UNC Asheville

UNC ASHEVILLE CRAFT CAMPUS

 

Meet the Maker: Conversations of Meaning with Craftspeople

Spring 2010

This year-long workshop/lecture series focuses on meaningful conversations with individual craftspeople, artists and designers. The goal of the series is to link the conversations with the “Makers” to the life of the viewer/user of contemporary craft. This spring marks an exciting time for the UNC Asheville Craft Studies initiative. This year’s Meet the Maker series will spotlight our collaborative work with many of our wonderful partner organizations.  Together we will bring you an exciting line-up of speakers: makers, curators, potters and artists alike. We will be hosting events both on our campus and at several of our partners’ sites. The series aims to generate awareness of contemporary craft practices and their significance in Western North Carolina and beyond.  Most events will be free; all are open to the public.
Please scroll down for information on each event this spring.

 

 

UNC Asheville's Art Department presents
Drawing Discourse: an annual exhibition of  CONTEMPORARY DRAWING

Juror: Deborah Rockman, artist, writer and Professor of Art, Kendall College of Art & Design of Ferris University
 

Over 150 Artists from across the United States submitted work.  The juror selected 50 pieces that are now hanging in the S. Tucker Cooke Gallery.
 
Exhibition dates: January 12 - February 2, 2010
S. Tucker Cooke Gallery is located on the ground floor of Owen Hall and open weekdays, 9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
All events are free and open to the public.
Art work is available for purchase as indicated.
 

 

 

This solo exhibit at CCCD features a series of work by sculptor and mixed media artist Loren Schwerd, currently an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Louisiana State University. An opening reception will take place Thursday, Jan. 21st from 5-7 pm. Additionally, the artist will give a lecture on Thursday, Feb. 25 at 6 pm at UNC Asheville Owen Conference Center. Mourning Portrait began as a series of memorials to the communities of New Orleans that were devastated by the flooding which followed Hurricane Katrina. Working from photographs Schwerd took of vacant houses from the Ninth Ward neighborhood, she creates metal armatures that act as the frameworks for weaving the hair into portraits of these homes. These commemorative objects are made from human hair extensions of the type commonly used by African-American women that the artist found outside the St. Claude Beauty Supply. The portraits draw on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century tradition of hairwork, in which family members or artisans would fashion the hair of the deceased into intricate jewelry and other objects as symbols of death and rebirth. This series venerates the city's losses, both individual and collective. Hair acts as the central metaphor to evoke a sense of intimacy and absence, and speaks to the racial politics that have paralyzed the city's recovery effort. In the two years that Schwerd has been researching and executing this work, the series has expanded into a larger body of objects and images that utilize a broader range of techniques and provide a richer context for the houses, such as sculptures, shaped from found wigs, that combine imagery from Victorian hair wreaths with contemporary, sculptural, African-American hair fashions. Loren Schwerd received her BFA in Studio Art from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1993, and her MFA in Sculpture from Syracuse University in New York in 1999. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the Louisiana State University School of Art in Baton Rouge and was an instructor and visiting Assistant Professor at the College of Charleston from 1999 to 2005.

The artist states about her work: "My artistic practice includes site-related installations, wearable art, video and sculptures that are inspired and shaped by the impulse to transform familiar objects into metaphorical constructions and paradoxical observations. I investigate the multiple associations that are present in a material, site, image, or gesture, seeking to identify and enhance points of connection and tension between these suggestions. I favor found materials that contribute their function, cultural value, and a trace of their mysterious personal history to my design. All of my projects demonstrate a dedication to craft. I employ basic methods of connection such as tying, weaving, and stitching, imbuing my work with a feminine sensibility, and whose meticulous labor evokes a sense of time, memory, and obsession. Permeating all of my creative endeavors is a slightly dark humor and a fascination with awkward beauty."  This exhibit will be on view January 15 March 26, 2010.

Loren Schwerd's work has been exhibited widely. Select venues include the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, MI; Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC.

 

 

Artist Statement: The Teenager Project 

I am an artist with a deep interest in the human condition, and in all of the subtle manifestations of its beauty and peculiarity. Over the past few years my work has evolved to include a level of discourse on political and social issues in contemporary society. My recent work has involved studying the unique attributes of individuals and defining features of a community – and I’m interested everyone from in the most heroic to the most troubling representatives of humanity, including soldiers, office workers, prison inmates, kids, the homeless and other marginalized people. I am now working on a series of portraits – ink and conté drawings and carved-wood sculptures – of adolescents. My goal is to study the uniqueness of real teenagers as they attempt to define their identities in modern culture. I’m interested in the ways that teens draw from a specific youth-culture vocabulary as they define their identities. They use clothing, hairstyles and accessories to show their political and cultural alliances, and express their personal sense of style. In my work I try to capture the tiny details of their clothing, their hairstyles and their book bags and backpacks. Though individually the drawings and sculptures are portraits, I see them together as an anthropological exhibit of early 21st century adolescents.

This project is especially timely because of my own personal circumstances right now. My son, Henry, is 14. I struggle every day to provide the support and structure that he needs, as well as to understand the world in which he lives. In the next few years he will change from a child to a young adult. The growth process fascinates me and as an artist I want to investigate this process. Just as important, the project offers the opportunity to advance my process as an artist into a role as a compassionate chronicler of an important aspect of the modern world we live in. I want to study the ways that a person’s identity develops and unfolds during adolescence, as well as their quest for self-definition and rites of passage. I’m interested in validating and recording the uniqueness of each of my participants, as well as their ambitions and struggles. While I’m committed to the journalistic aspect of this project, I welcome possibility that this project will allow me an authentic human connection with my participants and their families. This project was made possible by generous funding from the Independence Fellowships in the Arts.

Biography: Susan Hagen is a sculptor who resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Lawndale, NC. She received an MFA in sculpture from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in sculpture and drawing from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Recent work includes The Lost Army, a small monument to American soldiers in Iraq, Recollection Tableaux, a site-specific installation at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, and sculptural projects on endangered and extinct animals. Her work is has been featured in exhibitions at museums and galleries throughout the United States such as the World Tattoo Gallery in Chicago, del Mano Gallery in Los Angeles, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder, CO, Miami Basel, and the Philadelphia Airport and the Art Alliance in Philadelphia. Ms. Hagen has received fellowships from the George Sugarman Foundation, the Leeway Foundation, and the Independence Fellowships in the Arts. She teaches at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, PA, at Penland School of Craft in Penland, NC, and at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Aspen, CO, and has written hundreds of reviews and articles for the Philadelphia City Paper, Woodwork, Hand Papermaking, and many other publications. Gallery affiliations: Center of the Earth Gallery, 3204 N. Davidson Street, Charlotte, NC 28205 704-375-5756; Schmidt Dean Gallery, 1710 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103 215-569-9433 Contact info: Susan Hagen, 2208 Brandywine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19130 215-557-3753/215-834-4426. missioncreep.com  susanehagen@verizon.net

 

Fall 2008 Meet the Maker Schedule

Spring 2009 Meet the Maker Schedule

Fall 2009 Meet the Maker Schedule

Spring 2010 Meet the Maker Schedule

Fall 2010 Meet the Maker Schedule

Spring 2011 Meet the Maker Schedule

Craft Studies Initiative Homepage

 
North Carolina's Public Liberal Arts University