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Vessel Philadelphia: The Art of Containment and Today’s Makers
February 10, 2023 @ 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Vessel Philadelphia: The Art of Containment and Today’s Makers | Fri. Feb 10, 2023 | 6:30 – 7:30 pm | In-Person Event
Click HERE to RSVP for this In-Person Event
Join us here at the Museum for Art in Wood for a conversation with local artists about how the form of the vessel inspires their work. This is an in-person event. If you are unable to join us, there will be a recording available afterward.
Portrait of Miriam Carpenter by Laura Billingham
Miriam Carpenter is a contemporary artist and designer based in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. As a Rhode Island School of Design alumna, she began her career designing alongside Mira Nakashima. Through new processes, she investigates the mundane, unveiling the hidden complexities around us. Imbued with heart and soul, her action-oriented form of art is a union of traditional technique, ingenuity, and talent that is rooted in a conscious effort to create lasting positive change. Carpenter’s work can be found internationally in both private and public collections and has been exhibited most notably at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Michener Art Museum, Wharton Esherick Museum, Fuller Craft Museum, Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum, DeVos Art Museum, Philadelphia International Airport, SOFA Chicago, Design Miami and Moderne Gallery where she is currently represented. She has been awarded six international residencies over the past eight years and is an active participant in artist collaborations around the globe.
Syd Carpenter’s work includes sculpture responding to African American farms and gardens. She has been a professor of studio art at Swarthmore College since 1991, retiring in 2022. She began this work after purchasing her home in Philadelphia, where she began gardening, following in the footsteps of her mother, Ernestine Carpenter, and her grandmother, Indiana Hutson. Both women were master gardeners. Subsequent to teaching, she is developing projects in landscape design in addition to producing sculptures. Awards include a United States Artist Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Woman Fellowship, Pew Fellowship in the Arts, Multiple Leeway Foundation Fellowships, National Endowment for the Arts, the Peggy Chan Endowed Professorship of Black Studies, The James A. Renwick Distinguished Educators Award, Multiple Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grants and a Center for Established and Emerging Artists Fellowship. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Montreal Museum of Art, the Swedish National Museum, African American Museum of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Tang Museum of Skidmore College, the Fuller Craft Museum as well as many other public and private collections. Her guest artist residencies include Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Penland, Peters Valley Center, Watershed Center, Anderson Ranch, Bennington College, and the Brandywine Graphics Workshop.
Kate Dannenberg is a jeweler and metalsmith living in South Philadelphia. With thoughtful craftsmanship and attention to tactile experience, she creates jewelry and objects informed by the visual qualities of the natural world. She is interested in the way humans physically interact with precious and everyday objects—the way these interactions affect both the person and the object. Through her work as a teaching artist and curator, she strives to uplift the jewelry and craft communities through inclusion, education, and enthusiasm. Kate’s work is made by hand from recycled and responsibly sourced materials.
Kate is a member of Ethical Metalsmiths and earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Jewelry and Metalsmithing from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2015. Her work was included in The Metal Museum’s exhibition 40 Under 40: The Next Generation Of American Metal Artists in 2019, the Philadelphia Museum of Art Fine Craft Show (2020-2022), and the Smithsonian Women’s Committee’s inaugural Craft Optimism in 2021, among other exhibitions. She recently completed an artist residency at Penland School of Craft.
Jason McDonald is an artist working primarily in glass. Currently, he lives in Philadelphia, where he is pursuing an MFA degree at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture. He was introduced to furnace glassblowing at the age of 14 through the Hilltop Artists program in his hometown of Tacoma, Washington. Jason credits this program for exposing him to glass, a material that has held his attention and opened up a world of new possibilities. Jason has spent the majority of his career focusing on traditional Venetian furnace techniques, including goblets and pattern making. He uses glass to talk about a range of issues like the barriers BIPOC people face in accessing creative spaces and the wild joy of chasing technical pursuits. He is passionate about sharing his love of the material as well as the process of glassblowing. His ambitions include building a home studio where he can invite a diverse group of people to come play at the furnace, with an impractically large garden just outside the workshop door.
This event is free to the public. The Museum for Art in Wood interprets, nurtures, and champions creative engagement and expansion of art, craft, and design in wood to enhance the public’s understanding and appreciation of it. A suggested donation of $5 per person enables us to provide programs and exhibitions throughout the year.
Questions? Please contact Katie Sorenson, Director of Outreach and Communications, at [email protected].