Nora Atkinson Interview: Chatting About Queer Craft and More!
Last week I had the privilege of interviewing Nora Atkinson, the Renwick Gallery’s Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft. The intent was to garner her thoughts on LGBTQ identity and representation with contemporary craft, but our conversation quickly grew to encompass her thoughts on craftivism, the DIY movement, the role of technology in craft, and the evolution of craft education. She has graciously allowed me to share the transcript of our conversation below. This will form the first installment of interviews with curators, artists and theorists whose work focuses on the LGBTQ identity within craft.
DandyCraft: Can you give me a sense of what your personal and professional journey has been that brought you to the Renwick?
NA: I think like many people in the craft field I didn't come out of craft. Originally I was studying art and taking photography classes and ended up with a degree in Art History from undergrad. I took a couple of jewelry classes and as a matter of fact I studied with Mary Lee Hu, who we have upstairs in our permanent collection right now. I don't think I even recognized that craft existed as a field at that point. I wound up taking museology for my masters, which is I think unusual for a curator. In the middle of studying for that program Michael Monroe, who is the former curator of the Renwick, came and spoke to our class. He was reopening the Bellevue Arts Museum as a craft museum. At the time I was studying to be a curator of modern and contemporary art. I spent all of my time doing programs at the Henry Art Gallery about new media, trying to collect new work like Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and figuring out how to put that into our collection. So that was what was on my mind at the time, so in a way it was how you go about incorporating unusual media into the collection, which has something to do with craft, I think. But anyway he (Michael Monroe), came in and talked about this tea pot show he was going to reopen the Bellevue Arts Museum with to a massively incredulous audience of students who said, “You’ve got to be kidding me! You’re going to reopen a failed museum with tea pots?” But it was intriguing and the other part of that was intriguing is that you had an opportunity to start a museum from the ground up. It brought in tons of crowds from all over the place. The prior rendition had been a contemporary art venue that just didn’t work with the community. The community had a lot of standing craft shows so we decided to go back to the roots there. I was hooked on that, not necessarily because of the tea pots, but because it was something interesting people. I went and applied to an internship there, and Stephano Catalani, had just been hired. He was working in a gallery in Seattle, he was not working in the craft world either, and Michael Monroe saw his work that was dealing with a lot of big, sculptural artists, and thought he would be a good fit. I started as an intern in the curatorial department. I worked over the next year as an intern. Eventually I graduated and worked around at various other museums. They had really wanted to hire me there but it took a while, so I got a job there and work as an Exhibitions Curator and Registrar, basically managed all of their traveling exhibitions. And then I gave up the Registrar job, moved into a full Exhibitions Curator position, that eventually turned into a full Curator position, that eventually lead me here. So it was only about eight years that I was there and that was my only real training in craft although I’d been trained in art and trained in curatorial, I just got to know craft through being there. I think it was the perfect entry into the craft field, because Michael Monroe, who has been at the Renwick, had such a brilliant knowledge of everything that was studio craft, and everything that was traditional. He also had the foresight to know that it was changing and he had brought in Stefano, who had a completely opposite perspective who was very excited by craft and the possibility of these things but who wasn’t tethered to those definitions and those older modes of looking at things. So that’s the way our curatorial team there was formed. We did a lot of things that worked outside the box of craft to see where it could go. Eventually it seemed like it was a good time to move and this position came open, actually was created, and I applied not thinking I would get it. It created a beautiful full circle, coming here after working with Michael for those years.
DandyCraft: It seems quite serendipitous, and it’s been wonderful to see what’s happened since you’ve been here as well. One of the things that I’m interested in is looking at craft outside of the box. One of the quotes I’ve come across is from “Put Your Things Down, Flip it and Reverse it: Reimagining Craft Identities Using Tactics of Queer Theory”, by Lacey Jane Roberts. She was saying that if you apply the multiplicity and fluidity of queer identity to craft, it allows for a much more open definition rather than being medium specific. Do you agree with that perspective, or what do you think queer theory has to contribute to the craft world?
NA: I guess I would need to you to tell me a bit about what you mean by queer theory, but in general when you start to explore craft as an idea rather than as one of five media, which never quite fit the bill and was more of just short-hand, craft has always been this amazing vehicle for people who are underrepresented. Whether its women’s communities, African American communities, who are making objects for other reasons. And there are definitely gender specific craft practices in the history of craft so it opens up a massive dialogue as a vehicle to discuss certain issues, as there have always been parallels with those issues.
DandyCraft: The mutual outsider status has really been powerful and that’s what I’m interested in for my project that focuses on how various LGBTQ artists subvert domesticity through traditional objects.
NA: As a matter of fact, although it’s not exactly to do with your project because it’s not LGBT, but there’s a show that I’m doing next year on Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. Have you heard of these?
DandyCraft: No I haven’t.
