Curatorial Fellowship 2023
Crafting Denim / curated by Sonya Abrego NEO MINERALIA / curated by Oscar Salguero Something earned, Something left behind / curated by Kehayr Brown-Ransaw
The 2023 Curatorial Fellowship is made possible with the Stoney Lamar Craft Endowment Fund. A special thanks to Phillips, the leading auction house in art and design, for sponsoring the Curatorial Fellowship exhibitions. The Center for Craft is supported, in part, by the North Carolina Arts Council. Edited by Sarah Darro, Lisette Gallaher, and Marilyn Zapf Copy Edited by Liz Carleton Creative Direction by Futures Bright Design by Danielle Maughon
© 2023 by The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design, Inc. Published by Center for Craft on the occasion of the 2023 Curatorial Fellowship exhibitions, including:
Crafting Denim curated by Sonya Abrego NEO MINERALIA curated by Oscar Salguero Something earned, Something left behind curated by Kehayr Brown-Ransaw On view: February 17 – October 21, 2023 Bresler Family Gallery and John Cram Gallery Center for Craft 67 Broadway Street Asheville, NC 28801 All rights reserved. Except for legitimate excerpts customary in review or scholarly publications, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. The photographs in this book are by Benjamin James Roberts unless otherwise noted in the photograph captions.
Curatorial Fellowship 2023 / CENTER FOR CRAFT
Curatorial Fellowship 2023 /
FOREWORD
Foreword
Often a simple object holds profound truths about the world around us, and yet are often missed. As Sonya Abrego’s exhibition Crafting Denim reveals, a pair of handmade jeans may generate a conversation on the relationship between craft and fashion, skill, and labor. Similarly, in Oscar Salguero’s NEO MINERALIA, a collection of fabricated “rocks” leads the viewer to reconsider the relationship between craft and both the materials and sustainability of our planet. On the other hand, the makers themselves may be overlooked. In Kehayr Brown-Ransaw’s Something earned, Something left behind, the work of six artists of color are given the spotlight, each drawing from their distinct cultural backgrounds to form and craft exquisite works of sculpture. The 2023 Curatorial Fellowship exhibitions draw attention to three areas of craft and ask us to reconsider our relationship to industry, materials, and who has been included – or left out of – the craft conversation.
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As Center for Craft expands its mission to resource, catalyze, and amplify how and why craft matters, the Curatorial Fellowship exemplifies the kinds of programs that embody our new direction. Now in its third iteration, the Fellowship is internationally regarded as a model for supporting emergent curatorial practice. Previous Curatorial Fellows have gone on to hold prominent positions at major museums and national auction houses. By identifying emerging thought-leaders like Abrego, Salguero, and Brown-Ransaw, and supporting them with funding, professional development, and a platform for their ideas, the Curatorial Fellowship fosters fresh thinking, launches future leaders, and celebrates broad definitions of making to draw new audiences to craft. As you experience these three exhibitions, I invite you to imagine how these Fellows will shape future conversations about the centrality of craft in our everyday lives.
Stephanie Moore Executive Director
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Curatorial Fellowship 2023 /
Gallery
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Curatorial Fellowship 2023 /
Introduction
Introduction
Marilyn Zapf /
Director of Programs and Curator, Center for Craft
Sarah Darro /
Consulting Curator, 2023 Center for Craft Curatorial Fellowship
Lisette Gallaher /
Assistant Director, Center for Craft
Just as the discipline of curating continues to evolve based on trends in the field and greater social discourse, so too does the structure of Center for Craft’s Curatorial Fellowship Program. For the third iteration of this pioneering grant program, a cohort-based format was introduced. Recognizing the relational, collective nature of curatorial practice, this reenvisioned structure established a supportive framework that brought the three curator-awardees into discourse with one another and an extended network of mentors and professionals in the field; from art historians and material culture scholars to museum interpreters, exhibition designers, art handlers, and preparators. Moreover, this new structure also allowed for the resulting exhibitions to be installed and experienced concurrently. The publication set you hold reflects the collective spirit of this new format, with three publications operating individually and collectively within the set.
Foremost, we would like to extend our deepest thanks to the 2023 Curatorial Fellows: Sonya Abrego, Kehayr Brown-Ransaw, and Oscar Salguero. Each curator’s exhibition offers distinct entry points into craft. While American fashion scholar Abrego’s Crafting Denim reframes a subject that has long been understood within the context of industry, subverting viewers’ expectations of a familiar medium; industrial designer-curator Salguero investigates current and future geologies, suggesting a new order of speculative strata in his exhibition NEO MINERALIA . Distinct from these design- and industry-inflected approaches, interdisciplinary artist-curator Brown-Ransaw critically sheds light on artists of color who have been historically excluded from the discourse of studio craft in his exhibition Something borrowed, Something left behind. Each fellow was selected from a wide pool of highly qualified applicants because they demonstrated a singular curatorial vision and innovative approach to craft. Their exhibition proposals were carefully reviewed by Marilyn Zapf, Director of Programs and Curator at Center for Craft and Sarah Darro, Curator and Exhibitions Director at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, as well as reviewed by two outside readers including Juliana Rowen Barton, Director of the Center for the Arts and Curator of Gallery360 at Northeastern University; Nicole Burisch, coeditor of The New Politics of the Handmade: Craft, Art, and Design; Andres Payan Estrada, Director of Public Engagement at Craft Contemporary; and Darienne Turner, Assistant Curator of Indigenous Art of the Americas at The Baltimore Museum of Art. Thank you to each of the outside readers for their thoughtful consideration and participation in the selection process.
