Firsthand: Contemporary Craft in Context
Team: James Boyd Brent, Professor; Aidan O'Connor, Goldstein Director; Jean McElvain, Goldstein Museum Senior Curator; Thomas Mahota, Research Assistant
Program: Goldstein Museum of Design
This exhibition and research is about the handmade in design, design that starts with the hand as a tool in learning and production and comes alive through skillfully manipulated materials. We are referring to this as craft production—it’s where the activities of designing and making overlap.
The role of the hand in craft production is explored in hand-related themes:
• Hands adapt themselves to tools and tasks; they are conduits for experiential knowledge.
• Familiarity with a tool and a material in a trained hand can be a starting point for creativity—for example, a hand knows exactly the right amount of pressure to apply to a wall of clay spinning on a potter’s wheel so that it is just the right thickness, or with a soft touch a hand can instantly determine the quality of a piece of leather or the correct tension of a selvage.
The five case studies of local craft producers each demonstrate a high level of expertise in handmade processes. Our goal is to highlight the elegance of these processes and the beauty of the work itself, and also to stimulate ideas —and fresh perspectives—about the role of the handmade in contemporary design.
Keywords: The use of the hand in design production
Funders: All GMD programming is made possible in part by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operation Support Grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Other Collaborators: Richard and Debbie Cooter, Maggie Thompson, Amara Hark-Weber, Mercedes Austin, Eric Madsen, Urban Boatbuilders