NA: There’s this woman, Frances Glessner Lee, who was born at the turn of the century and started to work in the 1940’s and 50’s. She was the young heiress to the International Harvester Fortune, had quite a bit of money. Her older brother went off to Harvard and she wound up not being able to go to college because she was a young lady and they had certain gender roles that they were promoting. So she was married off at nineteen and was extremely unhappy in her marriage. It eventually dissolved and in fact one of her kids said the reason it dissolved was because she liked to work with her hands and her husband couldn’t understand that. In any event, that dissolved so she was back under the care of her parents and trapped in that way for many years. When her parents passed away and her brother passed away, her brother had a very close friend who she had become very close with, who was a forensic investigator and taught forensics. He would regale her with all the problems with forensic investigation. At the time, people would come in and corrupt all the evidence, not knowing what they were doing, and they didn’t have a very good way to teach that. She became involved and started to create miniature crime scenes based on composites of actual crime scenes that they used to teach investigators how to approach the crime scene. So to the point of what you’re dealing with, this was a very gendered craft that she learned growing up, that you were allowed to learn miniatures by creating these doll houses that were all about teaching you the domestic and teaching you those roles. Here she was, very unhappy in this marriage, and managed to create these dystopian doll houses, that managed to break certain gender boundaries. She became the first female police captain in the country. She founded a forensics school at Harvard and taught those classes all the way until she died. Those doll houses are still being used today to teach investigators. They’re at the Baltimore Medical Examiner’s Office now. So we’re bringing those in next year, and it’s not obviously LGBT, but it deals with a lot of those same issues. Being railroaded into certain gender roles and trying to escape from that.
DandyCraft: Wow, what a complete 180. How did the dioramas fluctuate in size?
NA: They were one in to one foot in scale. Most of them could be encased in a two-foot by two-foot square, some of them are in the round and others are from a specific angle. You basically get this opportunity to glimpse these usually not particularly wealthy homes of the time period. It’s also a glimpse into elements of her past, like the wallpaper would be something she remembered from her childhood. With each one you have a statement given by the witness, and you look into the scene, and it’s all about teaching people to look.
DandyCraft: This reminds me of another trend where you see a professions beginning to use art and craft. Like with museums training doctors in visual analysis to improve their bedside manner and observational skills. Have you seen examples emerging that use craft in this manner?
NA: Yes, I’m sure I have. We’ve actually been doing tours for doctors, investigators, for quite a long time. We’ve talked a lot about the idea of STEM craft. Art and science aren’t traditionally removed from each other, and we’ve built a culture these days that removes those into two separate boxes where science is important and art is not. But the creativity involved in those things is obviously important, and there are a lot of artists, who are doing work with larger microbes. I was actually just looking at this British artist who has gone back to the Victorian tradition of diatoms, microscopic collages. I don’t think they’re the mainstream, but there’s definitely a lot of interplay between art and craft with science.
DandyCraft: I use to work in museum education and after watching the trend of blending the two together as with STEM to STEAM. I’m glad to see the Renwick doing that as well.
NA: Although I still tend to think that STEM to STEAM is a little ridiculous, as its trying to add art back into something. At that point you’ve added everything back in and you agree that the world is a complex entity that we need to explore.
DandyCraft: I think it’s challenging for teachers too, at least for the elementary and middle school grades, they have so much they’re already dealing with, that when you shift one subject, all the others shift as well. They’re already so overwhelmed it’s hard to mitigate from their perspective.
NA: We have a display case in one of the rooms that’s kind of surrounding those ideas, where it’s got a piece by Erik and Martin Demaine, a father and son who are two professors, in conversation with Anni Albers. They’re all about systems, and in essence these numerical patterns, and weaving being the template for modern computers, and not forgetting the history that comes with.
DandyCraft: We’ve talked a little bit about craft encompassing multiple identities, the multiplicity of media, the multiplicity of practices, allowing people to come in from whatever angle they’re comfortable with. Do you find craft to be an area where it’s easy to identify as an LGBTQ artisan as opposed to other areas of art? Even within the Renwick collection, do many of the artisans make that a part of their identity as an artist, or is it totally removed?
NA: I do think it is particular strong in craft. Many LGBT artists are particularly attracted to craft because of the obvious historical connection there, particularly fiber artists. It’s a particularly strong medium to talk about gender because it’s always been a gendered medium that’s sort of under the radar of a lot of mainstream American art. It allows for a quiet entry into that world where you can make a very strong statement. I think ceramics is also a strong area for that. I don’t know if I could characterize why off hand. A lot of artists approach it for different reasons.
DandyCraft: It’s interesting that you should identity those two mediums especially. As I was reaching out to curators and artisans across the craft world, ceramics and fiber were the two mediums that emerged most strongly. I struggled to find other people working in wood, metal, and other mediums that had the same connection in terms of their LGBTQ identity and the material.
NA: Metal to me seems like such a traditionally masculine medium that in a way it doesn’t speak to those issues as much because it’s so forefront in something that’s always been the dominant whereas the others become more subversive. For example, is a gay man works in fiber it makes a major statement. Ceramics just seems like perhaps it’s the accessibility or the community of it. There is such a strong community within working in a ceramics shop. To me ceramics is one of my favorite medium because it really can become anything.
Dandycraft: It’s also much more tactile. With metal you’re much more removed, you’ve got the gloves, headgear, creating more barriers between yourself and the piece.
NA: Yea, its personal…
DandyCraft: Yes. With ceramics and fiber, it’s much more personal. The formative process is much more connected, especially if you’re forging something that relates to your identity. That would be more important, I imagine.
