As a complementary exhibition to DVAC’s wildly popular SHOP LOCALSHOP ART-themed annual ARTtoBUY: Holiday Gift Gallery, DVAC is presenting selections from the Ohio Designer Craftsmen’s “Best of 2013.”
While ARTtoBUY provides a showcase for the finest of our region’s contemporary craft artists, these additional works by members of the ODC provide an opportunity to extend the conversation beyond the Miami Valley. For this exhibition, DVAC chose pieces by artists who integrate traditional craft and contemporary art-making concepts; whose work commands unique and bold mastery of materials and techniques; and whose ideas are declared in artful interpretations.
Cynthia Cetlin’s wool sculptures resemble deep-sea creatures. Collar, echoing the shapes found in coral reefs, is wearable.
Many of these artists fuse function with fine craft, such as in the delicate wool and silk “Collar” by Cynthia Cetlin, the dynamism of “Storm’s Eye Ring” by Sharona Muir, and the intimacy of “Relations” by Rebecca Szaparagwoski. Others inject fresh perspective into time-honored craft materials in decorative objects, such as fiber in Deborah Bewley’s “House with 37 Balls III” and ceramic in Denise Romecki’s “Super Storm.”
Juror of the ODC’s Best of 2013, Michael W. Monroe, a renowned expert in the field of fine art craft, and director emeritus of the Bellevue Arts Museum, (Washington) stated that the objects he selected “were those in which the artists made conscious attempts to add fresh ideas to our visual world rather than merely restating previously existing ones. I was attracted to pieces presenting original emotions and ideas—emotions and ideas that encouraged me to respond in unanticipated patterns of thinking and feeling.”
DVAC honor’s the spirit of Mr. Monroe’s curatorial intent, that “visitors to the ‘Best of 2013’ exhibition will find new visual expressions, both provocative and pleasurable.”
DVAC is pleased to partner with the Ohio Craft Museum and the Springfield Museum of Art in presenting selections from the Ohio Designer Craftsmen Best of 2013 Annual Juried Exhibition, now in its 30th year.
This traveling exhibition of more than 100 works by ODC members from 44 states and Canada was first shown in Columbus, Ohio from May 5 to June 23, 2013; in Portsmouth, Ohio from July 12 to September 20; and is now on view in the Springfield Museum of Art from October 8 to December 1, 2013.
Organized for DVAC by guest curator Lesley Neufeld
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