Opening Reception:
Friday, October 19, 2012
5:30, Artist Talks
6:00 – 7:00 PM, Reception

Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC) is pleased to present In Residence 2011, an exhibition of work created by the eight artists who began their residencies at HCCC in 2011:  Celia Butler, Jamie Diaz, Nathan Dube, Marcia Erickson, Paula Haymond, Leslie Shershow, Melissa Walter, and John Zimmerman.

Each fall, the In Residence exhibition series features a collective display of the creativity that permeates the Artist Hall—a space that serves as home to the resident artists’ studios, as well as small exhibitions.  The HCCC Artist Residency Program not only gives its selected artists studio space but also provides an environment in which they can share ideas, collaborate, experiment, seek advice from peers and speak with the general public about their work and the greater world of contemporary craft.  (Click here to read more about the Artist Residency Program.)

Mixed-media artist Celia Butler represents a growing trend of artists who make inter-disciplinary craft. By combining pulled-sugar objects with photographs that directly reference fashion media, Butler’s work explores issues surrounding the image of the contemporary idealized female. Incorporating imagery evocative of childhood, perfection, innocence, fragility and sweetness with sexuality and adolescent awakening, Butler’s beautifully enticing, delicious works invite viewers to re-evaluate and critique the physical and behavioral stereotypes imposed on females of all ages.

Ceramic artist Jamie Diaz’s functional porcelain is inspired by the innate human need for attachment and relationships.  Individual vessels, such as cups, teapots, sugar bowls and creamers, nestle together inside larger fluid forms. Diaz considers the quantity, size and placement of each piece when developing her compositions for these groupings. In her works, each individual piece has a home, a designated placement within the larger group of objects.

Metalsmith Nathan Dube explores gender identity from the male perspective in his exquisitely crafted, comical objects. Using an aesthetic that fools many into thinking his hand-wrought pieces are industrially manufactured, Dube creates modern, grown-up interpretations of mischievous toys for boys. Pieces, such as Popgun, which consists of a spit-wad shooter that allows you to take aim at an iconic cowboy from one of three generations: John Wayne, Paul Newman or Billy Crystal, examine the role of cultural influences in forming contemporary, American male identity.

During her residency, Marcia Erickson sought to refine her functional ceramic pieces by exploring the myriad possibilities of surface texture and design allowed by the materiality of clay. Using stamps, sgraffito (a technique of scratching through the surface to reveal the color below), and a variety of glaze combinations, Erickson’s works articulate and record her reactions to her everyday environment.

Paula Haymond was drawn to wood as an artistic medium when she discovered the lathe, a machine tool that rotates the wood on its axis, allowing a worker to cut, sand, drill and shape the wood.  After she turns her vessels, Haymond uses a variety of techniques to color, pierce and carve, transforming the wood into whimsical, narrative pieces that express the wonder she finds in the natural Texas landscapes and the open pastoral scenes of her native home of Indiana. She is enticed by the wide variety of woods available, and her imagery is often inspired by the material’s natural characteristics, such as the grain, cracks and figures.

During her time at HCCC, metalsmith and jeweler Leslie Shershow created a body of work titled Maine Series. Using wood and silver, rope and crystals, these architectural pieces reference her nostalgia for the ramshackle houses of the Maine landscape she inhabited each summer as a child. In Siding, intricately fastened pieces of wood evoke slowly deteriorating planks on a dock or the roofing shingles covering boathouses and seaside shacks, allowing the viewer’s imagination to conjure scenes of a homey, nautical and serene landscape. Employing the inevitable deterioration and weathering of man-made structures, Shershow pays homage not only to the stingy, self-determined home-improver but also conjures the histories hidden in buildings and the impossibility of undoing time.

Melissa Walter’s purely abstract and decidedly un-wearable wall works have grown out of her background as a jeweler and metalsmith. Initially interested in the space and relationships between people and the objects, these sculptural works relate only to each other; they cannot be worn. Ranging in different sizes, these lozenge-shaped wall pieces nonetheless are meditations on adornment and the possibilities of objects to mediate relationships. Mounted in groupings of two or more, these works nest and stand-off, gather and disperse, like groups of people jockeying for personal space.

“Big History,” a field of study that attempts to understand and contextualize the universe’s history holistically, from the Big Bang until the present day, pervades the work of ceramic artist, John Zimmerman. Zimmerman translates this concept into sculptures that juxtapose the forms of ordinary, ubiquitous contemporary objects with incredibly articulated relief surfaces meant to evoke the stratification of rock and the accretion of time. His works are heavy, but not just in weight—these objects are reminders that all living things, inanimate objects and new innovations alike are inextricably products of the past, dependent upon evolutionary history and previous discoveries for their existence.

