Craft in America - Messages

Submitted by: Vivian Orr, Communications and Publications Coordinator

Part two of a glimpse of one of the videos in the Craft in America Series. 

For those of you who do not subscribe to cable PBS channels, or if you are like me, you don't even have rabbit ears on your TV, these wonderful videos are available through the public library. 

Craft in America is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the exploration, preservation and celebration of craft and its impact on America's cultural heritage.

Messages: Explore how artists go beyond skill to personal and political expression
copyright 2011

Beth Lipman is a glass artist working in Wisconsin. Her work explores the symbolism of 17th century still life paintings through glimmering creations made of clear glass, symbolizing wealth and consumerism. 

Charles M. Carrillo is an artist, author, and archeologist known particularly for creating art using Spanish colonial techniques that reflect 18th century Spanish New Mexico. Carrillo has blended craft, conservation, and innovation throughout his career as a santero, a carver and painter of images of saints.

Joyce J. Scott is a versatile artist from Baltimore, Maryland. She is a printmaker, weaver, sculptor, performance artist, and educator, but she is probably most well known for her work in jewelry, beadwork, and glass. Her art, in whatever form, reflects her take on all aspects of American popular culture, her ancestry, and the immediate world of her neighborhood.

"It's important to imbue the work with something that will resonate and follow someone home."

"Art can be a tool that can change peoples' lives."

"I'm listening to my Mom tell me stories, and they are not just stories that talk about my family history but they are primers on how to start making artwork that matters."

Thomas Mann is an artist who works in the mediums of jewelry and sculpture. The primary design vocabulary which he employs in the making of jewelry objects combines industrial aesthetics and materials and with evocative romantic themes and imagery. He calls this design system Techno Romantic. Though it is not the only design mode in which he works, it is the one for which he and his work is best known.

"When you have a successful professional career as a craft artist there will come a moment where you making the thing becomes less important than you imagineering the thing. In order for it to benefit other people around you, you kinda have to move on to the point where you train people to make things the way you make them."

"I hardly ever use the word craft artist to describe myself. I just use the word artist. To me being an artist is about expressing yourself and manifesting objects out of your creativity that other people acknowledge as being important to them in some form or fashion and are willing to support your efforts to continue making them."