Moving Things

12.8.2023 Join us for Craft Conversations with the MA in Critical Craft Studies this week! Both are FREE and will take place from 6-8 pm at @centerforcraft at 67 Broadway in Asheville Jan 9 (Monday) Craft Conversation: Tom Martin, Anna Helgeson, and Sara Clugage Jan 12 (Thur) Craft Conversation: Pecha Kucha with the Class of 2023 Miriam Devlin Jill DiMassimo Jennifer Hand Beryl Perron-Feller Rena Tom Joanna Weiss Tina Wiltsie #thisiscraft #whichcraft #craftscape #craft #criticalcraftforum #macraftstudieswwc #warrenwilsoncollege @warrenwilsoncollege @centerforcraft https://www.instagram.com/p/CnJEPOwsXqf/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

12.18.2022 Got in to see Designing Motherhood on the last day with Scott - brilliant exhibition @michellemillarfisher and @julianabarton and everyone involved in @designingmotherhood!! Loved the organization in sections and the curved table Image 2 - work by the fabulous Alison Croney Moses @alisoncroney Images 5-9 Joana Vasconselos’ Valkyrie Mumbet @joanavasconcelosatelier All from @maamboston https://www.instagram.com/p/CmX3f_5M-io/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

12.19.2022 Friends since we were 9. Still like we saw each other yesterday. Love you, Sharon. Thanks for coming up to Boston for the day to see us all. https://www.instagram.com/p/CmXlw9oMt9x/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

This piece! Cannot wait to see it in person someday @pigtailady and @susiesilbert! #Repost @susiesilbert with @use.repost ・・・ One of the most fantastic aspects of my job is working with the artist for the Rakow Commission. Because the commission is designed to support an artist in working beyond the current capacities of their practice, it is always an adventure of learning, creative problem solving, and growth (on all sides!!!). This year’s commission—the 35th—is a total case in point. We commissioned Anjali Srinivasan in the early days of 2020 to make a breathing wall of mirror she’d been dreaming about for more than a decade. And then COVID hit. And with it, a pandemic greatest hits of delays, really every one you can imagine. The piece is worth the wait. Based on her research into sheesh mahal or mirror palaces in northern India and Pakistan, साँस {Saans} eyes of the skinسانس reproduces the optics of these incredible historic spaces—miniaturizing your reflection so much, you almost disappear when you stand still in front of it. But when you move even a little bit, every single movement is amplified. An incredible meditation on activism, {Saans} reminds us that every small movement matters and is amplified when we work together. For more about this piece—and there is so much more about it—join us tonight in person or on Zoom at 6:30pm. And if you can’t make it (sorry for so last minute!!), it will be on youtube soon enough! @pigtailady @corningmuseum #agrafort #sheeshmahal #craft #craftscape #thisiscraft https://www.instagram.com/p/CkzC4WYsGS4/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#Repost @kalamendoza with @use.repost ・・・ Voting As Fire Extinguisher A poem by Kyle Tran Myhre @guantesolo When a haunted house catches fire: a moment of indecision. The house was, after all, built on bones, and blood and bad intentions. Everyone who enters the house feels that overwhelming dread, the evil that perhaps only fire can purge. It's tempting to just let it burn. And then I remember: there are children inside. -Kyle Tran Myhre Please follow and support Movement Poets like Kyle Tran Myhre @guantesolo. Artists like Kyle remind, inspire and call us to be visionary, expansive and radically hopeful in these pale times. https://www.instagram.com/p/CkvU2F7rAAN/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

11.06.2022 Promised to share this at the panel yesterday. Really good conversations on Craft Schools and Place, organized by @michellemillarfisher at the @mfaboston. Got to talk with Michelle, @alisoncroney and @aaron.beale.1 and to see so many people I miss seeing. Michelle has a gift for asking thoughtful and exciting questions. She always makes me my brain feel nourished and brings beautiful care for being in space, too. MFA Boston staff - while program was so smoooooooth! Thanks for the invitation and dialogue, Michelle and everyone! Cannot wait to see the exhibition …. Best surprise for me — @cal_der, @sluglexa and Allison (who asked a great question) hanging out afterwards with @ms_theotyson #craft #craftscape #criticalcraftforum #thisiscraft #mfaboston https://www.instagram.com/p/CkoN5k0rbbn/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

10.13.2022 Rabelais books @rabelaisbooks with Sara and Rachael on the way to Haystack. Have to come back and spend a week or four here. (at Rabelais: Fine Books on Food & Drink) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cjrb4gjs26A/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