NA: Yea, and there’s probably a number of artists, although I am not thinking of them off the top of my head, who do jewelry work as well. But I think that artist imprint, that handwork, and not just the actual intimacy of working, but also the intimacy of being able to see your own handprint in something, probably does play in with that.
DandyCraft: One of the things I’ve been reading within craft literature is the entry of DIY into craft and maintaining craft as a practice for skilled artisans and how to frame factor in DIY which is emerging very strongly. So how do you see this tension play out? On one hand you could see this opening up craft to this whole range of artisans, LGBTQ included, who wouldn’t have representation otherwise. But at the same time, I could see how this tension would arise. How do you feel about this shift going on?
NA: In some ways I don’t see it as a shift and in some ways I don’t necessarily see it as a tension I see them as being two different things. There are many artists who incorporate sloppy craft into their work purposefully and a lot of the people who are doing that are extraordinarily talented. There’s definitely a differentiation between museum worthy objects and objects that are just objects of use, production objects, that don’t rise to a certain standard. I love the DIY, and I’m glad there are so many makers out there, but I think what they’re making is separate from what people are looking to see in a museum in terms of a singularly skilled object. And I’ve incorporated a lot of what I would call sloppy craft work into our collection over the last two years. I think there’s a new test these days as to what skill means in the contemporary sphere. It used to mean something very different than it means today. Today there’s a lot more interest in the meaning behind how you make and the process there, so I would take an artist like Kathryn Clark who did the Foreclosure Quilt that we have upstairs. Her work is purposefully incorporating a lot of loose threads that are coming off of it, a lot of loose ends and a lot of fraying. It works as part of the composition and is meaningful, so that’s one of the tests I think. Someone like Jeffrey Mitchell, who is an LGBT artist, who does amazing ceramics work and other kinds of media, with paints and collage. But he as this ham handed way of handling clay that expresses something childish and looks sloppy in many ways, but the skill that goes into the creation of those works is phenomenal. The appearance of sloppiness doesn’t necessarily indicate an unskilled work.
DandyCraft: Its more the idea behind it…
NA: Yes. I’m really a proponent of skill, and I actually sort of miss skill in a lot of the contemporary work. That’s one of the things that ebbs and flows and I think the expression for a number of years in studio craft, the real heartfelt emotion that is the base of craft got lost. A bit more little more lee-way, a little less concern over the skill.
DandyCraft: So where did this idea of sloppy craft come from? Was it part of the spirit of the moment, or a particular school?
NA: I don’t know if it came from a particular school. There’s an element of the free form, if you go back to people like Peter Voulkos, that was not about crafting the perfect object. There was also that expressionism that was transcended. I think schools have definitely had a lot of influence in this. When the GI Bill came out, we had this massive influx of art students and art teachers. That supported the entire craft sphere for many, many years. They were tenured, and because they had academic positions they were able to create massive work, instead of working as an artist every day opposite a day job. Over the years, as we’ve gone into that period of STEM, gone away from the arts and gone into a period of recession, a lot of those programs have disappeared and a lot of the remaining programs have solidified into interdisciplinary programs. The post-modern which happens, so you end up with this interdisciplinary mash of things, which forefronts ideas but at the same time, people aren’t being taught those skills and people aren’t even in the schools any more to teach them. Essentially these days, when you go to art school, even when I was going to art school, in photography classes, we were begging to have classes that would teach us the zone system. They just didn’t teach that any more. They just say express yourself and it was more about critique than it was about teaching you technique. I think that’s had a major influence. I think a lot of the people who go into art school today, even if they go into a medium specific field, aren’t necessarily expected to produce medium specific work.
DandyCraft: Do you see that cycling back and changing? What would be the current that would shift it back to medium specific training?
NA: I don’t know what would shift it back towards that training unless it’s just a real interest in it. We’re definitely on a trajectory where we’ve moved away from that and most technique you learn. You could go to a craft school. You might apprentice somewhere, but most of it you’re learning on your own. That’s a trend that I’ve seen that’s really interesting. One of our artists upstairs, Dan Webb, who, at one point, just decided he wanted to learn to carve, he wanted a skill that was slow. His wife was a farmer and part of the slow food movement, and this was a way to get away from a computer screen and to slow down a little bit. He spent ten years just teaching himself the process of carving while he was trying to do his work and make a living. I think there are a lot of people that at a certain point want to get a little bit of depth into those areas, but I’m not sure that’s going to be, any time soon, codified into an academic sphere.
DandyCraft: What I’ve admired about craft is there is that room for self-taught individuals, who have made it their mission to create that path for themselves outside of normative trajectories.
NA: To that point the reason he (Dan Webb) has been so successful at that was because he has not chosen to be in that New York area or the L.A. arena, or those big art worlds where it’s very cut-throat and you don’t have that support. He’s chosen to be in Seattle, where’s there’s a community of artists, who are maybe under recognized on the national level, but who are close-knit enough to support each other doing that kind of experimentation.
DandyCraft: Do you see any centers emerging for the craft world? You mentioned that New York is very competitive. Do you see any new areas blossoming that could shift that attention?
