Crafting America

Every object tells a story. Click below for a journey through Crafting America as it appeared in the galleries at Crystal Bridges from February-May 2021. Simply click around the room to move, get a close view of objects including 3D models, and read interpretation labels.

Crafting America, developed by Crystal Bridges, celebrates the skill and individuality of craft within the broad context of American art. Featuring over 100 works in ceramics, fiber, wood, metal, glass, and more unexpected materials, this exhibition presents a diverse and inclusive story of American craft from the 1940s to today, highlighting the work of artists such as Ruth Asawa, Peter Voulkos, Jeffrey Gibson, Sonya Clark, and more.

Developed by Jen Padgett, associate curator at Crystal Bridges, and Glenn Adamson, guest curator and scholar of craft, design history, and contemporary art, Crafting America asserts craft’s integral role in expanding the story of American art.

In addition to the Crafting America works found in the Temporary Exhibition Gallery where the 360° Tour takes place, visitors can also find works of art and videos from the exhibition in the museum’s collection galleries by Toshiko Takaezu, Beth Lipman, and Ayumi Horie.

While Toshiko Takaezu was a multidisciplinary artist, her best-known works are enclosed ceramic forms, ranging in scale from the size of a hand to over six feet tall. She explored gestural splashes and layered veils of color like fellow artists Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler. “I didn’t want a flat surface to work on but a three-dimensional one,” Takaezu said.

Wisconsin-based artist Beth Lipman is well known for her detailed works made entirely of glass. Her sculptural practice explores aspects of material culture and deep time through still lives, site-specific installations, and photographs. In Belonging(s) (2020), Lipman responds to a group of eighteenth-century portraits of the Levy-Franks family attributed to Gerardus Duyckinck I (1695-1746) found in the Crystal Bridges collection. With the glass sculpture in the form of a traveling trunk and compiled with objects that could be associated with the Levy-Frankses’ trade and travel, Lipman addresses the theme of migration head-on. Learn more about Lipman’s work here.

Based in Portland, Maine, Ayumi Horie believes that the best handmade pottery encourages connections between people and makes daily life better. Her activism and advocacy promote thoughtful craft practice and support for makers around the world. In 2020, Ayumi put a few projects aside to work on new ones and to dig into organizational board work to help create a more equitable craft field.

In this video, watch Ayumi Horie create a ceramic ramen bowl along with making homemade ramen noodles.

Ayumi Horie often makes functional pottery with drawings of animals and typography, inspired by American and Japanese folk traditions and comics. In this video, watch Ayumi Horie bounce one of her cups onto a giant bone sponge.

Blakeman’s Fine Jewelry

Phillips

Morris Foundation, Inc.

Crafting America has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.