Get ready for our inaugural craft celebration, Craft Watch! Join us for riveting speakers, bid on exclusive artist tours, and support our Alumni Network.
The virtual event brings together television, personalities Tan France (“Queer Eye,” “Next in Fashion”) and Katherine Gray (“Blown Away”), to platform the Center for Craft’s mission on a national stage. This conversation will be moderated by Deborah Needleman, basketmaker, former editor-in-chief of T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and founding editor-in-chief of Domino magazine.
Tanya Aguiñiga was born in 1976 in San Diego, California, and raised in Tijuana, Mexico. Aguiñiga works with traditional craft materials like natural fibers and collaborates with other artists and activists to create sculptures, installations, performances, and community-based art projects.
Tanya Aguiñiga
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Drawing on her upbringing as a binational citizen, who crossed the border daily from Tijuana to San Diego for school, Aguiñiga’s work speaks of the artist’s transnational community. She founded AMBOS (Art Made Between Opposite Sides), an ongoing series of projects that provides a platform for binational artists. She was recently awarded the Latinx Art Forum: Latinx Artist Fellowship (2022), Heinz Award (2021), and an Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities (2018). Her work is in the collection of the Hammer Museum, LACMA, Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt and Renwick Museums, and the Museum of Art and Design among others.
We extend our gratitude to Susie J. Silbert, the former Corning Museum of Glass curator and cherished alumna, who will emcee our program with a delivery style characterized as “half stand-up comedian and half evangelist.”
We also deeply appreciate David Rago, founder of Rago Auctions, a partner in Rago/Wright, and frequent guest on “Antiques Roadshow,” for lending his more than five decades of experience to lead our auction and fund-a-need.
Max Adrian (he/they) is a textile artist interested in queerness, desire, and consumerism and a previous Center for Craft Windagte-Lamar Fellow.
Max Adrian
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His soft-sculptural practice finds inspiration in various sewing-related crafts like quilting, bag making, inflatables, puppetry, drag, and fetish wear. Adrian employs an evocative aesthetic of bold colors and tactile materials that tease expectations of pleasure. His work envisions a postmodern playscape, where bodies and objects are blurred, asking how humans' desires impact a sense of personal identity and community building.
Adrian holds a BFA in fiber and creative writing from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA in fiber and material studies from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture. He has worked professionally as a puppeteer, a mascot costume stitcher, and a production artist at Otherworld, an immersive art experience. Adrian was a 2022 Career Advancement Fellow and a 2015 Windgate Fellow with the Center for Craft. Various residencies, including Vermont Studio Center, Lighthouse Works, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and Millay Arts supported his practice. He is based in Columbus, Ohio.
Attendees can support the program through various means, including an auction led by David Rago featuring unique items such as a transformative vacation with VAWAA and an exclusive tour with artist Robell Awake.
An Atlanta Experience features a studio tour with artist and Center for Craft alum Robell Awake and High Museum of Art Decorative Arts and Design Curator, Monica Obniski, also a Center for Craft grant recipient, who will lead an exclusive, behind-the-scenes museum tour.
BROADCAST SPONSOR
sustaining sponsor
CATALYST SPONSOR
IN-KIND Sponsor
To sponsor, contact Olivia Hutto, Development Manager at 828-785-1357 x112 or at ohutto@centerforcraft.org. For full recognition, pledge to become a sponsor by October 1, 2024.
Barbara Berlin, SHENEQUA Brooks, Jennifer Calvert Hall, Michele Cohen, Helen Drutt, Lee Eagle, Elizabeth Essner, Louise Glickman, Ray Hemachandra, Joan Takayama-Ogawa, Stephanie Moore, Diana N’Diaye, Rebecca Ravenal, Lacey Stryker, Tim Tate, Céline Vaaler, Eric Wilcox, Patricia Young, Steven Young Lee
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
