Distinguished Craft Artists:
Lissa Hunter
Lissa Hunter continuously explores the form of the coiled basket for sculptural possibilities beyond its traditional beginnings. Painting and drawing plays an increasingly important role in her work, along with the use of varied materials and structural techniques to expand the possibilities of expression. Hunter received a BA degree in Fine Arts and an MFA in Textile Design from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. She has exhibited and taught nationally for over 30 years. Ideas and materials are what inspire her, combined with everyday life experiences, nature and observations of the systems and rituals of being human.
Lissa Hunter has conducted a distinquished artist workshop for the James Renwick Alliance in the 1990’s. The members of the alliance visited her studio twice on craft study tours in 1993 and again in the summer of 2008.
Jane Sauer Gallery, a JRA gallery caucus member, carries her work.
Jacques Vesery
Jacques Vesery is a sculptor from Damariscotta Maine, creating wood art pieces. Jacques works in wood, striving to create an illusion of reality. Although nature as inspiration seems obvious, Jacques' vision begins with the way nature is repeated within the "golden mean" or "divine proportions". His inspiration comes from pattern and form more than actuality itself. Jacques has demonstrated/ taught his techniques and lectured on design in France, England, Canada and the U.S. at such locations as Journees Mondiales du Tournage D'art Sur Bois Congres, Loughborough University, Anderson Ranch, Arrowmont and Haystack Mt. School. Jacques' work is in several public and private collections including the Detroit Institute of Art, the Contemporary Art Museum of Honolulu, Yale University Art Gallery, Celestial Seasoning and Northwest Airlines Corporate collections. Currently, he serves on the Professional Outreach Program's Advisory committee for the American Association of Woodturners. He is also a contributing editor for the American Woodturner Magazine. In his free time he enjoys cycling, hiking, ice skating, cooking and gardening. Jacques, his wife Minda Gold, and their sons Isaac and Jonah enjoy living, working and playing in Maine, the way life should be.
The James Renwick Alliance visited Vesery’s studio during the Caucus Craft Study Tour to Maine in the summer of 2008.
His work is available through Del Mano Gallery, a JRA gallery caucus member.
Joyce Scott
The remarkable work of Joyce Scott is a protean combination of historian, narrator and maker. Nothing is off limits. Everything must be explored. To borrow a phrase from the architect Robert Venturi, her work is about “messy vitality”.
Mixed media, a facile and polite catch-all phrase overused to the point of cliché in the Art World today, is inadequate to describe the daily experiences of life that vibrate and pulse through Scott’s work. It is her brassy triumph over cultural adversity and her ability to powerfully communicate this sense of history through her work that shines through, separating it from the large piles of kitschy junk being extolled so lavishly in the contemporary art scene.
Elizabeth Scott, Joyce Scott’s 92-year-old mother, was among a small group of artists such as Faith Ringgold who were early innovators in using the language of traditional African-American quilt making as a contemporary art form. That window opened by her mother and others of her generation has allowed Joyce to leap full-blown into this arena, re-interpreting these ideas in combinations of fiber, beadwork, glass, ceramics and found objects, as well as a recent series of monoprints, which are having their first formal exhibition here. Together, they form a poetic and vibrant snapshot of this moment as a part of that longer history.
Joyce Scott is a 2007 winner of the Master of the Medium Award.
Her work is available through Snyderman Gallery, a JRA gallery caucus member.
Mary Jackson
Mary A. Jackson, a basketmaker from Charleston, South Carolina, is a 2008 recipient of the Macarthur Fellowship. The fellowship, besides being known as the genius award, comes with an annual stipend of $100,000 for five years.
Her baskets derive from traditional Gullah basketry that dates back to colonial America and even further in Africa. The basic materials are local fibers, sweetgrass, pine needles and bulrushes, which are laced (sewn) with strips of Palmetto palms. The baskets and basketmakers were essential during the early days of rice cultivation in South Carolina. The practice and traditions of basketmaking have been passed down through the families with many familiar with the baskets from the stands along Route 17 in Mt. Pleasant outside Charleston. As Mary learned basketry from her mother, so she has passed those skills on to her daughter and granddaughter. The baskets are strong, durable, and of enduring beauty.
Jackson makes traditional baskets as well as her original contemporary designs. She has said that after years of learning and making the traditional designs, she became bored. She wanted and needed to make her own contributions to the genre. Her baskets require rigorous craftsmanship and long hours of work. Her special commissions usually require two or more months to complete. Her designs, while mostly functional, are larger than traditional baskets, with greater use of the color variations in the fibers.
Her work is included in the permanent collections of various museums from the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston to the Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin. She had her first museum show at the Gibbes Museum in 1984. She had been featured in exhibitions and is in the permanent collection at the Renwick Gallery. Jackson was one of the artists featured in the 2000 show, Five Women in Crafts. She was portrayed as one if the artists in the video series produced by the Renwick. She is also a featured artist in Craft in America, which is touring the United States, and for which there is a catalog by Jo Lauria and Steve Fenton.
She is a regular participant of the Smithsonian Craft Show, which was among her first stops on the national stage. She was selling locally, when a visitor to Charleston asked her to apply to the Smithsonian show. She did in 1984, and has gone on to show at major craft shows annually. She is slated to exhibit at the Washington Craft Show on November 7-9 at the Washington Convention Center.