NA: Interesting question. I don’t know if I have a good answer for that. The Seattle Art Fair is next week; I’m interested to see if that develops a little bit because certainly that area has a strong craft background. Obviously there’s a lot of craft happening in cities across the country, in Detroit, in San Antonio, in cities that are very strong. But in terms of becoming a center. I’m not sure if craft has really ever had a center.
DandyCraft: In visiting the Smithsonian Craft Show through my graduate program, our class spoke with a number of artisans who said they don’t aspire to be in museums and are content with making a living off what they do. It’s easy to imagine how incredibly talented individuals could fly under the radar of museums. In terms of collecting, how do you find these artisans?
NA: The internet is one way, but the way I find the most interesting individuals is through the artists themselves. I had an opportunity a few weeks ago to go out to a conference in Haystack, listen to a lot of people talk, interact with a lot of artists, hear what’s going on. Getting out to Archie Bray Foundation, places like that, where you can meet incredible artists working on their residencies. There’s a real network of those people under the radar that go residency to residency across the country and they introduce you to other artists. I recently found out about this amazing potter named Jami Porter Lara. She’s not a very well-known artist at this point but it was another artist that I respect very much who said they had just been to Anderson Ranch, she was working there, and that I should check her pieces out. They’re amazing. It’s a lot of word of mouth. You can’t tell a lot of things on the internet, especially when you’re talking about three dimensional objects. One of the bones I have to pick with a lot of things is that you get onto the internet on someplace like Pinterest and you see the same ten objects because someone took one great picture and posted and people are too lazy to post anything else, so it keeps coming up again and again. There are a thousand artists for every one of those images that are doing great work.
DandyCraft: Another facet of my research has been with craftivism. Given that the Renwick is here in Washington, have you seen any poignant examples of that within the local community?
NA: I’m not sure I’ve seen very much of that in the local community. But I have to admit that I’m probably not as connected with the local community having been a recent transplant here. Certainly there are artists who are within our greater local community like Sonya Clark who does amazing work that kind of craftivism. You might be familiar with that confederate flag that she brought a community together to unweave. I think there’s also a local community of the Combat Paper Project, which is another one of those. It’s a strain that is definitely all across the country. I also think of people like Sebastian Martorana, whose work corresponds so much to the degradation of that city. In almost all craft these days, it seems like the social component is extremely strong. It does seem like the most interesting thread going on in contemporary craft.
DandyCraft: How do you see this trend evolving as time goes on?
NA: I’m not sure if I can give you a good prediction on that. But I feel like there has been such a large scale exploration of what that means, a lot of things have already been done. The projects are really interesting, I’m curious over time, how much we’ll really think anyone outside of the craft sphere has really been aware of the projects, if they’ve made any real differences. It’s gone very much into the community project realm, which sort of moves it away from art, into social practice. Further than the half-way point. I feel like that may of off on its on thread. Many of the artists I’m interested in today have brought it back center, like Sebastian Martorana, whose work is very personal. You have people like Theaster Gates, whose work has become centered on creating community. That’s a positive thing, but I’m finding it outside the realm art at a certain point as people pursue their own lines of inquiry.
DandyCraft: I find that interesting, especially as craft has always had a community focus, but in returning to that has almost evolved into something else.
NA: When I try to define craft in the contemporary sphere, moving away from media and other distinctions, the definition I wind up with these days is really all about community. It’s about going back to the real beginnings of craft and thinking of Morris and Ruskin and those ideals that making really changes who we are. Not necessarily hand making, but making with tools, whatever it is, the human intervention of making versus leaving it to the machine. Inefficiency driven ideal of creating community and utopia through being very human and very human activity, seems to be at the heart of it.
DandyCraft: I find the vulnerability of it to be very interesting. I’ve become quite interested in the performance of identity, especially here in Washington as there seems to be this very political, corporate identity that’s being projected within work spaces and interpersonal relationships. To have something like craft that is intensely emotional, intensely vulnerable, how does this fit within the social world of Washington?
NA: That’s I think why craft is important and is so vital today. It is exactly the antithesis of a lot of the things we deal with on a day to day basis. We’re working in a capitalist system that’s all about efficiency and getting things does. Its highly more virtual, less personal, and craft is all about the personal, all about the relationship, all about Pye’s “workmanship of risk” that prizes our own minds and own decisions in everything. It’s the balancing force. People always talk about that perhaps craft will disappear in the wake of industry. It’s the classic argument, but modern craft exists because of industry. Even more so as we’re moving further into the digital, we need to be reminded of the physical.
DandyCraft: As museums evolve towards a much stronger digital presence and begin to reach out to communities that may never actually visit, how do you maintain that critical tactile sense?
NA: We are physical beings and that hasn’t changed yet. That was what was so transformative about wonder was to be in a space and feel and smell and be surrounded by the world. Yes, there’s a desire always to be integrated into the virtual world. But being integrated into it also gives you that opportunity to promote the things that make what you’re doing different. Hopefully people will come to see what you’re doing because it’s a different experience. We have an advantage over paintings because you can’t understand a three-dimensional object in an image, and in such an image based culture it’s nice to know that things are richer than that.
