Summer Travels

In the summer of 2008 Fiberarts Editor, Marci Rae McDade, traveled from coast to coast to visit museums and galleries, meet artists and writers, and see a wide range of exceptional contemporary fiber art in person. Her research was informed by attending The Language of Craft conference at the Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Deer Isle, Maine (page 14) and the Politics of Craft and Design panel discussion at the American Craft Council Fair in San Francisco (page11). From the wooded trails around the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts (page 28-29) to the “green” urban landscape surrounding the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon (page 18), She is proud to report that craft is flourishing in America. Here she shares photos from her travels.

Joanne Ingersoll, curator of Costume and Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum of Art in Providence, showed me two recent acquisitions from their collection by fashion designer Becky Earley from her 100 Blouses Project on July 10.

I enjoyed a morning hike and some “living history” at the Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on July 11.

Katherine Meyers let me sneak a peak on July 11 at the exhibition Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective (opening on November 16) at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. The semi-permanent installation features one hundred wall drawings by the artist throughout his career and occupies three full floors of a building of the museum’s sprawling complex.

Leslie Wright showed me some historic quilts from the Shelburne Museum collection after a tour of the contemporary show Quilts in Bloom (though October 26) in Shelburne, Vermont on July 12. Photo: Flora Chicoine.

Taking a rest in front of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, after touring the Wedded Bliss exhibition with Curator Paula Bradstreet Richter (reviewed in the September/October 2008 issue of Fiberarts).

Artist Mandy Greer gave contributing writer Suzanne Beal and me a guided tour of her other-worldly solo exhibition Dare alla Luce at the Bellevue Art Museum in Washington on August 3. Photo: Christian French.

Jennifer McCabe, director of the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco, welcomed me into the exhibition Simply Shaker (through November 2) on August 15. Photo: Barbara Shapiro.

In the Green category of the American Craft Council Fair in San Francisco, Bagitude, a two-woman company based in Tinley Park, Illinois, featured unique and stylish handbags made from recycled playbills, books, and album covers. I bought the Beatle’s Revolver album purse on August 16.

Namita Gupta Wiggers, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon, at the exhibition Manuf®actured (guest-curated by Steven Skov Holt and Mara Holt Skov, through January 4, 2009). In the background on the right is work by Laura Splan. Read a preview of the exhibit on page 18 of the November/December 2008 issue of Fiberarts. Photo: Marc Moscato.