Pictured: (1) Celia Butler, “Sugar Gloss.” Archival inkjet print. 2011. Photo courtesy of the artist. (2) Nathan Dube, “Popgun.” Silver, nickel, brass champagne party popper, walnut and paper. 2012. Photo courtesy of the artist. (3) Marcia Erickson, “Pair Cups.” Woodfired porcelain. 2012. Photo courtesy of the artist. (4) Paula Haymond, “White Linen.” Magnolia, turned, carved and textured with NSK Presto, high-speed dental drill. Titanium white with airbrushed acrylics underneath to create more of a golden appearance when the irises are textured. Gold acrylic accent along the top rim. 2012. Photo courtesy of the artist. (5) Leslie Shershow, “Siding.” Wood, silver, silver, paint, steel and calcite. 2012. Photo courtesy of the artist. (6) Melissa Walter, “Untitled (teal and black).” Masonite, cement, charcoal, acrylic paint and beeswax. 2012. Photo courtesy of the artist. (7) John Zimmermann, “Stratified Traffic Light.” Glazed ceramic and mixed media. 2012. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Opening Reception:
Friday, August 17, 2012
5:30, Artist Talk
6:00 – 7:00 PM, Reception

Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC) is pleased to present Glass Graphica, an exhibition about the possibilities of glass to convey graphic punch. The show also serves as an unlikely Texas reunion of two artists who met as teacher and student in New York City more than five years ago.

Moshe Bursuker and Miguel Unson first met in 2007 at the community access studio, UrbanGlass, in Brooklyn, NY, where Bursuker had been teaching and renting glassblowing time since 2001. At the time, Unson, a native Houstonian, was finishing up his degree in packaging design at the Pratt Institute, when an assignment about perfume bottles turned into a love of glass. Unson began hanging out at UrbanGlass, taking an early class from Bursuker and eventually becoming the studio’s coordinator of education before returning to Houston a little over a year and half ago.  While their techniques, methods and subject matter are quite different, two things are constant:  a love of material and a strong aesthetic.

Bursuker, a longtime New Yorker, combines photography and glass in tiled collages that utilize the properties of glassblowing to convey high-contrast images culled from our surroundings. While his past work has depicted naturalistic imagery—clouds and trees, ferns and leaves—his newest pieces, presented in this exhibition, place these items within the human landscape. Nature VS Architecture Wave, for instance, is a dizzying depiction of the thrust of a skyscraper into an unseen sky. A slash of tree branch cuts across the picture plane, its furcating limbs crawling across the surface with the creeping unease of a spider’s skittering walk. At the bottom, the piece breaks into a confusion of black and white—a pictorial representation of how glass windows reflect, refract and distort.

Bursuker accomplishes these meta-depictions of glass on glass through a skillful combination of glass blowing, sand carving, and digital photography. Despite their cool presentation, each of Bursuker’s pieces begins in the heat of the fire, where he skillfully applies layers of molten colored glass to blow vessels, which become the flat panels that are the basis of his work. Then, using recent innovations in studio technology, Bursuker sandblasts his digitally manipulated images through the surface color to reveal the high-contrast, high-tech photos. In these works, he has taken his process a step further, reintroducing his objects to the heat of the kiln to make them curve and bend, recovering the fluidity that is at the heart of the material.

Fluidity of material and a daring combination of disparate techniques are also at the heart of Miguel Unson’s flame-worked and kiln-cast glass wheels. In She Won’t Look at You (Won’t Look at You), gossamer veils of white glass form a watery network against a sea of black. Meandering trails of brilliant white dots offset the gauzy haze, giving the work structure and Unson’s signature pop. To create these works, which Unson describes as designed “to delight the eye and to baffle future archeologists,” he first begins in the heat of the glass torch. Using different-colored glass rods and a panoply of tools, Unson meticulously creates the twisty canes, dots, and candy-striped lozenges that form his pieces. After amassing a pile of elements, Unson carefully arranges them in a mold of his own design, which he fires in a kiln several times to achieve the thickness and presentation he desires. The results are visually arresting and are in fact baffling, looking as they do, like the remnant of some long-forgotten culture.

Moshe Bursuker earned his BFA in sculpture and photography from the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford in Connecticut.  He is the recipient of the Metropolitan Contemporary Glass Group Fellowship Award (2005), the Fellowship of the Creative Glass Center of America (2007) and the Fellowship of the Corning Museum of Glass (2007). He is represented by the Morgan Glass Gallery in Pittsburgh, PA; the Sandra Ainsley Gallery in Toronto, ON; and Sarah Jessica Fine Arts in Provincetown, MA; amongst many others. He has taught at the Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY; and UrbanGlass in Brooklyn, NY. Bursuker currently lives and works in the Greater New York City area.

Miguel Unson received his Masters of Science from the Pratt Institute in packaging design and his Bachelors of Arts in theater and English at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He was a both a resident (2010) and Emerging Artist in Residence at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, WA. He has taught at UrbanGlass in Brooklyn, NY; the Pittsburgh Glass School in Pittsburgh, PA; and at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Unson currently lives and works in Houston, TX.