DandyCraft: I think that wraps up the topics I wanted to cover, thank you so much for your time.
Please keep watching this space for an upcoming interview with ceramicist, Nicki Green, whose work brings queer identity to objects of domestic and religious rituals. More coming soon!
DandyCraft: Can you give me a sense of what your personal and professional journey has been that brought you to the Renwick?
NA: I think like many people in the craft field I didn't come out of craft. Originally I was studying art and taking photography classes and ended up with a degree in Art History from undergrad. I took a couple of jewelry classes and as a matter of fact I studied with Mary Lee Hu, who we have upstairs in our permanent collection right now. I don't think I even recognized that craft existed as a field at that point. I wound up taking museology for my masters, which is I think unusual for a curator. In the middle of studying for that program Michael Monroe, who is the former curator of the Renwick, came and spoke to our class. He was reopening the Bellevue Arts Museum as a craft museum. At the time I was studying to be a curator of modern and contemporary art. I spent all of my time doing programs at the Henry Art Gallery about new media, trying to collect new work like Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and figuring out how to put that into our collection. So that was what was on my mind at the time, so in a way it was how you go about incorporating unusual media into the collection, which has something to do with craft, I think. But anyway he (Michael Monroe), came in and talked about this tea pot show he was going to reopen the Bellevue Arts Museum with to a massively incredulous audience of students who said, “You’ve got to be kidding me! You’re going to reopen a failed museum with tea pots?” But it was intriguing and the other part of that was intriguing is that you had an opportunity to start a museum from the ground up. It brought in tons of crowds from all over the place. The prior rendition had been a contemporary art venue that just didn’t work with the community. The community had a lot of standing craft shows so we decided to go back to the roots there. I was hooked on that, not necessarily because of the tea pots, but because it was something interesting people. I went and applied to an internship there, and Stephano Catalani, had just been hired. He was working in a gallery in Seattle, he was not working in the craft world either, and Michael Monroe saw his work that was dealing with a lot of big, sculptural artists, and thought he would be a good fit. I started as an intern in the curatorial department. I worked over the next year as an intern. Eventually I graduated and worked around at various other museums. They had really wanted to hire me there but it took a while, so I got a job there and work as an Exhibitions Curator and Registrar, basically managed all of their traveling exhibitions. And then I gave up the Registrar job, moved into a full Exhibitions Curator position, that eventually turned into a full Curator position, that eventually lead me here. So it was only about eight years that I was there and that was my only real training in craft although I’d been trained in art and trained in curatorial, I just got to know craft through being there. I think it was the perfect entry into the craft field, because Michael Monroe, who has been at the Renwick, had such a brilliant knowledge of everything that was studio craft, and everything that was traditional. He also had the foresight to know that it was changing and he had brought in Stefano, who had a completely opposite perspective who was very excited by craft and the possibility of these things but who wasn’t tethered to those definitions and those older modes of looking at things. So that’s the way our curatorial team there was formed. We did a lot of things that worked outside the box of craft to see where it could go. Eventually it seemed like it was a good time to move and this position came open, actually was created, and I applied not thinking I would get it. It created a beautiful full circle, coming here after working with Michael for those years.
DandyCraft: It seems quite serendipitous, and it’s been wonderful to see what’s happened since you’ve been here as well. One of the things that I’m interested in is looking at craft outside of the box. One of the quotes I’ve come across is from “Put Your Things Down, Flip it and Reverse it: Reimagining Craft Identities Using Tactics of Queer Theory”, by Lacey Jane Roberts. She was saying that if you apply the multiplicity and fluidity of queer identity to craft, it allows for a much more open definition rather than being medium specific. Do you agree with that perspective, or what do you think queer theory has to contribute to the craft world?
NA: I guess I would need to you to tell me a bit about what you mean by queer theory, but in general when you start to explore craft as an idea rather than as one of five media, which never quite fit the bill and was more of just short-hand, craft has always been this amazing vehicle for people who are underrepresented. Whether its women’s communities, African American communities, who are making objects for other reasons. And there are definitely gender specific craft practices in the history of craft so it opens up a massive dialogue as a vehicle to discuss certain issues, as there have always been parallels with those issues.
DandyCraft: The mutual outsider status has really been powerful and that’s what I’m interested in for my project that focuses on how various LGBTQ artists subvert domesticity through traditional objects.
NA: As a matter of fact, although it’s not exactly to do with your project because it’s not LGBT, but there’s a show that I’m doing next year on Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. Have you heard of these?
DandyCraft: No I haven’t.