This fall I had the honor of serving on a review panel for @centerforcraft with Rachel Winston, Black Diaspora Archivist, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, The University of Texas at Austin, LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections Hrag Vartanian, Editor-in-Chief and Co-founder of Hyperallergic. Had to recuse myself from projects connected to students and people I know, of course - and am super proud of how many of our students and alums from @macraftstudieswwc applied (Looking at you, Maru!) Huge congratulations to all the recipients!!!! I cannot wait for you all to learn more about these amazing researchers and their projects. Announcement: The Center for Craft is excited to announce our inaugural Center for Craft Archive Fellows! The Craft Archive Fellowship supports archival research that tells more accurate and expanded craft histories, leading to a more inclusive future for craft. These six Fellows receive a $5,000 honorarium to conduct research and will be published in a special issue of Hyperallergic and a virtual program with the American Craft Council.   Congratulations to our 2022 Center for Craft Archive Fellows: Photos follow this order: Maru López (San Diego, CA) Craft, Lists, and Fairs: Constructing Puerto Rican Identity in the 1950s Siera Hyte (Waterville, ME) detsadatliyvsesdi: struggle to hold onto or cling to one another Elizabeth G. Greenlee and N.E. Brown (Berea, KY ) Black American Craft at Berea College and The Lincoln Institute Jeffrey Gan (Alameda, CA) Craft and Performance at Indo Refugee Community Centers, 1960-1975 Xenobia Bailey (Philadelphia, PA) James Forten: A man of the Cloth, with a Mind of Steel and a heart of Gold Olivia Quintanilla (San Diego, CA) Oceanic Chamoru Craft: Past, Present and Future #craftscape #thisiscraft #tendingtocraft #whichcraft #craftislong #craft #macraftstudieswwc #warrenwilsoncollege #centerforcraft @centerforcraft https://www.instagram.com/p/Ci0DGFtr-v8/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

9.17.2022 Took mom and James to @swanislanddahlias this morning. Gorgeous and perfect weather. Preschoolers running in tiny rubber boots. Some I wanted to pat, others to squish. Some like sea creatures, others like cosmos, still others like round honeycombs. My favorites looked like muppets and others like Blanche Dubois after a rough night. White to yellow to peach to coral to pink to red to deep burgundy. Thought about what flowers come in what colors. Delighted in chatting with anyone up for it. Three year old walking to hatch a pikachu egg (Pokémon card) Girl in sparky sequin pink dress about 4 already posing with one leg out (which I still don’t remember to do) and surprised at dirt sticking to her shoes. Lovely walk and conversation with a family replacing dahlias that groundhogs devoured. Saw three hummingbirds fighting over a blue salvia. OMG cause hilarious. Groovy for @benlignel. Tutti Frutti for @akivarkis. Called to the goats for @saraclugage. #dahlia #swanislanddahlias https://www.instagram.com/p/CinlBGAv0V4/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

9.8.2022 Made a few holes in the wrong spots but this is roughly what a diamond weave sounds like……. https://www.instagram.com/p/CiQ4mBHv3El/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

This is what I have been working to do in the MA in Critical Craft Studies program. More in that in our @macraftstudieswwc final publication in the spring. #Repost @antiracisteducation with @use.repost ・・・ #bellhooks from @pedagogyofresistance “A truly inclusive classroom must be intentionally designed as such from the start. It requires us to consciously examine our biases and actively counterbalance them in order to create spaces and curricula honor and affirm those on the margin, rather than include them as afterthoughts or special cases.” ___________________________________ #teachingtotransgress #decenterwhiteness #decolonizeyourcurriculum #criticalpedagogy #socialjustice #abolitionistteaching #urbaneducation #multicultural #teachersofinstagram #blackauthors #craftscape #thisiscraft #whichcraft #craft #macraftstudieswwc @warrenwilsoncollege https://www.instagram.com/p/Chz5Efbp-xQ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

