Janet Koplos – författare

With this concise and beautiful format, makers, fiber art collectors, and casual viewers take a world tour of spectacular examples of contemporary basketry. Guided by two experts, you’ll experience more than 180 works by 60 of today’s artists. Here is the best contemporary work from around the world, grouped into unusual thought-provoking topics (such as “The Body,” “Eccentric Color or Materials,” and “Allusion”) to help readers reach their own conclusions about each basket. Inspired by her widely followed blog Contemporary Basketry, the selection is carefully honed by authority Carol Eckert to represent the spectrum of contemporary work. There are three parts: • The photos do most of the speaking here; • the 60 artists tell us about their priorities; and • serving as a centerpiece, a guide by renowned critic Janet Koplos offers a one-of-a-kind exploration of what defines a basket, so we can understand how that term applies to this amazing range of work. A gorgeous book for basketry lovers, aficionados of other fiber and textile arts, and museum and art world audiences.

Here is the first comprehensive survey of modern craft in the United States. Makers follows the development of studio craft — objects in fiber, clay, glass, wood, and metal — from its roots in nineteenth-century reform movements to the rich diversity of expression at the end of the twentieth century.More than four hundred illustrations complement this chronological exploration of the American craft tradition. Keeping as their main focus the objects and the makers, Janet Koplos and Bruce Metcalf offer a detailed analysis of seminal works and discussions of education, institutional support, and the philosophical underpinnings of craft. In a vivid and accessible narrative, they highlight the value of physical skill, examine craft as a force for moral reform, and consider the role of craft as an aesthetic alternative.Exploring craft’s relationship to fine arts and design, Koplos and Metcalf foster a critical understanding of the field and help explain craft’s place in contemporary culture. Makers will be an indispensable volume for craftspeople, curators, collectors, critics, historians, students, and anyone who is interested in American craft.

The New Art Examiner was the only successful art magazine ever to come out of Chicago. It had nearly a three-decade long run, and since its founding in 1974 by Jane Addams Allen and Derek Guthrie, no art periodical published in the Windy City has lasted longer or has achieved the critical mass of readers and admirers that it did. The Essential New Art Examiner gathers the most memorable and celebrated articles from this seminal publication. First a newspaper, then a magazine, the New Art Examiner succeeded unlike no other periodical of its time. Before the word "blog" was ever spoken, it was the source of news and information for Chicago-area artists. And as its reputation grew, the New Art Examiner gained a national audience and exercised influence far beyond the Midwest. As one critic put it, "it fought beyond its weight class." The articles in The Essential New Art Examiner are organized chronologically. Each section of the book begins with a new essay by the original editor of the pieces therein that reconsiders the era and larger issues at play in the art world when they were first published. The result is a fascinating portrait of the individuals who ran the New Art Examiner and an inside look at the artistic trends and aesthetic agendas that guided it. Derek Guthrie and Jane Addams Allen, for instance, had their own renegade style. James Yood never shied away from a good fight. And Ann Wiens was heralded for embracing technologies and design. The story of the New Art Examiner is the story of a constantly evolving publication, shaped by talented editors and the times in which it was printed. Now, more than three decades after the journal's founding, The Essential New Art Examiner brings together the best examples of this groundbreaking publication: great editing, great writing, a feisty staff who changed and adapted as circumstances dictated—a publication that rolled with the times and the art of the times. With passion, insight, and editorial brilliance, the staff of the New Art Examiner turned a local magazine into a national institution.