Conference & Fair Reviews

AJF commissions various kinds of critically engaged writing about the field, including reviews of events such as conference and fairs where people gather to talk about and view contemporary art jewelry and related practices in the crafts and visual arts.

27 August 2011

Show Time: Contemporary Jewelry and the Design Fair

Susan Cummins

High-end craft fairs have developed an audience for craft that seems to have peaked. The galleries that take part believe that a small number of serious clients come to these fairs and that the list has evolved very little or not at all in the past decade. That audience is aging and various attempts to draw in other interested and younger clients from the world of design and art has not succeeded on any notable scale. Audience development strategies that have been implemented by the craft fairs have not resulted in sustained, successful growth. So the craft galleries have been left to find their own solutions. more...

25 July 2011

Best in Show: Exhibitions at the SNAG Conference 2011

Doug Bucci

It is entirely true that the exhibitions accompanying the 2011 SNAG conference ran the gamut from the best to 'fillers' and yet overall the shows were successful. It is paramount that the bridging of thematics occur in any exhibition and in some cases this was done overtly, in others it was more subtle. This year, four exhibitions were particularly successful in addressing the theme of the conference, which was flux. more...

08 July 2011

Rhetorics of Craft: Glenn Adamson's Keynote Lecture at the 2011 SNAG Conference

Gabriel Craig

Adamson's subject, 'affective objects,' sprang from the historical ideologies of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, whose preservationist attitudes towards handwork were cited as early examples of theorists characterizing craft as personal, intimate and even familial. After introducing Felix Gonzalez-Torres's 1991 work (Untitled) Portrait of Ross in LA as 'craft-like' and affective in its interactive and personal qualities, Adamson proclaimed that this work was an affective image of craft rather than an article of craft. Here, Adamson revealed what the lecture was to be about: the nebulous marginal space between the image of craft and the craft object. more...

06 July 2011

Similes and Metaphors: SNAG Conference 2011

Jillian Moore

In reflecting on the conference as a whole, I find myself frustrated by how limited the dialogue can be. While the culture at large is eagerly embracing materiality and process-oriented work has spilled back again into every medium out there, we're still chasing our collective tails, backbiting, infighting, aggrandizing and self-pitying. And some people have, inevitably, opted out. more...

19 April 2011

Notes from SOFA NY 2011

Damian Skinner

SOFA NY is, I realize, about more than the craft on display in the booths. It is also about meeting people and listening to people talk. There are a surprising number of opportunities for learning during the four-day fair. All of which is to say that SOFA NY is a contradiction and it can't be viewed as a whole, a coherent entity, but rather as an event in relation to which you can curate your own experience, identifying that which is interesting and screening out that which is unimportant. more...

01 March 2011

Craft's Emerging Identity: The CAA Conference 2011

Heather Gibson

Conferences stimulate the development of critical discourse in the craft world. In the United States, the American Craft Council, the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, the Society of North American Goldsmiths all organize craft-specific gatherings that fuel ideas and provide face-to-face networking. Craft is a small fish in a big pond at the gargantuan College Art Association conference, with over 200 sessions covering antiquity to new media. A glimpse at craft within this immense forum offers insight on emerging themes within the broader context of art and art history. more...

26 November 2010

Bingeing at SOFA Chicago

Jillian Moore

SOFA Chicago. (Or, everyone boards the Titanic.) My normal life keeps me in Iowa, a state not known for its gallery scene, let alone its studio-craft community. I don't want to imply that those things aren't happening here – they are, but at a slower pace and a lower volume. The extreme shift from living most of my life in my studio (basement) to my annual visit to downtown Chicago is like interplanetary travel. To say that the glut of visual information at SOFA Chicago is overwhelming would be an understatement. more...

09 November 2010

SOFA Chicago and Outsider Art

Damian Skinner

Ultimately, Lauren Viera's dismissal of SOFA and craft starts to look like a kind of psychological mechanism to deal with her discomfort, to ensure her identity as an art aficionado – not to mention the object of her love – doesn't just dissolve in the face of craft's destabilizing effects. While Viera can't articulate the real reasons why, the presence of outsider art at SOFA is indeed noteworthy and much more theoretically productive than it first appears. more...