The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design opens “Loving After Lifetimes of All This,” Jan. 30

“Loving After Lifetimes of All This,” an exhibition that explores “the intersections of craft, (self-)care, apprenticeship, and survival within the practices of historically disadvantaged populations” opens at The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design’s Benchspace Gallery & Workshop on Friday, Jan. 30.

Press release from The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design

Opening at The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design’s (CCCD) Benchspace Gallery & Workshop, January 30, 2015, Loving After Lifetimes of All This is an exhibition exploring the intersections of craft, (self-)care, apprenticeship, and survival within the practices of historically disadvantaged populations. Including artwork and ephemera from over 15 artists, activists, and archives nationwide, this exhibition considers ‘craft’ in an expanded sense to include such practices as homeopathy, scrapbooking, gardening, and other do-it-yourself (DIY) strategies for self-reliance.

With a focus on intergenerational skill-sharing, this exhibition positions craft-practice alongside the histories of community service, citizen journalism, and volunteerism, as another potential strategy for cultural resistance. In addition to traditional techniques such as weaving, quilting, ceramics, and woodworking, artists in this exhibition incorporate video, photography, archival material, and performance into their multi-disciplinary projects that often hybridize the historical with the contemporary.

Opening Reception: Friday, January 30, 2015
Time: 5:30 – 7:30 pm
Location: Benchspace Gallery & Workshop at The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design, 67 Broadway Street, Asheville, NC 28801
Admission: Free
Exhibition Dates: January 30 – May 23, 2015
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 6 pm

FEATURED ARTISTS
Gina Adams (Lawrence, KS); Tanya Aguiñiga (Los Angeles, CA); Natalie M. Ball (Chiloquin, OR); Jonathan D. Barnett (Kansas City, MO); NedRa Bonds (Kansas City, KS); Sonya Clark (Richmond, VA); Matthew Dehaemers (Kansas City, MO); Josh Faught (San Francisco, CA); Christopher Leitch (Kansas City, MO); Judith G. Levy (Lawrence, KS); Ramekon O’Arwisters (San Francisco, CA); Tina Takemoto (San Francisco, CA); and Temporary Services (Chicago, IL & Copenhagen, Denmark)

DETAILS
Exhibition highlights include an installation of artwork and video from San Francisco artist Tina Takemoto’s Looking for Jiro Onuma and Gentleman’s Gaman projects (2011). Inspired by the life of Jiro Onuma, a gay Japanese-American imprisoned within America’s Japanese incarceration camps during WWII, Takemoto has produced a performance film and various handcrafted objects that investigate Onuma’s strategies for survival. Sonya Clark, of Richmond, VA, will have four artworks on view relative to her ongoing investigations of early African-American entrepreneurship and endurance, including Barbershop Pole (2008) produced entirely from black combs. Two painted quilts from Klamath/Modoc artist Natalie M. Ball (Chiloquin, OR) interpret the reemergence of Modoc Ghost Dance ceremonies within contemporary tribal contexts. Chicago and Copenhagen-based collaboration Temporary Services contributes Booklet Cloud (1998-2014), an interactive installation of suspended publications, including How-To’s and guides to ‘creative approaches to living radically,’ produced by their publishing imprint Half Letter Press. Self-help periodicals also appear within the weavings of San Francisco-based artist Josh Faught, whose artwork Triage (2009) pays tribute to home-care, self-care, and activism throughout the ongoing AIDS crisis.