p.8 Top: Installation detail, Crafting Denim. p.8 bottom: Installation detail, Something earned, Something left behind. p.9: Installation detail, NEO MINERALIA. 10
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Curatorial Fellowship 2023 /
Introduction
Above: Oscar Salguero, Sonya Abrego, Kehayr Brown-Ransaw.
We owe an immense measure of gratitude to the subject area expert mentors who were paired with each fellow, generously extending feedback on written content, checklists and layouts, as well as providing professional guidance through the process. Thank you to the following individuals for their inimitable and formative guidance: Glenn Adamson, independent curator and author, and co-editor of the Journal of Modern Craft, who worked with Oscar Salguero; Michelle Millar Fisher, Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, who worked with Sonya Abrego; and Shawnya L. Harris, Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art at the Georgia Museum of Art, who worked with Kehayr Brown-Ransaw. A significant element of the 2023 Curatorial Fellowship program was the addition of a series of seminars led by museum experts on varying elements of curatorial practice. We would like to thank our brilliant session leaders for
their generous contributions to the Fellowship experience: Jennifer Navva Milliken, Artistic Director for the Museum for Art in Wood, who lectured on Curatorial Theory and Craft; HannaH Crowell, former Chief Exhibition Designer at the Mint Museum, who lectured on Exhibition Design; and Troy Smythe, Manager of Interpretation Strategy and Education Projects at Corning Museum of Glass, who led an interpretation writing workshop. An exhibition series and publication of this scale requires the professional partnership of many people. We would like to thank Tim and Meagan Scroggs of Futures Bright for their collaboration and creative vision from the outset of the program; designers and builders Erik Penderson, Kristi Pfieffer, Konrad Sanders, and Thomas Schram for contributing to the physical experience of these exhibitions; photographer Benjamin Roberts for capturing the installation views included in this catalog; and our dedicated team of art handlers and preparators, Carrie Helmkamp, Lauren Roquemore, Ian Brownlee, and Devyn Vasquez, for contributing their specialized knowledge and skillsets to the installation of these exhibitions.
Craft Scotland’s “Sustaining Curatorial Careers Report,” April 2022 https://www.craftscotland.org/mediaLibrary/other/english/709685.pdf.
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Curatorial Fellowship 2023 /
ABOUT
About the 2023 Curatorial Fellowship
Center for Craft launched its Curatorial Fellowship Program in 2017 to support emerging curators across the country in exploring and testing new ideas about craft. Every three years, a cohort of curators is awarded a $5,000 honorarium each and is provided access to professional development tools, mentorship, and the opportunity to work within their cohort to bring their exhibitions to fruition. During the yearlong program, the Fellows work closely with Center for Craft staff to produce their exhibition, develop related educational materials, design their exhibition catalog, and deliver a curatorial talk. Their final exhibitions are displayed in Center for Craft’s Bresler Family Gallery and John Cram Gallery, located in Asheville, North Carolina.
“By identifying emerging thought-leaders like Abrego, Salguero, and BrownRansaw, and supporting them with funding, professional development, and a platform for their ideas, the Curatorial Fellowship fosters fresh thinking, launches future leaders, and celebrates broad definitions of making to draw new audiences to craft.” — Stephanie Moore
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Curatorial Fellowship 2023 / Sonya abrego
Crafting Denim
Crafting Denim explores the work of three contemporary denim makers, Bowery Blue Makers, W.H. Ranch Dungarees, and Raleigh Denim, who all take an artisanal approach to making jeans. Takayuki Echigoya of Bowery Blue Makers brings a global perspective: his work draws from the long-standing appreciation of American denim in Japan and blends influences from both cultures. Ryan Martin from W.H. Ranch highlights regional independence; his work draws from his home state of Kansas and from the history of making and wearing jeans in rural communities. And Raleigh Denim, the largest of the three workshops, brings community, uniting experienced makers from North Carolina’s manufacturing past with youthful contemporary designers. Each has a distinct approach and background, but are all invested in making jeans in small-scale workshops where attention is paid to the details, quality, and origins of each material. Machines and hand tools that would be obsolete in today’s large garment factories are revived by makers who value subtle distinctions and create pieces that are meant to last. Dr. Sonya Abrego is a New York City-based design historian specializing in American fashion. She takes an interdisciplinary approach to examining the interconnections between dress, popular culture, art, craft, and design. Sonya has published in scholarly and popular venues, has presented at conferences across North America, and presently teaches at Parsons School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology. Her first book, Westernwear: Postwar American Fashion and Culture, is published with Bloomsbury Academic.
