By Christina Chacon
Ready for some great design and craft events, exhibits, & sales to check out? We’ve got you covered for the month of October and beyond. Check out Whitney Smith’s pottery for some beautiful and functional ceramic work (early Christmas gift ideas anyone?), or Grand Tales of the Loom: Four Master Weavers for a unique exhibit on the art of weaving, or Wizardry in Wood in the UK for some fabulous and breathtaking wood carvings. Any great events in your area we might have missed? Tell us about them! And don’t forget to check the Handful of Salt website for updates!
Northern California
Whitney Smith Pottery
Meet the Artist: Whitney Smith
October 13th, 2012 at Marion and Rose’s Workshop, Oakland.
Marion and Rose’s Workshop is proud to present their new vendor Whitney Smith Pottery. Whitney Smith creates beautifully functional ceramic pottery, designed and handcrafted to bring exquisite, modern home accessories into your everyday.
September 5th through October 7th, 2012 at Velvet Da Vinci.
Velvet Da Vinci is proud to present the first US one-person exhibit by Buenos Aires-based jeweler Jorge Castañon. One of the leading contemporary jewelers in Latin America, Castañon incorporates found wood and metal to create a poetic visual diary of normally overlooked debris of city.
San Francisco Center for the Book Workshops
Month of October at the San Francisco Center for the Book.
SFCB workshops have a whole new line up to enjoy. From bookbinding to calligraphy, there is a workshop for every interest and every level to choose from. Check out their website for a complete list of exciting classes.
Fiber Futures, Japan’s Textile Pioneers
Phase 1: July 20th through October 6th, Phase 2: October 23d through December 1st, 2012 at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art, 51 Yerba Buena Lane, San Francisco, CA.
We saw this fabulous exhibit in New York and are so delighted it’s coming to San Francisco. Co-organized by Japan Society (New York,) Tama Art University (Tokyo,), and International Textile Network Japan, Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers explores a new art emerging from a remarkable fusion of Japanese artisanal and industrial textile making. Coaxed from materials as age-old as hemp and newly developed as microfilaments, a varied array of more than 25 works by artists from multiple generations will be on view in this extraordinary two-part exhibition.
MOCFA will be closing on December 1, so make sure you get in there. MOCFA, we’ll miss you.
Northwest
August 7th, 2012 through February 16th, 2013 at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR.
Museum of Contemporary Craft is pleased to present “Reflecting on Erik Gronborg,” a forerunner of the contemporary “sloppy craft movement,” whose work from the 1960′s and 1970′s incorporates political and pop themes with ceramic forms. Gronbrog makes functional ceramic works that explore contemporary culture. Combining the thousand-year-old continuum of ceramic history with silk-screening, comics, china, paint and commercial glazes, Gronborg’s provocative crafty and non-precious approach is as engaging today as it was in the late 1960′s.
Southern California
September 30th, 2012 through January 6th, 2013 at The Craft and Folk Art Museum, L.A.
This exhibition explores the unique role that Los Angeles played in the tattoo renaissance that took place in the United States. The exhibition will move through the 60-year transformation of tattooing from its traditional base of military and outlaw cultures into an art form of great distinction and adoption into contemporary culture.
East Coast
Bhakti Ziek, Continuum, 2010; Image Courtesy of Fuller Craft Museum
Grand Tales of the Loom: Four Master Weavers
September 22, 2012 through January 20th, 2013 at the Fuller Craft Museum, Boston, MA.
Four artists, four storytellers, one beautiful collaborative exhibition. Weavers seem to be especially connected to folks. Some believe in the spirituality of work, the rhythm and repetition of the loom. Some feel there is a continuum in the warp and weft that connects all weavers. All find meaning and metaphor by joining hundreds of individual threads into a single plane.
June 2 through October 7, 2012 at the Fuller Craft Museum, Boston, MA.
Iron Twenty Ten: A Juried Exhibition of Contemporary Blacksmithing offers both the casual viewer and the seasoned metalsmith a comprehensive survey of the finest contemporary blacksmithing in the United States today. The artists in the exhibition are united by a commitment to the highest levels of craft and a point of view that is both distinct and contemporary.
United Kingdom
Wood Carving by Stuart Mortimer; Image Courtesy of The Worshipful Company of Turners
October 17th – 20th, 2012 at Carpenters Hall, London.
Exhibitors at Wizardry in Wood 2012 will include over twenty of the UK’s most skilled and creative wood-turners showing the finest of contemporary work. Many of the pieces will be available for sale. The exhibition features important historical collections to show how the craft of wood-turning has evolved during the 800 year existence of the Worshipful Company of Turners.
MADE London – The Design and Craft Fair
October 26th – 28th, 2012 at One Marylebone Way, London.
MADE London is organized by the team behind MADE 12, Brighton’s Design and Craft Fair, Brighton Art Fair and the Palace Art Fair present an enjoyable event showcasing the very best and most original makers in this country and beyond exhibiting the highest quality contemporary craft and design.
September 7th through October 20th, 2012 at the London Design Festival.
It’s hard to choose what we liked the most from the amazing London Design Festival, but one of our top picks is CAA’s exhibition, domesticMATTERS. This exhibit sees the gallery transformed into the imagined home of a collector of Modernist furniture and 21st Century craft. It addresses the link between contemporary craft makers and some of the most important design and manufacturing companies supporting contemporary British. It is an exhibition with a mission, and the ultimate goal is to stimulate and develop interactions between uniquely skilled designer makers, potential producers, and retailers.
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