On May 26, 2021, the Center for Craft’s first-ever virtual benefit will kick off a year-long celebration of our 25th year advancing the field of craft. Please join us as we look toward the future and celebrate those who make the field so vibrant. Highlights of the evening will feature internationally renowned artist, Magdalene Odundo, Craft Futures Honoree, Michael Sherrill, and the opportunity to hear from craft artists and scholars whose lives and work have been impacted by the Center for Craft.
All funds raised will provide critical resources to jumpstart our programming for emerging craft artists and scholars.
Registration for this event is now closed, but you can still show your support by making a donation.
Magdalene Odundo DBE is an internationally acclaimed ceramic artist, who received her early education in India and Kenya before moving to England in 1971. After completing her undergraduate at the West Surrey College of Art Design (now known as the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham) in 1976, she undertook a teaching post at the Commonwealth Institute, London, in Museum Education before completing her masters at the Royal College of Art, London. She returned to teach at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) in 1997, becoming Professor of Ceramics in 2000 and inaugurated as a Professor Emerita in 2016 in recognition of her contribution to the University's research culture. Magdalene is the Chancellor of the University for the Creative Arts.
Magdalene's best-known works are hand built using similar techniques as the ancient Greeks and Romans - such as the coiling technique. Many of these are now part of the permanent collections of nearly 50 international museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, The British Museum in London, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York and the National Museum of African Art in Washington DC. She has held workshops, lectures and residences, solo exhibitions and been part of group exhibitions in various locations across the world for over 40 years. For her work she has been awarded the African Art Recognition Award by the Detroit Institute of Arts in 2008 and the African Heritage Outstanding Achievement in the Arts Award in 2012 in Nairobi, Kenya. She has also received honorary doctorates from the University of Florida (2014) and University of the Arts London (2016). In 2008 she was awarded an OBE for services to the Arts and Art Education and was made a Dame in the 2020 New Years Honours.
At present, Magdalene is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics, The Art Workers Guild and Chelsea Arts Club. She is a Patron of the National Society for Education and Design (NSEAD) and a Trustee of the Watts Gallery in Surrey and the Hepworth Wakefield in Yorkshire.
Photo credit: Photo by Anne-Katrin Purkiss. Courtesy of Odundo.
Photo credit: Photo by Margery Sherrill.
The son of an inventor/motorcycle racer and warrior princess/homemaker, Michael Sherrill has lived in the western North Carolina mountains since 1974. He considers himself a materials-based artist experimenting primarily in the media of metal, clay, and glass. At the heart of his interest is the intersection of where humans and materials meet in both handmade objects and the natural world.
Michael’s work is in several public collections including the Smithsonian’s Renwick Museum of American Craft, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Mint Museum, the Museum of Art and Design, Corning Museum of Glass, and Takoma Glass Museum, among others.
In 1993, the Year of Craft, Michael was selected for the White House collection, which traveled to venues around the United States. His piece, “Incandescent Bottles,” now resides in the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum. In 2003, Michael was honored as Artist of the Year by the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, in Charlotte, North Carolina. As part of the International Ceramics Symposium (World Ceramic Exposition Foundation), Michael was one of 10 artists invited in the summer of 2004 to participate in a residency creating outdoor sculptures to be placed permanently at the International Ceramic Museum in Inchon, S. Korea.
His other residencies include: Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts (2005), John Michael Kohler Arts Center (2006), and Museum of Glass (2010). Michael is the 2010 United States Artists Wingate Fellow. Most recently Michael was honored by the James Renwick Alliance as the 2019 Master of the Medium, Clay.
Aaron McIntosh is a cross-disciplinary artist whose work mines the intersections of material culture, family tradition, sexual desire and identity politics in a range of works including quilts, sculpture, collage, drawing and writing. As a fourth-generation quilt maker whose grandparents were noted quilters in their Appalachian communities, this tradition of working with scraps is a primary platform from which he explores the patch worked nature of identity. Since 2015, McIntosh has managed Invasive Queer Kudzu, a community storytelling and archive project across the LGBTQ South.
His work has been exhibited at the Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Yale University's Green Art Gallery, the International Quilt Study Center, the Los Angeles Craft & Folk Art Museum and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay & Lesbian Art in New York City. His current research creation project, Hot House/Maison Chaude, is supported by a 2020-2022 Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council Insight Development grant. Additionally, McIntosh is a recipient of the 2020 United States Artist Fellowship in Craft, a 2018 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, a 2017 Virginia Culture Works Grant, and two Center for Craft Windgate Fellowships in 2006 and 2015. He has held residencies at the Banff Centre, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. His critical writing has been published in the Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, the Surface Design Journal, and the Journal of Modern Craft.
As an educator, McIntosh is committed to transforming and diversifying the next generation of fibre/textile artists. Since 2010, he has taught in the Fibre programs of James Madison University, the Maryland Institute College of Art, Virginia Commonwealth University, and currently is an Associate Professor in the Fibres & Material Practices program at Concordia University.
American Craft Council
Osgood Landscape Architecture, Inc.
Vannoy Construction
Mountain BizWorks
Prosim Engineering, LLC
Anonymous
Doug and Elise Beckstett
Joan M. Benedetti
Ed Bresler
Fleur S. Bresler
Jennifer Calvert Hall
Diane (Charnov)
Sara Clugage
Michele Cohen
Helen Drutt English
Richard and Laura Evans
Sue Keane and Roger Findley
Bernie and Rebecca Herman
Charlotte and Raul Herrera
Sara and Bob McDonnell
Lynn Pollard
Meaghan Roddy
Fred and Sue Sanders
Cindi Strauss and Chris Ballou
David and Dianne Worley
67 Broadway St, Asheville, NC 28801
(828) 785-1357 | info@centerforcraft.org
Gallery Hours: Tues–Sat, 10–6 get more info
Gallery Hours: Closed — Reopening Fall 2019