Above: (1) Moshe Bursuker, “Nature VS Architecture Wave.” Blown, cut, carved and slumped glass. 2012. Photo by Josh Silk. (2) Miguel Unson, “She Won’t Look at You.” Flameworked and cast glass. 2010. Photo by Miguel Unson.

Opening Reception: Friday, June 15, 2012
5:30, Artist Talk by David Katz
6:00 – 7:00, Reception

This summer, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft presents Systemic Expansion, a large-scale, site-specific installation by sculptor David Katz, in the Artist Hall.  In this fantastic ceramic landscape, coils of unfired clay stand in for the infrastructure that connects us, from the sweep and sway of power lines—so ubiquitous as to be easily forgotten—to the gossamer of social networks, whose invisible threads have bound us in their web of encoded interactions (“Like,” “Friend” and “+1”). These undulating, quasi-figural lines are in stark contrast to the sharp grid-like structures, at once suggestive of houses and prisons, which anchor and shelter them.

Katz works in an abstract idiom to capture the complexity of the relationship between people and the environments they create. Starting with “the apparent human need to alter our surroundings, fabricating artificial environments that suit our needs,” Katz investigates the complexity of living, “within our own constructed realities and built spaces.” But it is not just the ephemeral networks of the internet and Facebook that inspire Katz’s expansive, subtly colored, airily constructed works. Rather, development patterns of urban sprawl, suburbia and colonization shape and inform his installations, drawing parallels between the seen and unseen, the shape of our buildings and brains, and the complicated systems which connect and flow between them.

Curatorial Fellow, Susie Silbert comments, “It is an honor to be showcasing the work of a young artist who moves so adeptly among content, form and material.  Katz’s embrace of the idiosyncrasies of the Artist Hall have made the exhibition breathtaking to behold.”

David Katz is a 2012 MFA recipient from the University of Indiana-Bloomington in Ceramics and was recently accepted into the prestigious Artist-in-Residence program at Arrowmont School of Art and Craft in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. He received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Post-Baccalaureate certificate from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. He has also completed residencies at the Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Skaelskor, Denmark, and Greenwich House Pottery in New York, NY. Katz has recently shown at the Grunwald Gallery of Art, Bloomington, IN; The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA; The Gallery Project, Ann Arbor, MI; Keramic-Biennale 2011,Varazdin, Croatia; Schacht Gallery, Saratoga Clay Art Center, Schuylerville, NY; and the Internationale Keramik-BIiennale, Kapfenberg, Austria.

Above image: David Katz, Suburban Trap. Ceramic, glaze, wire and unfired clay. 2012. Photo by David Katz.

Opening Reception: Friday, June 1, 2012
5:30, Artist Talks
6:00 – 8:00, Reception
In conjunction with the opening of
Texas Masters Series: Piero Fenci–Battlement.
Featuring open studios by current artists-in-residence  from 6:00 – 7:00 PM.
Click here to see photos from the opening reception.

This summer, various plants and foliage created from X-rays, MRI film, and cast bronze twist and wind their way up the walls of the large gallery in Interstitial Spaces: Julia Barello & Beverly Penn. The exhibition features two artists who share a background in metalsmithing and an interest in creating large-scale wall installations from small, sometimes delicate, pieces referencing flora and fauna. Their shared interests come together in this lushly ornamental exhibition, which features past works by both artists, along with an entirely new, collaborative wall installation made specifically for Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC).

HCCC Curator, Anna Walker, commented: “Both Barello and Penn tackle notions of life cycles and semi nature, or the idea of exuding control over the unruly natural elements. Barello explores this theme by using X-ray and MRI films as her chosen materials, while Penn freezes plants in her bronze castings to capture their authentic forms. HCCC is excited to premiere the first collaborative installation by these two nationally prominent, mid-career artists.”

In addition to using unusual materials, both artists explore negative space in their bodies of work. Viewers may find the empty spaces, or interstices, between the ornate structures of their pieces to be just as compelling as the primary forms. The artists say the title of the exhibition, Interstitial Spaces, is also a reference to their new collaborative piece, which is about “the space between their two theoretical dialectics and formal practices.”

Julia Barello’s interest in the use of medical films developed in the late 1990s, when she was intrigued by the approach of viewing the body through X-ray film, a material which alludes to sickness, death and the cycle of life. By deleting patient information from discarded hospital films, Barello compromised the original images; however, the process of cutting up the films gave her the freedom to treat them purely as source material. In Interstitial Spaces, plants, flora and fauna are her inspiration for the shapes she meticulously cuts from the films. Barello creates multiple layers of these intricately cut, semi-transparent shapes, to create several large installations of natural scenes across the walls. In a way, the artist combats the human sickness captured in the medical films by transforming it into life-affirming images of nature.

The impulse to control, contain, order, and organize is ever present in the wall works of Beverly Penn. Penn takes invasive species, or weeds, and casts them in bronze. She is able to freeze and capture a certain curl or shape of the weed and then uses the cast-bronze pieces to create large wall sculptures reminiscent of Victorian wall-paper patterns or Islamic tracery. In Penn’s sculptures, the once-unruly plants are suddenly frozen in time, allowing the viewer to consider the artist’s control over the structured patterns and forced arrangements on the wall. Further reflection causes one to consider the implications of control over nature and how the continual battle between man and nature brings forth innovation, but often at a cost to the environment.

