BARBARA M. BERK

The 2020 Biennial Members Exhibition celebrates the diversity of talents in the museum’s membership base. This biennial exhibition is an important opportunity for young, mid-career, and veteran artists to exhibit their work to the Fuller Craft Museum community.  Artists both inside and outside of New England participate, showcasing works of metal, ceramics, glassware, furniture, textiles, basketry, woodturning, jewelry, and other craft-based media.

 

The exhibition is juried by Emily Zaiden.  Director and Curator of the Craft in America Center in Los Angeles, Zaiden has “curated more than forty exhibitions focused on contemporary craft, art, and design…She has published exhibition catalogues and written articles and reviews for journals including Archives of American Art Journal, Metalsmith, and Antiques and Fine Art. She has served as juror for various organizations and exhibitions including Hawaii Craftsmen, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, California Fibers, Furniture Society of America and the Smithsonian Craft Show.  [And she] has lectured on contemporary craft, and American and international decorative arts topics at conferences and museums across the country, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Craft Contemporary, and Milwaukee Art Museum.”  Zaiden has an M.A. from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture.  Previously, Zaiden was a Research Associate to the Decorative Arts department at LACMA and research editor for Architectural Digest. 

 

“Founded in 1969, the Fuller Craft Museum focuses solely on collecting contemporary craft, which is rooted in the creation of functional objects and dates back roughly to the end of World War II. Makers who work primarily with their hands in materials that are tactile and familiar – wood, metal, glass, ceramics, and fiber – have stretched the boundaries of these functional everyday objects into the conceptual, the personal, the virtuosic, and wildly imaginative studio craft scene.  The Museum explores this leading edge of contemporary craft through exhibitions, collections, education, and public programs.  It challenges perceptions of and builds appreciation for the material world.  The Fuller Craft Museum chronicles, interprets, and presents craft in its many forms, striving to keep this work accessible, to put people in touch with the minds and methods of the makers and the values embodied by craft.”

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My work explores the interplay of traditional fiber techniques with novel materials.  Using Renaissance lace stitches, I play with line, plane and pattern. Using modern industrial wire, I play with texture, volume and scale.

 

“Lace Eleven:  A Pair of French Knots” is a Bobbin Lace structure.  Using 16 threads for the Petite Knot and 20 threads for the Grand Knot, I created two squares of lace.  Playing with the long loose wire threads, I embroidered and embellished the surface of each lace square.  I then sewed the threads and lace together with wire to establish each 3-dimensional form.

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View:   Virtual Tour of the Exhibition

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About the work in the Exhibition: