ranked as most important to the advancement of the field was a history of American Craft in the twentieth Century. The journey toward making this a reality can be tracked on www.craftcreativitydesign.org/research/history.php. Makers: A History of American Studio Craft by Janet Koplos and Bruce Metcalf is with the publisher, the University of North Carolina Press. Long awaited, the book, researched and written under the auspices of CCCD, will include 500+ images and also serve as an undergraduate text. It will be released in 2010. The University of North Carolina Press is making craft history and criticism a focus of the Press.

The Journal of Modern Craft, edited by Glenn Adamson, Victoria & Albert Museum, UK; Edward S. Cooke, Jr. Yale University, USA; Tanya Harrod, Royal College of Art, UK, is the first peer-reviewed academic journal to provide an interdisciplinary and international forum in its subject area. It address all forms of making that self-consciously set themselves apart from mass production - whether in the making of designed objects, artworks, buildings or other artefacts. Published three times a year in March, July and November. To place an order/subscription visit www.bergpublishers.com and download order forms or email custerserv@turpin-distribution.com.

The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design is an inter-institutional Center of the University of North Carolina.

The mission of the regional UNC Center is to support and advance craft, creativity and design in education and research, and, through community collaborations, to demonstrate ways that craft and design provide creative solutions to community issues. The mission of the nonprofit CCCD is to support the mission of the UNC center through funding, programs, and outreach to artists, craft organizations, schools in the community, region and nation.

email: info@craftcreativitydesign.org
phone: 828.890.2050
web: http://www.craftcreativitydesign.org