Julia Barello is a professor in the Department of Art at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. She has exhibited widely across the United States, at institutions such as the Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, Museum of Art and Design, Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, and Museum of Contemporary Craft. Her work can be found in multiple permanent collections, including those of the Museum of Art and Design, Mesa Arts Center, Isle Royale Natural History Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Craft.

Beverly Penn is a professor in the Department of Art and Design at Texas State University. Her work has been featured in exhibitions across the country and at such venerable institutions as the Austin Museum of Art, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, American Craft Museum, and the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati. Penn’s work is in numerous permanent collections, including the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, Racine Art Museum, and National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Above images: (1) Beverly Penn, Thatch. Bronze. 2010. Photo by Christopher Zaleski, courtesy of McMurtrey Gallery. (2) Beverly Penn, Maelstrom. Bronze. 2011. Photo by Christopher Zaleski, courtesy of McMurtrey Gallery. (3) Beverly Penn, Five Weeks Time: Allium Canadense, 2012. Bronze, Brass, Glass and Steel Photo by Christopher Zaleski, courtesy McMurtrey Gallery. (4) Julia Barello, Wisteria. MRI and dyed X-Ray films, steel. 2011. Photo by Caroline Brooks. (5) Julia Barello, Wisteria (Detail). MRI and dyed X-Ray films, steel. 2011. Photo by Caroline Brooks. (6) Julia Barello and Beverly Penn, Submerged, 2012. Cast bronze, recycled and dyed X-Ray film, steel. Photo by Zaleski Studio.

Opening Reception:
Friday, June 1, 2012
5:30, Artist Talks
6:00 – 8:00, Reception
In conjunction with the opening of
Interstitial Spaces: Julia Barello & Beverly Penn.
Featuring open studios by
current artists-in-residence from 6:00 – 7:00 PM.
Click here to see photos from the opening reception.

Demonstration by Piero Fenci: Building Battlement
Saturday, June 2, 2012
2:00 – 5:00 PM
at the Glassell School of Art, Ceramics Studio
5101 Montrose Boulevard
Co-Presented by ClayHouston and The Glassell School of Art

This summer, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC) is pleased to present the fourth show in its Texas Masters Series, Piero Fenci—Battlement. Piero Fenci is the fourth artist to receive this honor, awarded to established career artists working in Texas who have made a significant impact in the craft field. Following in the footsteps of former Texas Masters, Harlan Butt, Cindy Hickok and Rachelle Thiewes, Fenci was chosen for his outstanding involvement in the Texas craft community, his dedication and excellence in teaching, the innovative qualities of his work, and his exceptional craftsmanship. As the 2012 Texas Master, Fenci’s work is featured in a solo show and a printed color catalog, and the artist will serve as a juror of the CraftTexas 2014 biennial exhibition.

Fenci’s work has roots in the underlying craft tradition of functionality, while exploring the sculptural and conceptual realm of contemporary ceramics. HCCC Curator, Anna Walker, worked with Fenci to select pieces from four separate bodies of work created during the last five years. The selection highlights the variety of interests and influences in the artist’s work, ranging from traditional origami and Japanese armor of the Muromachi period to Shaker hatboxes and tinware. Fenci says, “I take these archetypes, filter them through my psyche, and intuitively connect them. My work, therefore, constitutes loosely rendered re-inventions of the past; they are my attempt to build a family tree of spiritual ancestors, a heritage of my own passions.”

The earliest works in the show are from Fenci’s Torre series. Torre is the Spanish word for tower, and these quiet machine-like sculptures reference buildings, engines or turbines with their shapes. While Fenci is known for working with brilliant and colorful glazes, the Torre forms have a neutral palette of white and gray. Upon closer examination, a rough crackled texture appears on the surface of the works. These slight disruptions allude to time, age and decay.

The frozen, quiet silhouettes of the Torre series create a serene backdrop for the brighter glazes and sharp angles of Fenci’s Casco y Escudo and Muralla series. Casco y Escudo loosely translates to Helmet and Shield, while Muralla translates to Battlement. Both titles are fairly literal in describing the forms and shapes in the two bodies of work. Fenci’s unique raku method of firing his glazes brings forth “happy accidents” of brilliant metallic colors in his helmet, shield and battlement forms. Not only more colorful than his older work, these newer bodies are constructed using slabs to create angular flat surfaces with sharp edges and geometric shapes that seem to shift as one moves around them. True to their titles, each piece is poised on its pedestal as if recently removed from battle or waiting to be taken into action.

Visitors to the exhibit also have the chance to see Fenci’s Torbellino series of pen-and-ink drawings that complement and echo the forms of his sculptures.

