Craft Conversation: Gestures of Resistance
Tuesday, January 26, 6:30 pm
The Lab at Museum of Contemporary Craft
Listen to an audio podcast of the lecture (MP3)
Join Judith Leemann and Shannon Stratton, guest co-curators of Gestures of Resistance for a discussion about their ongoing exploration of the relationship between handicraft, labor and performance. Through an informal dialogue, Leemann and Stratton will discuss the design of the exhibition as a continually developing installation and how each artist's project will transform the Museum into a workspace. Viewing craft as a methodology and a fulcrum by which community and current cultural conditions can be understood, Leemann and Stratton's focus on craft actions provides a critical focus for the examination of contemporary visual practices.
Judith Leemann teaches at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and is the lead artist-in-residence at the Design Studio for Social Intervention, Boston. Shannon Stratton teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is the director and co-founder of Three Walls, Chicago.
Photo: Cat Mazza, Nike Blanket Petition, 2004; Workshop at Three Walls Gallery, Chicago. Photo courtesy of the artist.
CraftPerspectives Lecture: William Gilbert
"Land Arts of the American West"
Wednesday, March 10, 6:30 pm
PNCA Swigert Commons, 1241 NW Johnson St.
Free and open to the public
In conjunction with the upcoming exhibition Land Art: David Shaner, Museum of Contemporary Craft in partnership with PNCA presents the lecture "Land Arts of the American West" by Bill Gilbert, a ceramic artist who holds the Lannan Chair in Land Arts of the American West in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of New Mexico. Gilbert will discuss the resurgence of interest in Land Art and how this genre has shaped the American West while simultaneously being informed by it.
Craft Conversation: Reading the Land
With Daniel Duford (PNCA) and Matt Johnston (Lewis & Clark College)
Tuesday, April 6, 6:30 pm
The Lab at Museum of Contemporary Craft
Free and open to the public
In this new program format, artist Daniel Duford and art historian Matt Johnson will each speak for 20 minutes about how "reading" the landscape functions in their own work, providing another lens through which the connections between David Shaner's work and land can be understood. The final 20 minutes will focus on connecting their talks through discussion and dialogue with the audience.
CraftPerspectives Lecture: Hannah B. Higgins
"Fluxus Experience"
Thursday, April 22, 6:30 pm
PNCA Swigert Commons, 1241 NW Johnson St.
Free and open to the public
Commonly associated with political and cultural activism in the 1960s, the Fluxus Movement struggled against narrow definitions of art and performance. Hannah B. Higgins, the daughter of the Fluxus artists Alison Knowles and Dick Higgins and noted author of Fluxus Experience, will lecture on this movement to provide an additional context for the practices engaged in Gestures of Resistance.
CraftPerspectives Series
The CraftPerspectives Series provides a forum for today's leading craft artists, professors and curators to share their knowledge of and ideas about issues in contemporary craft.
Past Programs
CraftPerspectives Lecture
Vicki Halper
November 2009
Listen to the podcast
CraftPerspectives Open Conversation
Sloppy Craft
October 2009
Anne Wilson
Liminal Networks
October 2009
Listen to the podcast
CraftPerspectives Conversation
Handmade Nation
April 2009
Listen to the podcast
Visit the Handmade Nation Portland microsite
Glenn Adamson
Craft in the 21st Century: Directions and Displacements
February 2009
Listen to the podcast
Watch the webcast
CraftPerspectives Panel
Curating the Work of Mandy Greer and Darrel Morris
January 2009
Garth Clark
How Envy Killed the Crafts Movement: An Autopsy in Two Parts
October 2008
Listen to the podcast
This lecture is available for purchase as a print on demand book.
Steven Skov Holt and Mara Holt Skov
Manuf®actured: From Readymade to Alreadymade
September 2008
Listen to the podcast
Paul Smith
Reflections: Twentieth Century Studio Craft Movement – Current Observations
April 2008
Ellen Lupton
The Design It Yourself Revolution
March 2008