critical craft forum

 
 

What is Critical Craft Forum?

Link: Critical Craft Forum Website

Critical Craft Forum offers real time conversations about critical issues of interest to the field. Anyone can participate and shape the conversation. We are energized by over 12,700 participating members as of June 2020—and add new members daily -- from places across the globe.

People like you make CCF into a platform for dialogue, discussion, and debate. 

Email us at criticalcraftforum@gmail.com to collaborate on and create future projects:

  • Podcasts and Blog Launched October 13!!! Subscribe on iTunes to Critical Craft Forum (Not on iTunes? Listen here)

  • College Art Association: See programs tab for current call for proposals and upcoming presentations.CCF has been invited to create a day of programs at CAA 2018 in Los Angeles (9th Annual CCF Session at CAA!) Update soon for CAA 2019!

  • Gender and Adornment, an ongoing research project with Benjamin Lignel and Namita Wiggers

  • Instagram projects include building an archive of Americans of Asian and Pacfic Islander heritage working through craft for the month of May 2020. Project grew exponentially, with the number of posts matching the day of the month. Final project is an archive of nearly 450 people.

BACKGROUND

In 2008, Namita Gupta Wiggers and Elisabeth Agro started Critical Craft Forum out of a desire for a place to talk with people across the craft community. From this emerged a Facebook group (2010) annual sessions at College Art Association (2010-2019), and more. See the about page for full details.

ABOUT

Critical Craft Forum offers real time conversations about critical issues of interest to the field. Anyone can participate and shape the conversation. We are energized by nearly 19,000 members as of December 2021 – and add new members daily in the Facebook group.

Critical Craft Forum emerged out of a desire for a place to talk with people across the craft community. Started in 2008 through sessions at the American Craft Council Conference and College Art Association, CCF became an actively moderated Facebook group (2010), hosted annual session at College Art Association (2010-2019), collaborated to create an unsettling coloniality bibliography with Aram Han Sifuentes, Lisa Vinebaum and Namita Wiggers (see Special Projects to download PDF), podcasts on iTunes, Gender + Jewelry project (@genderandjewelry), support writers contributing to the forthcoming Companion on Contemporary Craft, Wiley Blackwell Publishers, and an Instagram feed @criticalcraftforum.

Facebook remains the most active place to engage in conversation and dialogue. To join, request membership in Critical Craft Forum on Facebook.

People like you make CCF into a platform for dialogue, discussion, and debate. Thanks to seed funding and support from Center for Craft, we were able to develop this website.

Critical Craft Forum works to expand dialogue in new ways.

Namita Gupta Wiggers - Director | Curator | Co-Founder

Namita Gupta Wiggers is a writer, curator, and educator based in Portland, OR. She is the Director | Curator and Co-Founder of Critical Craft Forum. Wiggers is the Program Director of the Master of Arts in Craft Studies at Warren Wilson College, North Carolina. This low residency program, the first of its kind, focuses on critical and historical craft studies (www.warren-wilson.edu/craft). From 2014-17, Wiggers taught in MFA Applied Craft + Design, co-administered by Oregon College of Art + Craft and Pacific Northwest College of Art, Oregon College of Art + Craft, and at Portland State University. From 2004-14, she served as Curator (2004-2012) and then Director and Chief Curator (2012-14), Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR.

She contributes to online and in-print journals and books, serves as the Exhibition Reviews Editor, The Journal of Modern Craft, and on the Editorial Boards of Garland and Norwegian Crafts. Recent projects include: Across the Table, Across the Land with Michael Strand for the National Council on Ceramic Education in the Arts; EVERYTHING HAS BEEN MATERIAL FOR SCISSORS TO SHAPE, a textile-focused exhibition at the Wing Luke Museum of Asian American Experience, Seattle; a forthcoming publication with Wiley Blackwell Publishers; and Gender + Adornment, an ongoing research project with Benjamin Lignel. 

She serves on the Board of Trustees, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and is a former board member of the American Craft Council, and The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design.

Namita has served as the Director of Critical Craft Forum since 2014.

email criticalcraftforum@gmail.com

Elisabeth Agro -  Advisor | Co-Founder

Elisabeth is Co-Founder of and Advisor to Critical Craft Forum. The Nancy M. McNeil Associate Curator of American Modern and Contemporary Crafts and Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She serves as an advisor to the project.