For more than 35 years, Piero Fenci has distinguished himself as both an artist and an educator. Originally from Santa Barbara, California, he holds an MFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in Alfred, New York, and a BA in Latin American Studies from Yale University. Since 1975, Fenci has been a teacher and the head of the ceramics department at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, TX. He has also spent time as a visiting professor at both the Nantucket Island School of Design and the Arts in Nantucket, MA, and the Escuela de Bellas Artes, Universidad Autonoma de Chihuahua, Mexico, where he founded the first university ceramic art program in the state’s history.

Fenci’s vessels have been featured in numerous magazines and books, such as Ceramics Monthly, American Ceramics, The Contemporary Potter, and Clay and Glazes for the Potter. His pieces have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions from coast to coast (including HCCC’s CraftTexas 2010) and are included in many private and museum collections, including The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art in Alfred, NY.

Above images: (1) Piero Fenci, Torre III. Low fire ceramic. Photo: Harrison Evans. (2) Piero Fenci, Torre II. Low fire ceramic. Photo: Harrison Evans. (3) Piero Fenci, Torbellino III. Ink on paper. Photo: Harrison Evans. (4) Piero Fenci, Torbellino II. Ink on paper.
Photo: Harrison Evans. (5) Piero Fenci, Torbellino I. Ink on paper. Photo: Harrison Evans. (6) Piero Fenci, Muralla I. Low fire ceramic. Photo: Harrison Evans. (7) Piero Fenci, Casco y Escudo II. Low fire ceramic. 2010. Photo: Harrison Evans. (8) Piero Fenci, Torre I. Low fire ceramic. Photo: Harrison Evans. (9) Piero Fenci, Casco y Escudo III. Low fire ceramic. Photo: Harrison Evans. (10) Piero Fenci, Casco y Escudo I. Low fire ceramic. 2010. Photo: Harrison Evans.

Opening Reception:
Friday, September 28, 5:30 – 8:00 PM
At 6:30 PM, three artists will be presented with
the jurors’ Award of Merit prizes for CraftTexas 2012.
The evening will also feature open studios by
HCCC’s current resident artists from 6:00 – 7:00 PM.
Beer sponsored by Karbach Brewing Co.

This fall, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC) presents CraftTexas 2012, the seventh in a series of biennial juried exhibitions showcasing the best in Texas-made contemporary craft. Featuring works by 40 Texas artists, the exhibition includes everything from a large-scale installation of crocheted linen and latex paint to stoneware ceramic vessels and pate de verre glass sculptures mimicking iron cookware.

The CraftTexas series, which is hugely popular with visitors, provides artists the unique opportunity to have their work seen by three established jurors and included in an exhibition that seeks to broaden the understanding of contemporary craft. The show features outstanding work in all craft media: clay, fiber, glass, metal, wood and mixed media.

This year saw an unprecedented increase in artist applications, with over 500 works submitted. The jurors spent hours evaluating and scoring pieces to inevitably trim the show down to 49 works. HCCC Curator, Anna Walker, commented:

“Juried shows are particularly exciting because there is a certain amount of risk involved—you never know who will apply and exactly what stance the jurors will take on different pieces. I’m pleased to say that this year’s juried exhibition not only features a wide range of work but also includes what I would consider some of the best in contemporary craft across the state. As always, it’s rewarding to see new artists and work never before exhibited at HCCC, along with some familiar faces from previous years.”

While CraftTexas 2012 features a varied selection of work, there are several minor trends running throughout this group show. For instance, there is a strong focus on contemporary furniture, ranging from a midcentury-influenced chair by Danny Kamerath to George Sacaris’ stunning, polished-aluminum stools. Kamerath has been making functional furniture full time since 2005, after a career switch from advertising design. His design background is evident in the clean and elegant form of his hickory chair, Jill, composed of simple lines and circles reminiscent of Charles and Ray Eames’ Dot Pattern. Like many furniture makers before him, Kamerath chooses his type of wood specifically for each piece.

George Sacaris developed the idea for his Faux Bois Stumps after seeing a fake wood bench made from concrete at a farm in south Texas. (Faux bois is French for the artistic imitation of wood in other media.) These hand-formed aluminum objects, which are both sculptural and functional—as clever stools or end tables—come in a variety of colors, from polished mirror to brown. Sacaris completes these modern forms with the nodules of imaginary severed tree limbs.

Many of the artists explore the use of nontraditional materials in their craft practices, as clearly shown in the contemporary sculpture and jewelry of Edward Lane McCartney and Michael O’Neill. Inspired by the recent exhibition, Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Space and Time, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, McCartney transforms paper-back books and vibrantly colored paper in his piece, Folio Chromatique, #7, The Velocity of Color. The sculpture, which resembles strings of oversized, accordion-like paper beads, is strung in linear patterns and suspended from the wall. Michael O’Neill’s bracelet, Flood, is assembled with silver, found driftwood and Pyrex. Fragments of this unlikely combination of materials swirl around the circular structure of a bracelet akin to tossed debris found on a construction site.