NA: There’s this woman, Frances Glessner Lee, who was born at the turn of the century and started to work in the 1940’s and 50’s. She was the young heiress to the International Harvester Fortune, had quite a bit of money. Her older brother went off to Harvard and she wound up not being able to go to college because she was a young lady and they had certain gender roles that they were promoting. So she was married off at nineteen and was extremely unhappy in her marriage. It eventually dissolved and in fact one of her kids said the reason it dissolved was because she liked to work with her hands and her husband couldn’t understand that. In any event, that dissolved so she was back under the care of her parents and trapped in that way for many years. When her parents passed away and her brother passed away, her brother had a very close friend who she had become very close with, who was a forensic investigator and taught forensics. He would regale her with all the problems with forensic investigation. At the time, people would come in and corrupt all the evidence, not knowing what they were doing, and they didn’t have a very good way to teach that. She became involved and started to create miniature crime scenes based on composites of actual crime scenes that they used to teach investigators how to approach the crime scene. So to the point of what you’re dealing with, this was a very gendered craft that she learned growing up, that you were allowed to learn miniatures by creating these doll houses that were all about teaching you the domestic and teaching you those roles. Here she was, very unhappy in this marriage, and managed to create these dystopian doll houses, that managed to break certain gender boundaries. She became the first female police captain in the country. She founded a forensics school at Harvard and taught those classes all the way until she died. Those doll houses are still being used today to teach investigators. They’re at the Baltimore Medical Examiner’s Office now. So we’re bringing those in next year, and it’s not obviously LGBT, but it deals with a lot of those same issues. Being railroaded into certain gender roles and trying to escape from that.
DandyCraft: Wow, what a complete 180. How did the dioramas fluctuate in size?
NA: They were one in to one foot in scale. Most of them could be encased in a two-foot by two-foot square, some of them are in the round and others are from a specific angle. You basically get this opportunity to glimpse these usually not particularly wealthy homes of the time period. It’s also a glimpse into elements of her past, like the wallpaper would be something she remembered from her childhood. With each one you have a statement given by the witness, and you look into the scene, and it’s all about teaching people to look.
DandyCraft: This reminds me of another trend where you see a professions beginning to use art and craft. Like with museums training doctors in visual analysis to improve their bedside manner and observational skills. Have you seen examples emerging that use craft in this manner?
NA: Yes, I’m sure I have. We’ve actually been doing tours for doctors, investigators, for quite a long time. We’ve talked a lot about the idea of STEM craft. Art and science aren’t traditionally removed from each other, and we’ve built a culture these days that removes those into two separate boxes where science is important and art is not. But the creativity involved in those things is obviously important, and there are a lot of artists, who are doing work with larger microbes. I was actually just looking at this British artist who has gone back to the Victorian tradition of diatoms, microscopic collages. I don’t think they’re the mainstream, but there’s definitely a lot of interplay between art and craft with science.
DandyCraft: I use to work in museum education and after watching the trend of blending the two together as with STEM to STEAM. I’m glad to see the Renwick doing that as well.
NA: Although I still tend to think that STEM to STEAM is a little ridiculous, as its trying to add art back into something. At that point you’ve added everything back in and you agree that the world is a complex entity that we need to explore.
DandyCraft: I think it’s challenging for teachers too, at least for the elementary and middle school grades, they have so much they’re already dealing with, that when you shift one subject, all the others shift as well. They’re already so overwhelmed it’s hard to mitigate from their perspective.
NA: We have a display case in one of the rooms that’s kind of surrounding those ideas, where it’s got a piece by Erik and Martin Demaine, a father and son who are two professors, in conversation with Anni Albers. They’re all about systems, and in essence these numerical patterns, and weaving being the template for modern computers, and not forgetting the history that comes with.
DandyCraft: We’ve talked a little bit about craft encompassing multiple identities, the multiplicity of media, the multiplicity of practices, allowing people to come in from whatever angle they’re comfortable with. Do you find craft to be an area where it’s easy to identify as an LGBTQ artisan as opposed to other areas of art? Even within the Renwick collection, do many of the artisans make that a part of their identity as an artist, or is it totally removed?
NA: I do think it is particular strong in craft. Many LGBT artists are particularly attracted to craft because of the obvious historical connection there, particularly fiber artists. It’s a particularly strong medium to talk about gender because it’s always been a gendered medium that’s sort of under the radar of a lot of mainstream American art. It allows for a quiet entry into that world where you can make a very strong statement. I think ceramics is also a strong area for that. I don’t know if I could characterize why off hand. A lot of artists approach it for different reasons.
DandyCraft: It’s interesting that you should identity those two mediums especially. As I was reaching out to curators and artisans across the craft world, ceramics and fiber were the two mediums that emerged most strongly. I struggled to find other people working in wood, metal, and other mediums that had the same connection in terms of their LGBTQ identity and the material.
NA: Metal to me seems like such a traditionally masculine medium that in a way it doesn’t speak to those issues as much because it’s so forefront in something that’s always been the dominant whereas the others become more subversive. For example, is a gay man works in fiber it makes a major statement. Ceramics just seems like perhaps it’s the accessibility or the community of it. There is such a strong community within working in a ceramics shop. To me ceramics is one of my favorite medium because it really can become anything.
Dandycraft: It’s also much more tactile. With metal you’re much more removed, you’ve got the gloves, headgear, creating more barriers between yourself and the piece.
NA: Yea, its personal…
DandyCraft: Yes. With ceramics and fiber, it’s much more personal. The formative process is much more connected, especially if you’re forging something that relates to your identity. That would be more important, I imagine.
NA: Yea, and there’s probably a number of artists, although I am not thinking of them off the top of my head, who do jewelry work as well. But I think that artist imprint, that handwork, and not just the actual intimacy of working, but also the intimacy of being able to see your own handprint in something, probably does play in with that.
