ASHEVILLE, NC (January 26, 2022)— Since 2005, the Center for Craft has annually funded academic researchers, independent scholars, curators, and graduate students focused on writing and reclaiming the history of craft through the Craft Research Fund grant program.

In its third year, the Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship awards $20,000 to two mid-career artists pursuing projects that advance, expand, and support the creation of new research and knowledge through craft practice. 

In total, the 2022 Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship, Exhibition Grant, and Project Grant awarded $137,135 to eleven organizations, scholars, and makers in support of craft research, exhibitions, catalogs, and projects in the United States.

Artist Fellowships

Robell Awake (Atlanta, GA) and Charlie Ryland (Rollinsford, NH) — $20,000

Carving New Histories: Toward a More Accurate Woodworking Imaginary

This team of artists aims to assemble a more accurate understanding of and community within period furniture and green woodworking by centering the life, work, and contribution of Black and Indigenous makers through research, documentation, and object making. Their project will culminate in a body of work such as a chair and other objects using methods learned through their research. 

Aram Han Sifuentes (Chicago, IL) — $20,000

Otro Mundo Es Posible: Textiles and Garments for Protest in Chiapas, Mexico

This project examines garments and textiles in Chiapas, Mexico and how they are and have been important to political movements in the region and beyond. For Han Sifuentes, sewing is a medium to investigate identity, politics, immigration and immigrant labor, possession and dispossession, citizenship and belonging, dissent and protest, and race politics in the United States. Her research explores how textiles played and continue to play a role in the Zapatistas Movement.

Exhibition Grants

Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY) — $12,361

Funk You Too! Contemporary Ceramics and the Legacy of Funk Art

This exhibition will bring together over sixty-five ceramic sculptures from historical and contemporary artists whose work embodies the themes and aesthetics of Funk art,  highlighting the clay medium as a tool of social and political critique and resistance. 

The George Washington University Museum & The Textile Museum (Washington, DC) — $15,000

Stitching Identities: Portraiture in Contemporary Textile Art

This exhibition will focus on the renaissance of portraiture and figuration in contemporary textile artworks, bringing together artists who represent a diversity of personal identity and artistic perspectives. 

Project Grants

Rebecca-Eli Long (Lafayette, IN) — $13,122

Crafting Autistic Interests

This project is part of dissertation research that uses participatory textile-making to explore autistic "special interests" and address narrative injustice. Through giving material form to autistic interests, this project serves as a form of textile politics that highlights the liberatory potential of autistic joy through craft.

Mariah Gruner (Cambridge, MA) — $13,901

The Mending Stitch: Reading Repair in Women’s Needle Craft Activism

This project will investigate the theme of repair in embroidered craftivism, examining the relationship between “women’s work,” mending, and the stitch. Through studying contemporary activist stitchers engaged in literal and symbolic repair, this research places the work of activist stitchers within the history of American political textiles.

Anna Riley (Brooklyn, NY) — $5,100

White Quartz and Ishgar: Craft on Film

This project will research a group of 20th century American scientists and anthropologists who sought to study and conserve Middle Eastern glass practices, and who often framed contemporary craft as "ancient technology." Riley explores the history and consequences of this framing.

Danielle Charlap (Beverly Hills, CA) — $6,701

Curating Cold War Nationalism: U.S. Craft and Design at Midcentury

This project is part of dissertation research that examines how midcentury curatorial practices staged craft and design as consequential cultural and political U.S. exports at home and abroad during the Cold War. 

Julia Silverman (Beverly Hills, CA) — $9,950

Fabricating Hopi Silver: Craft, Modernism, and the Protection of Visual Property

This project examines the 1938 Hopi Silver Project at the Museum of Northern Arizona, which sought to invent a distinctive Hopi style of jewelry. By combining archival research with community-based studies, this research investigates the implications for Hopi visual sovereignty today.

Glass Education Exchange (Madison, WI) — $10,500

Expanded Glass Histories

This project is a video podcast of conversations between scholars researching pre-1962 histories of glass through trade, labor, science, and industry with contemporary glass artists with overlapping interests. This podcast series is a decolonizing effort to expand conventional craft glass narratives.

Sharbreon Plummer, Savneet Talwar, Rachel Wallis (Addis, LA) — $10,500

Stitch by Stitch: A Conversation with Abolitionist Quilters

This project seeks to provide new insights on historical and contemporary craft within the U.S. through examining the ties between abolition and quilting. Using narrative and arts-based research methodologies, this project explores the role quilting can play in facilitating new forms of liberation.

The selection panel for the 2022 Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship included Weston Teruya, Artist, Related Tactics; Dr. Catherine Dormor, Head of Research Programmes at Royal College of Art and Reader in Textile Practices Regional Editor for Textile: The Journal of Cloth & Culture for Sage Publications; and Holly Jerger, Exhibition Curator, Craft Contemporary. 

The 2022 Craft Research Fund Exhibition and Project Grants panel included Monica Obniski, Curator of Decorative Arts and Design, High Museum of Art; Dr. Kelley Totten, 2011 Craft Research Fund Graduate Grant and 2009 Travel Grant Recipient; Dr. Martin Tsang, Cuban Heritage Collection Librarian and Curator of Latin American Collections at the University of Miami Libraries and 2021 Craft Research Fund Project Grant Recipient; Darienne Turner, Assistant Curator of Indigenous Arts of the Americas, Baltimore Museum of Art.

One of the primary funding sources for scholarship on American craft, Craft Research Fund grants are administered by the Center for Craft and supported by the Windgate Foundation. For inquiries regarding the Craft Research Fund or other grant opportunities at the Center for Craft, contact Mellanee Goodman, Grant Programs Manager, mgoodman@centerforcraft.org.

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ABOUT CENTER FOR CRAFT The Center for Craft is celebrating 25 years of advancing the field of craft through awarding grants, offering exhibitions and public programs, building strategic community and national partnerships, and spearheading initiatives in the United States. Founded in 1996, the Center is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential national 501c3 organizations working in the craft field today. For more information on ways to celebrate 25 years of craft and learn more about grants administered by the Center for Craft, visit www.centerforcraft.org.