curated by Sonya Abrego / NEW YORK, NY
left: Installation detail, Crafting Denim. Headshot: Sonya Abrego. 17
Curatorial Fellowship 2023 / Kehayr Brown-Ransaw
Something earned, Something left behind
Something earned, Something left behind is a group exhibition concerned with reconciling a history of craft and exclusion of POC narratives and displacement. It centers on artists working with cultural traditions at the forefront of their practice to engage conversations of identity, healing, and reconnection. This show gives reverence to ancestral homelands, hyphenated identity markers, expectations to assimilate, and the pressure to give up parts of oneself in order to fit a new identity. Few objects in the world are apolitical in their historical affiliations. How have the cultural, political, and economic decidedness of objects impacted their meaning and worth? These works on view investigate and analyze the transactional and political languages of objects. Kehayr Brown-Ransaw is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator based in Bde Óta Othúŋwe/Mnísota (Minneapolis/ Minnesota). Brown-Ransaw’s practice engages in conversations of familial histories, concepts of gendered work, tradition, and Blackness/Black identity through quilting, weaving and printmaking. His curatorial and teaching practices are concerned with access, representation, and the presentation of marginalized communities. Brown-Ransaw received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Furniture Design from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He has exhibited work across the Twin Cities with public works at Franconia Sculpture Park. He is the recipient of a 2020/21 Emerging Curators Institute (ECI) Emerging Curator Fellowship, 2020/21 Jerome Early Career Fellowship, 2021 Franconia Sculpture Park Mid-Career Artist Fellowship, and 2021 Artist-in-Residence at the Minnesota African American Heritage Museum & Gallery.
curated by Kehayr Brown-RansaW / MINNEAPOLIS, MN
left: Linda Sok, “We are going to temple tomorrow, who wanna come?” (detail), 2022. Headshot: Kehayr Brown-Ransaw. 19
Curatorial Fellowship 2023 / Oscar Salguero
NEO MINERALIA
NEO MINERALIA presents a selection of new rock specimens crafted by ten international artists exploring the potential of rocks as reflections of our effects on human and nonhuman ecologies. Departing from traditional rock formation categories (Igneous, Metamorphic, Sedimentary), the artworks highlighted propose the emergence of Synthetic and Digital rocks. By embedding humanmanufactured materials (plastics, e-waste) and human-originated data points (critical, financial, social) into the craftsmanship of these rocks, the artists propose that these geological entities can serve as vessels of stories, warnings, and futures in our evolving entanglement with nature. Oscar Salguero is an independent curator, researcher, and critical designer based in Brooklyn, NY. His design work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including a presentation during Stockholm Design Week 2020, as part of non:agency’s The Age of Entanglements. As a curator, Salguero is a fellow of SixtyEight Art Institute’s The Curatorial Thing 2020 Edition: The Curator is the Weather, for which he received the Danish Arts Foundation’s International Visual Arts Funding Grant. In Spring 2021, Salguero curated Interspecies Futures [IF] at the Center for Book Arts, NY. The show marked the first survey of bookworks by emerging artists working at the intersection of speculative fiction and new interspecies possibilities. Salguero is the founder of the Antilibrary and is the author of the Symbiocene Anthology, a series of artists’ book reviews published online via Future Based.
curated by Oscar Salguero / NEW YORK, NY
left: Silvia Noronha, “Shifting Geologies” (detail), 2020-2022. Headshot: Oscar Salguero. 21
The Center for Craft’s mission is to resource, catalyze, and amplify how and why craft matters. We increase access to craft by empowering and supporting artists, organizations, and communities through grants, fellowships, and programs that bring people together, as well as through our public galleries which educate our audiences about the materials, processes, skills, and research that define craft. Craft inspires what’s possible and creates lasting memories of people, places, and experiences. We believe that craft is for everyone and has the power to celebrate our differences while illuminating our similarities – igniting genuine human connection, gathering and building community, empowering, and promoting health and wellness.
Center for Craft Staff Stephanie Moore — Executive Director Marilyn Zapf — Director of Programs & Curator Erika Kofler — Director of Operations Lisette Gallaher — Assistant Director Jena Gilbert Merrill — Grants Writer Mellanee Goodman — Grant Program Manager, Research & Ideas Anna Helgeson — Grant Program Manager, Community Vitality Olivia Hutto — Development Manager Madison Tenney — Communications Coordinator Patti Behzad — Visitor Services Coordinator Lex Turnbull — Cowork Community Coordinator
Board of Directors Doug Beckstett — President
Cheri Hoffman
Lisbeth Evans — Treasurer
Diana N’Diaye
SHENEQUA Brooks — Secretary
Julie O’Keefe
Nedra Agnew
Meaghan Roddy
Peter Alberice
Cindi Strauss
Jennifer Calvert Hall
Tim Tate
Diane Charnov
Laura Way
Margaret Conrads
David Worley
Ray Hemachandra
Emily Zaiden
Bernie Herman
The Center for Craft increases access to craft by empowering and resourcing artists, organizations, and communities through grants, fellowships, and programs that bring people together. The Center’s Curatorial Fellowship was started in 2017 to give emerging curators a platform to test new ideas about craft.