material concern

i haven’t been posting so often for the past couple weeks: because things have been crazy busy.

I’m really excited: during fashion week, we’ll be screening a short film by my very talented friend peter shanel…the film features popomomo’s fall 09 collection, and its awesome!

we shot for two days at my friend julie’s awesome house. I’ll write more about the film and the people who worked on it later,

but in the meantime here’s a behind the scene’s look at the shoot:

and then an invite to the screening party at the mandrake in culver city march 19th:

lecture at USC

March 2, 2009
9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
University Park Campus
Watt Hall
Galen Ceramics Studio (Room 107)

Modern Craft: Directions and Displacements
After many years out in the cold, craft is a hot topic for artists and historians. Received narratives of nineteenth-century imperialist and industrial aesthetics are being displaced by studies that focus on the figure of the artisan. Fixtures in the Modernist firmament, from the Bauhaus to Post-Minimalism, are being reevaluated according to new ideas about production. Meanwhile, contemporary artists are embracing carpentry and ceramics, and a whole youth subculture is taking up knitting and other hobby techniques. In this talk, Glenn Adamson will provide a brief survey of the terrain. By looking closely at three areas of contemporary practice in particular-DIY protest art, ceramic sculpture, and so-called “Design Art”-he will also suggest where modern craft is heading next.

Glenn Adamson is Deputy Head of Research and Head of Graduate Studies at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he leads a graduate program in the History of Design. His research interests include modern craft and design; furniture and ceramics in England and America in the 17th and 18th centuries; and decorative arts theory. Dr. Adamson is co-editor of the triannual Journal of Modern Craft, and the author of Thinking Through Craft (Berg Publishers/V&A Publications) and the forthcoming Craft Reader (Berg, 2009).  His other publications include Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World (MIT Press), and Gord Peteran: Furniture Meets Its Maker (Milwaukee Art Museum). Presently he is working on an exhibition about Postmodernism, to be held at the V&A in 2011.

Image: Marianne Jorgenson, Pink M.24 Chaffee, Copenhagen, 2006.