Nora Atkinson – författare

"Craft for a Modern World" highlights nearly 200 of the extraordinary craft objects held at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum. Nora Atkinson looks at the whole notion of what defines craft, and how attitudes towards it are continually changing, from the pioneering years of the studio craft movement through to new definitions and expressions of craft today.This fully illustrated new volume features works by artists including Matthias Pilessnig, George Nakashima, Albert Paley, Ron Fleming, Zack Peabody, Billie Ruth Sudduth, Todd Hope, Michael James, Toots Zynsky, Michael Sherrill, Patti Warashina, Merry Renk, Kim Schmahmann.

Based on the seventh instalment of the biennial Renwick Invitational, this striking volume, presents the work of Steven Young Lee, Kristen Morgin, Jennifer Trask, and Norwood Viviano. The four selected artists work in a remarkable variety of media including porcelain, raw clay, bone, gold, glass, metal, found objects and mineral pigments. Their visual sensibilities draw on sources ranging from traditional Asian pottery to vintage Americana, and from the romance of the Victorian Era to the algorhythmic precision of the computer. Together, they engage a current fascination in American craft with change, transformation, ruin, and reinvention.

All of the artists use the topic of Nature as a means of asking what it is to be human in a world increasingly chaotic and divorced from our physical landscape. Forces of Nature: Renwick Invitational 2020 features artists Lauren Fensterstock, Timothy Horn, Debora Moore, and Rowland Ricketts. Nature provides a way for these invited artists to ask what it means to be human in a world increasingly chaotic and divorced from our physical landscape. Representing craft media from fiber to mosaic to glass and metals, these artists approach the long history of art's engagement with the natural world through unconventional and highly personal perspectives. Forces of Nature: Renwick Invitational 2020 is the ninth installment of the Renwick Invitational. Established in 2000, this biennial showcase highlights midcareer and emerging makers who are deserving of wider national recognition. The featured artists work in a wide variety of media, from Lauren Fensterstock, who creates detailed, large-scale installations using intensive modes of making drawn from the decorative arts, including paper quilling and mosaic, and from whom SAAM has commissioned a site-specific work - inspired in part by the illustrated renaissance German manuscript The Book of Miracles - that will transform an entire gallery at the Renwick, to Timothy Horn, who creates exaggerated adornments that combine natural and constructed worlds, taking inspiration from objects as varied as baroque jewellery patterns and Victorian era detailed studies of lichen, coral, and seaweed, from bronze and glass, as well as unusual materials like crystalized rock sugar, to evoke the extravagant Amber Room in the Catherine the Great's palace of Tsarskoye Selo; and from Debora Moore, known for her exquisitely detailed glass renderings of orchids, and who is represented in this volume in her new series, Arboria (2018), in which Moore focuses less on realism and more on capturing an intensely personal experience of beauty and wonder, to Rowland Ricketts who creates immersive installations using handwoven and hand-dyed cloth, starting on his farm, where he cultivates the indigo plants he uses to colour his artwork, fully linking his material and process with the finished product. Participatory engagement from non-artists, forms a major part of Rickett's work, emphasising the relationship between nature, culture, the passage of time, and everyday life. AUTHOR: Nora Atkinson is the Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum Washington, DC. 74 colour illustrations