Some of the artists continue the use of traditional craft materials and processes but do so in new and exciting ways. David Bogus’ bold installation, The Optimist Luggage, consists of 11 pieces of brightly patterned, lifesized ceramic luggage that mimic various objects of luxury and consumer culture. His slip-casting process creates a trompe l’oeil effect, appearing super realistic until the clay shells of the original luggage reveal themselves at close range. Paula Gron also rethinks traditional processes, as she creates a fantastic explosion of fibers in her surreal sculpture, My Toothbrush. Using wood and traditional basketry techniques to create a tightly knit basket form for the base of the brush, she then adds pink stick-like fibers to create wild bristles that have a life of their own.

CraftTexas 2012 was juried by Jean W. McLaughlin, Executive Director of the Penland School of Crafts in Bakersville, NC; Rachelle Thiewes, internationally acclaimed metal and jewelry artist from El Paso, TX, and HCCC’s 2009 Texas Master; and Jade Walker, Director of the Visual Arts Center in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin.

Above: (1 & 2) David Bogus, “The Optimist Luggage” (detail). Ceramic, glass shelving. 16″ x 16″ x 8″. 2011. Photo by David Bogus. (3) Shannon Brunskill, “Disintegration.” Pate de verre. 12’ x 60’ x 2’. 2011. Photo by Shannon Brunskill. (4) Elizabeth DeLyria, “Driftwood Burl with Beach Stones.” Stoneware, glazes and stains. 6” x 16” 13”. 2011. Photo by Elizabeth DeLyria. (5) Tanya Ermakova, “Something Old, Something New.” Recycled sweaters. 17.5” x 20’ x 1”. 2011. Photo by Emma Collins. (6) Paula Gron, “My Toothbrush.” Fiber. 18” x 26” x 13”. 2011. Photo by Paula Gron. (7) Cindy Hickok, “Grab Bag” (from “Mixed Bags”). Fiber (machine embroidery). 10” x 7” x 1”. 2012. Photo by Rick Wells. (8) Cindy Hickok, “Mixed Bags.” Fiber (machine embroidery). 10” x 7” x 1”. 2012. Photo by Rick Wells. (9) Shikha Joshi, “Following in the Footsteps.” Clay. 12” x 13” 6”. 2012. Photo by Anand Joshi. (10) Kira Kalondy. “Amanecer.” Ceramics. 15” x 22” x 18”. 2012. Photo by Christopher Talbot. (11) Danny Kamerath, “Jill.” Hickory. 32” x 16.5” x 22”. 2012. Photo by Danny Kamerath. (12) Danny Kamerath, “Table for Two.” Yaupon holly. 11.5” x 12.5 x 10.5”. 2011. Photo by Danny Kamerath. (13) Ryu-Hee Kim, “I Miss You.” Copper. 11” x 9.5” x 3”. 2012. Photo by Becky Hopp. (14 & 15) Edward Lane McCartney, “Folio Chromatique #7, The Velocity of Color” (detail). Paper-back books, colored paper, acrylic rods and steel. 72” x 60” x 12”. 2011. Photo by David Gooding. (16) Michael O’Neill, “Flood.” Silver, driftwood, Pyrex. 5” x 5” x 3”. 2010. Photo by Brianne Corn. (17) Griselda Pena, “Cut.” Oak and encaustic. 4”x 5.5” x 2.25”. 2010. Photo by TJH Photographics. (18) Omar Perez, “Bloodwood Console Table.” Bloodwood, Ebony and Sterling Silver. 62” x 21.5”. 2012. Photo by Katharine Landmeier. (19) George Sacaris, “Faux Bois Stumps.” Aluminum. 17” x 60” x 60”. 2011. Photo by Jack Thompson. (20) Shalena White, “Earth Spirit.” Earth, china clay, cheesecloth, recycled newspaper, tape, string, glue, steel, quartz and graphite. 58” x 10” x 5”. 2012. Photo by Thomas Jack Hilton. (21) Catherine Winkler Rayroud, “Capitalism at Work.” Paper cutting made from one piece with nail scissors. 19” x 21.5”. 2010. Photo by Catherine Winkler Rayroud.

Looking at the work in his show, Implied Utility, it’s hard to believe Chris Hedrick hasn’t been carving wood his whole life—the illusion of his pieces is just so good. Using primarily hand tools in the converted garage of his historic Houston Heights home, Hedrick digs into exotic woods to extract amazingly accurate reproductions of everyday objects. This exhibition focuses on his charismatic portrayals of woodworking tools themselves.

Hacksaws and power drills, hammers and rakes emerge from Hedrick’s capable hands looking just like their hardware-store counterparts, only enhanced with the liveliness of wood grain and the spark of a well-seasoned design sense. But Hedrick isn’t interested in simple verisimilitude; his work is full of wit and irony, forged through both his years of visual play as a graphic designer for the energy industry and his weekends spent on the beach surfing.