8.27.2022 I have been thinking about learning Gregg’s shorthand for years now. Did an embroidered jewelry project using Gregg’s Shorthand about ten years ago and collect shorthand texts, materials, pages. Found the Pittman Dictation Course in a vintage mall today gif a whopping $3.50. All kinds of new projects running in my head……. https://www.instagram.com/p/ChxnU1aPL9f/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#Repost @jiayangfan with @use.repost ・・・ Repost @secretchords_apoemfortheday Thanks for posting this @cheemobile https://www.instagram.com/p/ChgxdhmOYeS/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#Repost @travelsofsamwise with @use.repost ・・・ Partition's Craziest Border Town After a few weeks of touring @project.dastaan films across the UK, I'm back to showing pictures from my Bangladesh trip. Today we're off to Darashbari Mosque - the largest Mosque on the Bangladesh side of Partition's Craziest Border town Amidst bucolic mango groves, scarlet krishnachura blossom and ponds of clustered water lillies, stands the terracotta town of Gaur The word 'Bongo' had long been used to refer to the small region around modern Barisal, but in 13th century Gaur, the Ilyas Shahi Dynasty proclaimed themselves Sultans of Bengal, and all their subjects 'Bengali'. By 1500, the Sultanate capital of Gaur was the fifth most populous city on the planet, with canals, palaces, roads, bridges and over 200,000 residents.This was the city where Bengali identity first crystallised. Gaur was eventually sacked by Sher Shah Suri, but it remained one of the most iconic and popular tourist sites in India until 1947, when it simply fell off the map In June of that year it was announced that Bengal and Punjab would be partitioned between a Hindu-majority India, and a Muslim-majority Pakistan. But Gaur was pretty evenly divided between Hindus and Muslims. In the absence of any easy way to divide the ancient city, the Bengal Boundary commision decided to just make the eastern city walls into the border Today the ruins of the Darashbari Mosque fall just inside the border of Bangladesh. The royal inner city falls in India, whilst the suburbs are now in Bangladesh. The greatest city of medeival Bengal - the embodiment of Bengali identity - has itself been Partitioned https://www.instagram.com/p/ChNG_jxrEzO/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#Repost @ramblingsofasikh with @use.repost ・・・ This border is called the 'zero line' and demarcates the boundaries of the modern nation states India & Pakistan. This particular photo was captured at Kari Sansari, Kasur via Twitter user Safi_Jah. It obviously caught my interest so did a little bit of digging and found out that although there seems to be no fence at this location there is one on either side a few km from where the photo was taken. What is quite interesting is that this border was not erected until the late 1980s with the Indian Government installing barbed-wire fences and gates along 343 miles of border, restricting access to 21,300 acres of farmland. A 13.4-metre (44-foot) strip of land was carved out of farmers’ holdings, four metres (14 feet) were kept on Pakistan’s side, seven metres (22 feet) were on India’s side, and about three metres (11 feet) were in between. Apart from that, another three-metre strip of the farmers’ land abutting the international border was restricted for patrolling by Indian security forces, according to documents accessed by Al Jazeera. In addition, the border has brought a number of problems with it. An Al-Jazeera article from last year outlines how the barbed-wire fence that marks this border is arbitrary - land acquired without adequate compensation. In one example Raghbir Singh Bhangala who owns 13 acres of farmland in Tarn Taran can only access 5, with the remaining 8 on the wrong side of the 'zero-line'. Bhangala, now 78, has spent more than 25 years of his life fighting for the right to till his land, ever since it was declared a restricted area because it falls between the fence and the so-called “zero line” – the international border between India and Pakistan. #borders #problems #india #pakistan https://www.instagram.com/p/ChNG7O1rY_v/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#Repost @brownhistory with @use.repost ・・・ This week marks the 75th anniversary of Partiton. At the time of Partition, familes lost track of each other. It took months sometimes years, for the members of families to be located again. This is a photograph of a reunion at a refugee camp in Lahore taken in 1948. Weeping, the women tell each other sad stories of their hardships and losses they've encountered since they last saw each other. Photographer: Henri Cartier-Bresson https://www.instagram.com/p/ChNG3wyLI0t/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

8.12.2022 I don’t like everything about Salman Rushdie. He’s complicated. People should be. This book came into my life when I needed it more than almost anything. Rereading it tonight. Then moving back to Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which I read to our kids, and @samvan15 turned into a play in which @layskw played Haroun. My becoming who I am is intertwined with Rushdie’s writing - and struggles. His most infamous book came out when we were in college. Our friend Greg’s copy was stolen pretty soon after he’d forked out money for an actual hard cover. This was not money he had to spare in college, despite our both being English majors. I sobbed through Shalimar on a plane to Chicago. Thanks to @lisanicolejarrett one of his lectures kicked off the very first classes of the @macraftstudieswwc program in July 2018. And as someone who organizes events like the one this morning, I feel for all those who put it together. For the moderator, who was also injured. I hope you pull through. I know you have much more to share from the Sea of Stories, and I refuse to accept that this is Khattam-Shud. #salmanrushdie https://www.instagram.com/p/ChLbBtfpGbz/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=