DandyCraft: One of the things I’ve been reading within craft literature is the entry of DIY into craft and maintaining craft as a practice for skilled artisans and how to frame factor in DIY which is emerging very strongly. So how do you see this tension play out? On one hand you could see this opening up craft to this whole range of artisans, LGBTQ included, who wouldn’t have representation otherwise. But at the same time, I could see how this tension would arise. How do you feel about this shift going on?
NA: In some ways I don’t see it as a shift and in some ways I don’t necessarily see it as a tension I see them as being two different things. There are many artists who incorporate sloppy craft into their work purposefully and a lot of the people who are doing that are extraordinarily talented. There’s definitely a differentiation between museum worthy objects and objects that are just objects of use, production objects, that don’t rise to a certain standard. I love the DIY, and I’m glad there are so many makers out there, but I think what they’re making is separate from what people are looking to see in a museum in terms of a singularly skilled object. And I’ve incorporated a lot of what I would call sloppy craft work into our collection over the last two years. I think there’s a new test these days as to what skill means in the contemporary sphere. It used to mean something very different than it means today. Today there’s a lot more interest in the meaning behind how you make and the process there, so I would take an artist like Kathryn Clark who did the Foreclosure Quilt that we have upstairs. Her work is purposefully incorporating a lot of loose threads that are coming off of it, a lot of loose ends and a lot of fraying. It works as part of the composition and is meaningful, so that’s one of the tests I think. Someone like Jeffrey Mitchell, who is an LGBT artist, who does amazing ceramics work and other kinds of media, with paints and collage. But he as this ham handed way of handling clay that expresses something childish and looks sloppy in many ways, but the skill that goes into the creation of those works is phenomenal. The appearance of sloppiness doesn’t necessarily indicate an unskilled work.
DandyCraft: Its more the idea behind it…
NA: Yes. I’m really a proponent of skill, and I actually sort of miss skill in a lot of the contemporary work. That’s one of the things that ebbs and flows and I think the expression for a number of years in studio craft, the real heartfelt emotion that is the base of craft got lost. A bit more little more lee-way, a little less concern over the skill.
DandyCraft: So where did this idea of sloppy craft come from? Was it part of the spirit of the moment, or a particular school?
NA: I don’t know if it came from a particular school. There’s an element of the free form, if you go back to people like Peter Voulkos, that was not about crafting the perfect object. There was also that expressionism that was transcended. I think schools have definitely had a lot of influence in this. When the GI Bill came out, we had this massive influx of art students and art teachers. That supported the entire craft sphere for many, many years. They were tenured, and because they had academic positions they were able to create massive work, instead of working as an artist every day opposite a day job. Over the years, as we’ve gone into that period of STEM, gone away from the arts and gone into a period of recession, a lot of those programs have disappeared and a lot of the remaining programs have solidified into interdisciplinary programs. The post-modern which happens, so you end up with this interdisciplinary mash of things, which forefronts ideas but at the same time, people aren’t being taught those skills and people aren’t even in the schools any more to teach them. Essentially these days, when you go to art school, even when I was going to art school, in photography classes, we were begging to have classes that would teach us the zone system. They just didn’t teach that any more. They just say express yourself and it was more about critique than it was about teaching you technique. I think that’s had a major influence. I think a lot of the people who go into art school today, even if they go into a medium specific field, aren’t necessarily expected to produce medium specific work.
DandyCraft: Do you see that cycling back and changing? What would be the current that would shift it back to medium specific training?
NA: I don’t know what would shift it back towards that training unless it’s just a real interest in it. We’re definitely on a trajectory where we’ve moved away from that and most technique you learn. You could go to a craft school. You might apprentice somewhere, but most of it you’re learning on your own. That’s a trend that I’ve seen that’s really interesting. One of our artists upstairs, Dan Webb, who, at one point, just decided he wanted to learn to carve, he wanted a skill that was slow. His wife was a farmer and part of the slow food movement, and this was a way to get away from a computer screen and to slow down a little bit. He spent ten years just teaching himself the process of carving while he was trying to do his work and make a living. I think there are a lot of people that at a certain point want to get a little bit of depth into those areas, but I’m not sure that’s going to be, any time soon, codified into an academic sphere.
DandyCraft: What I’ve admired about craft is there is that room for self-taught individuals, who have made it their mission to create that path for themselves outside of normative trajectories.
NA: To that point the reason he (Dan Webb) has been so successful at that was because he has not chosen to be in that New York area or the L.A. arena, or those big art worlds where it’s very cut-throat and you don’t have that support. He’s chosen to be in Seattle, where’s there’s a community of artists, who are maybe under recognized on the national level, but who are close-knit enough to support each other doing that kind of experimentation.
DandyCraft: Do you see any centers emerging for the craft world? You mentioned that New York is very competitive. Do you see any new areas blossoming that could shift that attention?
NA: Interesting question. I don’t know if I have a good answer for that. The Seattle Art Fair is next week; I’m interested to see if that develops a little bit because certainly that area has a strong craft background. Obviously there’s a lot of craft happening in cities across the country, in Detroit, in San Antonio, in cities that are very strong. But in terms of becoming a center. I’m not sure if craft has really ever had a center.
