FROM TINY SHINY TO HEAVY METAL

The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design is one of those small jewels that make this area so special. This regional center of the University of North Carolina studies Twentieth Century Studio Craft in America, working collaboratively with UNC-Asheville, Appalachian State University and Western Carolina University. This is the appropriate location for such a center since southern Appalachia is world-renowned for its indigenous fine crafts.

In the decade since its inception, CCCD has sponsored national panels and events, achieving a reputation as the primary site where history and criticism of craft are treated with the same academic rigor that is applied to art history and criticism in universities. A major effort has used a private grant of $500,000 to fund the writing of Makers: A History of American Studio Craft, the first-ever undergraduate textbook on the subject of Studio Craft. When the University of North Carolina Press releases this peer-reviewed book in 2010, I shall have more to say about this landmark effort.

The Center has grounds and a short hiking trail with intriguing public sculptures by David Tillinghast (Earth Mound and Underground Bell), Harry McDaniel (Fiddleheads), Roger Halligan, David Nash and others. I am surprised at how few people are aware of the Center’s small public gallery and the quality of the exhibitions that are mounted there.

The current exhibition, entitled Different Tempers: Jewelry & Blacksmithing, is an intriguing exhibit curated by art historian Suzanne Ramljak, editor of Metalsmith magazine. Taken as a whole, it is a study in scale. The work of fourteen fine craftspeople from eight states is on display, running the gamut of metalsmithing. There are pieces of coldworked precious metal jewelry and there are massive forged steel pieces. “From tiny shiny to heavy metal” was the flippant description passed on to me by CCCD director Dian Magie.

Button is an imaginative piece of jewelry created by Melanie Bilenker of Philadelphia, PA using ebony, resin, Ms. Bilenker’s hair and precious metals. Massive Wrought Cuff I is a piece of blackened silver wrought by Natasha Wozniak of Brooklyn, NY.

Moving to a slightly larger scale is David Clemons of Little Rock, AR. His sculpture The Trees We Construct to Conceal our Strange Fruit is a disturbing piece composed of a silver sculpture surrounded by a steel cage with botanical details. Only upon close approach do you detect the poem Strange Fruit by Lewis Allen, made famous by Billie Holiday. The poem is written into the plastic base and only observable from above. The poem gives new significance to the silver chains and the tree motif of the sculpture: slavery and lynching.



Larger still, and entirely made of steel, is Tacitocypriose by Maegan Crowley of Dolores, CO. I liked the way in which this piece depicted the mysteries of botany: how does a plant know to grow its roots down and its flowers up? What happens at the transition between these two growth instincts?

Albert Paley of Rochester, NY is nationally known for his gates and his exterior sculptures. In the current CCCD exhibit, Paley is represented by forged steel andirons and a medium-sized (for Paley) recent sculpture. In Asheville, we already have his weathering steel sculpture Passage at the Federal Building, executed in 1995. If you can’t easily get to downtown Asheville, this grand piece (37 feet high, 23 feet wide and 16 feet in depth) can be seen at a sculpture website.

The Different Tempers exhibit runs at CCCD through December 11, with gallery hours 10:00 am to 5:00 pm Monday through Friday. The Center is located on the grounds of the Kellogg Center on Broyles Road in Henderson County between Route 64 East and South Rugby Road. Consult CCCD’s website or call (828) 890-2050 for directions.

© 2009 Edward C. McIrvine

Arts Spectrum column #459

November 13, 2009