Hedrick’s sense of humor is evident in these works; he interrupts their stolid perfection with equally well-rendered interventions—a cloth left dangling on the blade of his hacksaw, a delicate shroud clothing the business end of a hammer, a saw melting into liquid fluidity. Like the Funk artists to whom his work nods, it’s clear from his command of materials that Hedrick takes his craft seriously, but also that he knows serious is only half the battle. Art, like life, shouldn’t be caught up in so many rules—it’s funny, messy, absurd and more than a little irreverent.

Chris Hedrick is a sculptor, painter, graphic designer, outdoorsmen and Texas native. He received his BFA in commercial design from Southwest Texas State University and worked as a graphic designer in the energy industry for 27 years before leaving to devote himself fulltime to his art in 2007. His work has been exhibited at Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX; The Art Car Museum, Houston, TX; and The Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX, among many others. He is represented in Houston by the D.M. Allison Gallery, which will have a solo exhibition of his work this March. He has been carving wood for four years.

Houston Center of Contemporary Craft presents The Handmade Print, an exhibition of photographs on handmade paper by Virginia artist, Alyssa Salomon. Her first solo show outside her home state, The Handmade Print is also the premier exhibition of her recent collaborations with papermaker, Helen Hiebert.

Alyssa Salomon is a photographer, poet, consummate craftsperson and, also, a bit of a mad scientist. Using her own recipes for the nineteenth-century photographic processes of cyanotype and van dyke printing, Salomon makes handmade prints that “recall an accumulation of sights seen and linked by treasured recollections.” Her images record moments—snippets of experience—which seek to connect what is human with what is wild: tree branches against a stark winter sky, birds frozen in mid air, a private moment relishing the feel of water. Salomon’s camera becomes the human eye, winking on these moments of serenity and delight, connecting disparate subjects that invoke the richness of our senses. This somehow similar to how a photo book works, a narrative of life’s beautiful moments. A collection of one’s favorite moments are preserved through online tools like Printed Memories.

Salomon infuses her images with emotion through her masterful use of these antiquated processes. She heightens the velvety surfaces inherent to van dyke and cyanotype by printing on handmade paper and sealing the surfaces with wax, creating images that are suffused with romantic abstraction. In addition to traditional framed photographs, this exhibition features her newest series of works on handmade, stretched abaca-paper disks. The result of a recent collaboration with renowned papermaker, Helen Hiebert, these pieces allow light to radiate behind the images. They appear as portholes, eyes into another, quietly magical world. As Salomon says, “ordinary and wondrous phenomena are my means and my subject.”

Alyssa Salomon lives and works in Providence Forge, Virginia, where she has been a leader in alternative photo processes since the late 1990s. She has taught extensively, including workshops at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina; the Ah Haa School in Telluride, Colorado; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Studio School in Richmond, Virginia; and Virginia Commonwealth University, among others. Her work is included in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Ritz Carlton Dubai, Hotel Palomar Philadelphia, and many other public and private collections. Salomon is a two-time recipient of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship.

With two photo-related exhibitions, The Handmade Print (on view in the Artist Hall) and Bridge 11: Lia Cook (on view in the Large Gallery), HCCC is pleased to be a Participating Space for FotoFest 2012, the Fourteenth International Biennial of Photography and Photo-Related Art. Located in Houston, Texas, the FotoFest Biennial is the United States’ largest and longest running international photography festival and one of the oldest international showcases for photography in the world today. The festival takes place March 16 – April 29, 2012. For more information, visit www.fotofest.org.

Above, from left to right: Alyssa Salomon, these wild ecstasies (for A. Siskin). Cyanotype, waxed. 2010. Photo by Terry Brown. Alyssa Salomon, Tell Me again, the World will be Beautiful. Van dyke, waxed. 2009. Photo by Terry Brown. Alyssa Salomon, Untitled. Van dyke on handmade paper, metal, waxed. 2011. Photo by Alyssa C. Salomon.

Transference is based on the artists’ mutual interest in recovering and repurposing forgotten objects and technologies. In past works, Paiko, a glassblower, has recontextualized bell jars, reliquaries and absinthe fountains, filling them with contemporary and personal meaning. Similarly, Rose’s musical compositions have combined modern electronics with obsolete instruments such as music boxes, pipe organs and player pianos.

In this piece, the duo derives its inspiration from the history of glass musical instruments, particularly the glass armonica and glass harp. The 18th-century takes on the “singing wine glass” consisted of a series of glass bowls, goblets or tubes of different sizes, which performers played by rubbing a moistened finger along the lip of the vessels to elicit a range of musical tones. In Transference, Paiko and Rose have removed the performer and mechanized the process, quite literally transferring the glass armonica’s historical format to fit a contemporary context.