DandyCraft: In visiting the Smithsonian Craft Show through my graduate program, our class spoke with a number of artisans who said they don’t aspire to be in museums and are content with making a living off what they do. It’s easy to imagine how incredibly talented individuals could fly under the radar of museums. In terms of collecting, how do you find these artisans?
NA: The internet is one way, but the way I find the most interesting individuals is through the artists themselves. I had an opportunity a few weeks ago to go out to a conference in Haystack, listen to a lot of people talk, interact with a lot of artists, hear what’s going on. Getting out to Archie Bray Foundation, places like that, where you can meet incredible artists working on their residencies. There’s a real network of those people under the radar that go residency to residency across the country and they introduce you to other artists. I recently found out about this amazing potter named Jami Porter Lara. She’s not a very well-known artist at this point but it was another artist that I respect very much who said they had just been to Anderson Ranch, she was working there, and that I should check her pieces out. They’re amazing. It’s a lot of word of mouth. You can’t tell a lot of things on the internet, especially when you’re talking about three dimensional objects. One of the bones I have to pick with a lot of things is that you get onto the internet on someplace like Pinterest and you see the same ten objects because someone took one great picture and posted and people are too lazy to post anything else, so it keeps coming up again and again. There are a thousand artists for every one of those images that are doing great work.
DandyCraft: Another facet of my research has been with craftivism. Given that the Renwick is here in Washington, have you seen any poignant examples of that within the local community?
NA: I’m not sure I’ve seen very much of that in the local community. But I have to admit that I’m probably not as connected with the local community having been a recent transplant here. Certainly there are artists who are within our greater local community like Sonya Clark who does amazing work that kind of craftivism. You might be familiar with that confederate flag that she brought a community together to unweave. I think there’s also a local community of the Combat Paper Project, which is another one of those. It’s a strain that is definitely all across the country. I also think of people like Sebastian Martorana, whose work corresponds so much to the degradation of that city. In almost all craft these days, it seems like the social component is extremely strong. It does seem like the most interesting thread going on in contemporary craft.
DandyCraft: How do you see this trend evolving as time goes on?
NA: I’m not sure if I can give you a good prediction on that. But I feel like there has been such a large scale exploration of what that means, a lot of things have already been done. The projects are really interesting, I’m curious over time, how much we’ll really think anyone outside of the craft sphere has really been aware of the projects, if they’ve made any real differences. It’s gone very much into the community project realm, which sort of moves it away from art, into social practice. Further than the half-way point. I feel like that may of off on its on thread. Many of the artists I’m interested in today have brought it back center, like Sebastian Martorana, whose work is very personal. You have people like Theaster Gates, whose work has become centered on creating community. That’s a positive thing, but I’m finding it outside the realm art at a certain point as people pursue their own lines of inquiry.
DandyCraft: I find that interesting, especially as craft has always had a community focus, but in returning to that has almost evolved into something else.
NA: When I try to define craft in the contemporary sphere, moving away from media and other distinctions, the definition I wind up with these days is really all about community. It’s about going back to the real beginnings of craft and thinking of Morris and Ruskin and those ideals that making really changes who we are. Not necessarily hand making, but making with tools, whatever it is, the human intervention of making versus leaving it to the machine. Inefficiency driven ideal of creating community and utopia through being very human and very human activity, seems to be at the heart of it.
DandyCraft: I find the vulnerability of it to be very interesting. I’ve become quite interested in the performance of identity, especially here in Washington as there seems to be this very political, corporate identity that’s being projected within work spaces and interpersonal relationships. To have something like craft that is intensely emotional, intensely vulnerable, how does this fit within the social world of Washington?
NA: That’s I think why craft is important and is so vital today. It is exactly the antithesis of a lot of the things we deal with on a day to day basis. We’re working in a capitalist system that’s all about efficiency and getting things does. Its highly more virtual, less personal, and craft is all about the personal, all about the relationship, all about Pye’s “workmanship of risk” that prizes our own minds and own decisions in everything. It’s the balancing force. People always talk about that perhaps craft will disappear in the wake of industry. It’s the classic argument, but modern craft exists because of industry. Even more so as we’re moving further into the digital, we need to be reminded of the physical.
DandyCraft: As museums evolve towards a much stronger digital presence and begin to reach out to communities that may never actually visit, how do you maintain that critical tactile sense?
NA: We are physical beings and that hasn’t changed yet. That was what was so transformative about wonder was to be in a space and feel and smell and be surrounded by the world. Yes, there’s a desire always to be integrated into the virtual world. But being integrated into it also gives you that opportunity to promote the things that make what you’re doing different. Hopefully people will come to see what you’re doing because it’s a different experience. We have an advantage over paintings because you can’t understand a three-dimensional object in an image, and in such an image based culture it’s nice to know that things are richer than that.
DandyCraft: I think that wraps up the topics I wanted to cover, thank you so much for your time.
Please keep watching this space for an upcoming interview with ceramicist, Nicki Green, whose work brings queer identity to objects of domestic and religious rituals. More coming soon!