The Center for Craft is pleased to announce its 2020 Curatorial Fellows, three teams of emerging craft curators who were selected to develop and mount cutting-edge exhibitions for display in the Center for Craft’s galleries in downtown Asheville, NC during the 2020 exhibition season. The Fellows will work closely with Center staff to produce the exhibition, develop didactic material and an exhibitions catalog, and deliver a curatorial talk.

Meet the 2020 Curatorial Fellows

Lauren Kalman is a visual artist based in Detroit, whose practice is invested in the history of adornment, contemporary craft, video, photography and performance. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the Detroit Institute of Art, and the Museum of Arts and Design and featured in numerous exhibitions internationally.Raised in the Midwest, Kalman completed her MFA in Art and Technology from the Ohio State University and earned a BFA with a focus in Metals from Massachusetts College of Art. Currently she is an Associate Professor at Wayne State University.

Matt Lambert holds an MFA in Metalsmithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in Metalsmithing, Printmaking and Ceramics as well as studying Psychology, Art History and American Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit Michigan. Lambert has contributed to Metalsmith Magazine, Norwegian Craft, Art Jewelry Forum and the forthcoming 2019 Athens Jewelry Week text. Currently Lambert is an MA candidate at Warren Wilson College in Critical and Historical Craft researching the relationship of craft to nation-state structure through nomadism and fixity using a queer/intersectional perspective.

Kayleigh Perkov specializes in American art viewed through the lens of craft and the decorative arts. She received her Ph.D. in Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine in 2018. Her dissertation, “Giving Form to Feedback: Craft and Technological Systems circa 1968-1974,” focuses on pioneering craftspeople who synthesized handmaking and technology. This work was supported by The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design, the Newkirk Center for Science and Society, and a predoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy is a New York-based curator, writer, and arts administrator focusing on contemporary art, with a special interest on craft and bringing awareness to artists of color. She is currently the Assistant Manager of Curatorial Affairs at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York. She holds a BA in Art History from the University of Florida with minors in Anthropology and Ceramics and an MA from the Bard Graduate Center, New York, in Decorative Arts, Design History & Material Culture.

The Exhibitions

Desire Paths
‍Matt Lambert and Lauren Kalman

Desire Paths looks at makers both within the discourse of craft and ones that exist on the periphery of the craftscape who focus on the movement of the body towards something desirable. These desires of the body are in relationship to: nature, tech, self and society. Using architectural theory and queer curatorial strategies, Desire Paths will examine the possibilities and futures of bodies, revealing connections between the corporeal and craft.

Feedback: Craft and the Roots of Computer Aided Design
Kayleigh Perkov

Feedback: Craft and the roots of Computer Aided Design examines craftswomen who used digital technology in their practice. Craft scholarship has reacted to computer aided design with a mixture of celebration and anxiety. Much of this discourse fails to examine the historical precedence of digital tools in craft practice extending to the 1960s. A focus on feedback between person and machine will nuance scholarship, while an emphasis on women elucidates their under appreciated role.

Funk You: Contemporary Sculpture and Funk Ceramics
Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy

Funk You: Contemporary Sculpture and Funk Ceramics brings together sculptures in clay by eight contemporary artists that echo themes and aesthetics of 1960s–70s Funk ceramics. Put in conversation with historical pieces by four figures in Funk ceramics, the line between past and present is blurred, bridging the gap between the current generation and the pioneering artists who paved the way for ceramics to be imaginative, expressive, critical, and unapologetic.

More information can be found at: https://www.centerforcraft.org/grants-and-fellowships/curatorial-fellowship