The result is an encompassing environment that is both contemplative and active. Paiko and Rose have mounted scores of hand-blown glass vessels along the gallery walls and atop pedestals and wired them to rotate in an indeterminate sequence. As such, they spin seemingly of their own accord, traced on the exterior by glass arms with fabric tips that “play” the surface of the vessels, much as a record needle activates the surface of a vinyl 45. Absent a human performer, these glass objects become the central actors in determining the musical composition. HCCC Curatorial Fellow, Susie Silbert, commented, “By orchestrating the installation in this way, Paiko and Rose highlight the materiality of glass. The particular characteristics of each vessel—its thickness and shape, the chemical composition of the glass—dictate the note each will play. In recontextualizing the glass armonica in this way, the song of Transference is as much about the history of this nearly forgotten instrument as it is about the possibilities of glass.”

Andy Paiko is known for ambitious, technical works that explore the metaphorical and symbolic tension of form versus function. His work has been featured in such national and international print publications as FRAME, Wired UK, American Craft, Glass Art Quarterly, the Corning Museum’s New Glass Review, and numerous online blogs. He was selected as one of 20 emerging Searchlight Artists for 2008 by the American Craft Council, and his work will appear in the Renwick Gallery of Decorative Art at the Smithsonian in 2011 for the exhibition, 40 Under 40: Craft Futures. Paiko holds a BS in Studio Art from California Polytechnic State University and currently resides in Portland, Oregon.

Ethan Rose is a sound artist and composer whose works encompass a variety of forms including performance, installation, and recorded composition. Through methods of reduction and repositioning, he utilizes methods of interactive composition to explore qualities of materiality, transformation, and perception. Rose has exhibited and performed domestically and internationally at places such as Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Art Festival, Museum of Contemporary Craft, New Genre Festival, Museum of Craft and Design, East/West Project, and the SXSW Music Festival, as well as many other venues and gallery spaces throughout the world.

Transference was first commissioned and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, in partnership with Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon.

At HCCC, Transference was partially funded by a 2012 Celebration Grant from the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass (AACG). The exhibition is a part of the 50th Anniversary of Studio Glass, a nationwide series of exhibitions promoted in part by AACG. The anniversary celebrates the establishment of glass as an artists’ medium in the United States in 1962. For more information, visit click here.

Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC) presents Bridge 11: Lia Cook, a solo exhibition of the work of internationally recognized fiber artist, Lia Cook. The exhibit presents large-scale woven images of human faces and introduces several works from a new body of work based on the artist’s recent art-neuroscience collaboration.

HCCC Curator, Anna Walker, describes the significance of the exhibition: “Arguably one of the pioneers of the modern fiber-art movement, Lia Cook was one of the first people to utilize a digital jacquard loom as an art tool in the 1980s. HCCC is thrilled to host an exhibition of an artist as important to the history of studio craft as Cook, and we are especially pleased to do so during Fotofest 2012, the largest and longest-running international photography festival in the U.S. Thinking of her work in relation to photography provides visitors with an opportunity to recognize this medium as part of her process, as well as to consider her use of focus, scale and portraiture in the final works.”

Cook’s current practice incorporates concepts of cloth, touch, and memory. With her use of a digital jacquard loom, she weaves the images and creates monumental works that blur distinctions among computer technology, weaving, painting, and photography. Informal family snapshots, which offer intimate information and shared history, are frequently a starting point for her woven images. From a distance, each work paints the distinct and compelling features of a face. However, as the viewer comes closer, the “pixels” of the image dissolve into pointillist fields of individual threads.

In her new body of work, Cook was inspired by her participation in TREND (Transdisciplinary Research in Emotion, Neuroscience and Development), a 2010 spring residency at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. During that time, she collaborated with Greg Siegle, a PhD professor of psychiatry, to collect computer data in real time and map the human brain as it responded to the stimuli of Cook’s woven faces. About the process, the artist said, ―We tried many different approaches using Electroencephalography (EEG), Pupil Studies, EyeTracking and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). The subjects did a variety of tasks. In one example, they compared the woven image with a photograph of the woven image with the original tapestry itself. We could see different responses in the brain in visual images and found some evidence of my original idea that the woven image evoked a different kind and/or intensity of emotional response.

In her neuroscience-inspired body of work, Cook overlays her woven portraits with colorful lines that represent the data she collected. These linear patterns are both informative and visually inspiring to the artist. In essence, she has physically imbedded the portraits with scientific information.

A resident of Berkeley, California, Cook has been a Professor of Art at the California College of the Arts since 1976. She has exhibited widely across the United States, as well as in Australia, China, France and Ireland, among other countries. Her work can be found in many permanent collections, including that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the Racine Art Museum; and the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Cook has also been the recipient of many prestigious awards and special recognitions, among them a French Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Master of the Media for Fiber from the James Renwick Alliance, and a Distinguished Alumnus Award for the University of California.

Bridge 11: Lia Cook is part of the biennial Bridge Exhibition Series organized by the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

With Bridge 11, HCCC is a Participating Space for Fotofest 2012, the Fourteenth International Biennial of Photography and Photo-Related Art. Located in Houston, Texas, the FotoFest Biennial is the United States’ largest and longest-running international photography festival and one of the oldest international showcases for photography in the world today. The festival takes place March 16 – April 29, 2012. For more information, visit www.fotofest.org.