Fall 2009 Exhibition
September 17th, 2009 to January 3rd, 2010
First and Second Floor Galleries:
State of the Union: Contemporary Craft in Dialogue
Organized by Melissa Caldwell; Director of Exhibitions, Philadelphia Art Alliance
Public Opening Thursday, September 17th, 2009, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Read the Philly Inquirer's review of the show, Click Here!
 State of the Union: Contemporary Craft in Dialogue
Throughout the first and second floor galleries the Philadelphia Art Alliance (PAA) will present the group exhibition State of the Union: Contemporary Craft in Dialogue. Featuring the work of 12 artists in variety of media, the exhibit was organized by Melissa Caldwell, Director of Exhibitions at the PAA. An opening reception will be held on September 17 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
About the Exhibition:
Within contemporary art, there has been a well-noted renewal of interest in process and materials in the current practices of artists, designers, and architects. Consequently scholars and professionals have begun to consider the definition of craft outside the tightly defined perimeters that have been determined by history to be an anti-theoretical process of crafting meticulous objects in a given medium. Given this conservative historical marginalization, craft has the potential of questioning the boundaries of its own conventions even more so than other fields in contemporary art.
Many artists working in craft-based media are those who challenge these historical standards, providing a self-reflexivity to their practice, and considering the term as an active subject to be questioned in innovative ways. Scholars have argued that the roots of this climate may be found in the 1970s when higher level art educators began to teach skills to their students from a wide range of materials and techniques. The results of this attitude are widely evident in the disappearance of medium specific crafts courses in higher educational institutions.
 The goal of this exhibition will be to engage in this dialogue by providing alternative vantage points in which to consider the state of craft. State of the Union is not meant to be a comprehensive survey of each of what encompasses craft production today but a focus on the post-disciplinary practices being used by emerging artists who are interested in questioning the fundamental assumptions of its traditional perimeters.
Given the historically validated hierarchy between crafts and the fine arts that has been explored exhaustively by countless theorists, a new generation of artists within the craft discipline is using their work to consider ways in which craft can maintain its identity outside its relationship to the fine arts. Considered through the use of material and skill, self-reflexivity of the very position of craft and its reception by the viewer becomes the subject of the work itself. Some artists included in the exhibition explore craft processes and materials, borrowing from one or more techniques and media, thus questioning the traditional categories of craft as textiles, clay, glass, wood, and metal. Others reconsider the traditional function or use value of craft, referencing its history as an object to be used or worn thus subverting its original purposefulness. Yet others question its ties to the decorative and the roots of craft aesthetic in Western history.
 Adapting technique and material in multiple ways by a single artists or even within a single work encourages the viewer to think in terms of craft broadly in a way that both respects the qualities of particular disciplines and transcends their self-assigned limits. The artists Amy Beecher, Austin Heizman, and Yo Fukui all borrow from different methods of construction and employ multiple kinds of materials to create abstract pieces that sit outside the conventions of craft as a purposeful object. For these artist process and open-ended skills are employed in sculptural terms, all the while referencing materials traditionally associated with craft.
While Beecher, Heizman, and Fukui represent one end of the post-disciplinary spectrum through an open and fluid approach the final form, more refined and technical methods applied to varied materials within a single object can reflected in the work of Julie York, Rachel Abrams and Tetsuya Yamada. In their pieces, traditional techniques such as casting, carving and throwing are employed to create a reference to skill and its significance in craft, but their adoption of forms from industrial or mass-produced everyday objects.
 Many of the artists in this exhibition also reference the traditional forms and uses of the crafted object. This allusion to the decorative in some cases and the function in others asks the viewer to question their assumptions of the category of craft. For example, the works by Gord Peteran, Haley Renee Bates and Richard Bloes also take traditional forms—vessels, tableware, and furnishings, respectively—and challenge their ability to be consumed as an everyday object. They reflect upon material and form as a conceptual idea, thereby destabilizing the meaning of what is to be a vessel, a spoon or a table, etc. Crafts use as adornment for the body is also referenced in the work of Jill Baker Gower through her examination of the association of jewelry to commercialized aspects of beauty and the desire for altering the body to meet a mass marketed ideal.
 Like use and function, the traditional Western decorative aesthetic is part of the historical classification of craft. Adelaide Paul, Jennifer Blazina, and Jeanne Quinn also work with Victorian and early Modern decorative motifs found in chinoiserie, Victorian picture frames, and other parlor style furnishings. Deemed quaint, beautiful or merely ornamental, both artists reexamine the association of the decorative with the domestic and its consequential marginalization in art. Borrowing from the familiarity of this aesthetic, Paul, Blazina and Quinn ask in turn for the viewer to not only question their own assumptions and associations with such objects, but then its ability to classify craft as a less serious practice then other forms of art.
Rather than treating craft as pejorative term as defined against the fine arts, the artists in State of the Union wish to embrace the term craft and reject the idea of distancing themselves from the field. Approaching craft in a way that reaches beyond the restriction of a single medium or by referencing its historical purposefulness invites connections to the fine arts, interior design, architecture, new media, performing art, and pop culture. Whether it is sculptural and abstract thus working outside the conventions of the media chosen, or through its reference to the industrial, the purposeful, the decorative, or as a form of adornment, the artists in State of the Union reflect the current debates within the field.
Participating Artists: Yo Fukui, Haley Bates, Austin Heitzman, Adelaide Paul, Amy Beecher, Jeanne Quinn, Jen Blazina, Rachel Abrams, Jill Baker Gower, Richard Bloes, Julie York, Gord Peteran, Tetsuya Yamada.
For more information about the Philadelphia Art Alliance Exhibitions Program, contact Melissa Caldwell at 215-545-4302 or mcaldwell@philartalliance.org.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Admission Fee:
$5 for adults
$3 for students and seniors
Pay what you wish on Fridays.
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