Recently, The Center for Craft hosted the first of an online webinar series, "Ask the ____". To kick off this series, we "Asked the Artists" in a live interview with Shapeshifters exhibition Joshua Adams and Jiha Moon.

Joshua Adams

"I think for me that hand sanding or that quality that Jiha was talking about...just getting that level of intricacy woven in to whatever you’re working on, I think that’s really important, especially when you’re doing art because, like she was talking about, you want people to be interested in it. You want people to keep coming back to it and finding things in it."

Adams, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians and trained woodcarver, often creates masks inspired by traditional Cherokee stories in order to educate viewers about tribal culture. Addressing his own personal experience, Adams observes the complexity of living in the multiple cultural contexts of maintaining Cherokee tradition in the contemporary South.

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Jiha Moon

"We often categorize things like “this is craft, this is fine art, and your work is borrowed from craft but it’s really fine art,” And what goes to the museum or not? These are all people’s inventions that people created based on their needs and their interests. But our job as artists is to make the most interesting work and not worry about those categories. Be free of category."

Korean-born artist Moon assembles and paints her work with recognizable imagery, such as fortune cookies, dragons, and emojis juxtaposed with facets of southern culture, such as peaches, face jugs, and the southernism “bless your heart.” By playfully combining eastern and western symbols, Moon reflects on the intricacies of identity and nationhood in an increasingly global society.

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A transcript of the interview is available for download on this page.