Hands-On: Critical Connections Between Craft and Pedagogy

As Jenni Sorkin explores in Live Form (2016), artists working in craft media have often built social and economic networks anchored in teaching to achieve self-sufficiency rather than artistic canonization. This panel invites conversations about the ways in which making and teaching were inseparable for artists working in craft media across North America during the twentieth century and up to today. In Mexico, Canada, and the United States, artists have turned to textile, ceramics, wood, glass, and metal to test boundaries and devise radical social and artistic practices. Considering a range of educational settings, including specialized craft schools, grass roots organizations, university departments, and government-funded institutions, we encourage exploration and critique of how art and pedagogy inform one another. What techniques developed to transfer complex embodied knowledge from teacher to student? How did art education programs deliver, or fail to deliver, on craft’s seemingly democratic promises? How was craft instruction used as both a tool of domination, in carceral institutions and boarding schools, as well as liberation, in grassroots contexts? What can we learn from craft pedagogy’s prioritization of process over finished object? And finally, how can treating craft as a pedagogical framework inform new approaches to craft and craft histories? Interest in craft ideals seems to reappear in times of political turbulence and social transformation. How should we understand the promises of liberation latent in these returns? We invite papers from artists, educators, and art historians exploring connections between craft and pedagogy historically and today.