Smithsonian Craft Show 2025 Volume 45.4
GRAPHT by Nick Cave of vintage metal serving trays, vintage tole and needlepoint on wood panel, 92.1 x 92.1 x 5.1 centimeters (each panel), 183.5 x 92.1 x 27.3 centimeters (overall), 2024. © Nick Cave. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Photograph by Dan Bradica Studio.
MUFFY YOUNG | WEARABLE
It is hard to envision the absence of something that’s always been there. When we take something for granted, we lose our gratitude, but more vitally, we lose the knowledge of how much work it took to make that thing in the first place.
I grew up in my young adulthood accompanying my mother, Carolyn, to the Smithsonian Craft Show. I remember feeling like I was in a hall of treasures, and I’m not referring to the jewelry, or the porcelain vessels, or the elegant clothes. Each person, many of whom I knew, possessed all the knowledge, skill and passion to create these works of art. One hundred and twenty in all. What a magnificent gathering of human expression.
To some this may seem to be a frivolity, and nothing could be further from the truth. For starters, the show is organized by the Smithsonian Women’s Committee, an all-volunteer group that raises money for the Smithsonian Institution. In the forty-three years the show has been organized, more than fourteen million dollars have been raised for museum exhibitions, research projects, collection acquisitions, and more. With the recent push to eliminate or severely cut the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency that supports our nation’s most important cultural institutions and educational repositories, the noble work carried out by the Women’s Committee stands out ever more starkly in its beneficence.
The Visionary Award is another aspect of the show that illustrates its fundamental desire to elevate the crafts. Started in 2014, it was introduced to put a spotlight on innovative makers who have put in a lifetime of work. At the United States capital, there was an additional significance in rendering this award here, suggesting that our country could, and should, do more to honor those who preserve our traditions and push the envelope of handmade objects. This year, in giving the award to Nick Cave, an African-American multimedia artist who is most well known for his enigmatic and delightful Soundsuits, the Women’s Committee has chosen to elevate a very unique voice.
Cave’s first Soundsuits emerged from the national convulsion that was the Rodney King beating. The scene, caught on film by a nearby resident, and the subsequent acquittal of the police officers involved, brought out the intense knot of deep injustices, complicated racial relationships and a sense of hopelessness. It was in this context that Cave made his first Soundsuits, a physical form for a voice that had so much to say that it couldn’t all get out at once.
An evolving universe was born out of those genesis pieces. Even back to 2007 when Ornament covered Cave in a cover feature, he was experimenting with different mediums. His Tondos, also made from similar materials to his Soundsuits, were wall pieces, miniature galaxies, portals to the realm where the Soundsuits dwelled. The rich surface textures of Soundsuits, made from recycled Afghans, enthralled and bedazzled a much younger me.
Surfaces are what we see first, and often they can be alluring all by themselves. But looking only surface deep at a work of craft, at a superficial level that breezes over its reality, its physicality, its presence, means you miss out on so much more. Because a superficial view of the world, where things are disposable and consumable, reduces our humanity to waste and desire. It makes us take things for granted, to lose our understanding of where everything comes from. It ungrounds us, by filling our heads with a fanciful fairy tale where extraction from the earth has no costs, where producing mountains of plastics that go into our oceans and landfills is invisible and undeterred, where destroying ecosystems has no bearing on where we get our food, and industrial pollution is completely detached from the concept of clean air and water.
LYNN REINTSAMA | WEARABLE
SUSAN LENZ | DECORATIVE FIBER
This viewpoint pervades American culture, and the effects of that ungrounded perspective are all around us. Buddhists would tell us that we’re not being present. That instead of actually living, we’re constantly dreaming of the future, the past, what we want and desire, what we fear, rather than simply being.
Craft is one of the antidotes, and that’s not being flippant. Anyone who is a longtime collector who is familiar with artists, or has friends who are craftspeople, knows that focus, that ability to subsume themselves in their work and the process. That concentration, that paying attention to the here and now, has been present in every practicing artist I’ve ever met. Even the ones who sometimes have their head in the clouds!
It takes being receptive, and being receptive requires respect. But when those doors open, you are rewarded with something rare these days: connection. And the beautiful nature of this revelation comes in layers. From the physical piece that the artist has made, giving their time, care and attention, to talking with the artist, learning how and why they made that piece, to potentially purchasing and owning that work, there is a flowering of humanity through this personal exchange.
KARI LONNING | BASKETRY
ANNA JOHNSON | JEWELRY
ROBERT & TOR ERICKSON | FURNITURE
VALERIE COX | WEARABLE
Craft can have a lot to say, just as Nick Cave’s work does, and exploring a little deeper shows the hidden messages all around. Valerie Cox of Vervet Noir loves telling stories. Each garment, made from a variety of collected fabrics and upcycled clothing, has a poem or other embroidered communiqué, the seed for the narrative Cox wishes to tell. She then either draws an image, or finds one that inspires her, digitizes it, and through the use of a computer program, embroiders the design on the fabric. Ferns, flowers, birds and branches waft across the garment, as verse after verse scrolls past, each line embroidered in golden thread.
Cox uses contrasting fabrics to good effect, mixing some well chosen bolts of cloth purchased along her global travels to pair with upcycled fabric taken from another garment. She talks about covid and the lives it took and the disruption it caused; she inscribes a verse of poetry from a Palestinian poet slain in an Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis. Cox hides these intense narratives in plain sight, with the beautiful imagery around them potentially leading the casual admirer to believe that all they’re looking at is a pretty jacket.
But to the person who sees, who reads, who notices, a journey through the human condition awaits. In her A Beautiful Land coat, a dark, dark blue velvet surface is embroidered with colorful parrots, tiger lilies and yellow hibiscus. Yet the short story written there is anything but idyllic, and ends,
“The men of power turned their backs and rejoiced in the piles of treasure they had amassed on the backs of their poor.
When they looked out from their palaces, they were surprised to see nothing but red marks on the marble of their verandas.
And yet, even as the blood flowed like rain from their hands, their only foolish response was “Why God, why?”
These are not meek words, and Cox’s wearable art is a case study in how craft creates conversation and communicates. So too does Cave’s most recent work. His continuing conversation with himself, the world, and the material proceeds, with metal collages blended with tole and needlepoint, or giant cast iron figures accompanied by bronze bouquets. It only takes a moment of clear eyes to see that the strong emotions born out of Rodney King remain undiminished.
AMALGAM (PLOT) by Nick Cave of bronze, tole flowers and cast iron door stops, 58.4 x 254.0 x 119.4 centimeters, (face-down figure), 160.0 x 172.7 x 165.1 centimeters (face-up figure),160.0 x 304.8 x 317.5 centimeters (overall), 2024. © Nick Cave. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Photograph by Dan Bradica Studio.
Cave says of his art that, “My work can sit in a craft space when discussing making, but I see my work sitting in an art space fully as whatever it needs to be and however a viewer needs it to function for themselves.” This feels like a generous stance, yet most artists understand that their work is beyond themselves.
“It’s a true honor to be celebrated and held up as an example for this group of artists,” Cave mentions when asked about how it feels to receive this year’s Visionary Award. “I am grateful and humbled to be centered here on the eve of my exhibition next Winter at SAAM.” He has a wonderful message on clothing and art-to-wear, contrasting it with his own performance work. “While my work is based on the body and I do wear the work for photography and performance, I think you are talking about fashion and the power of expression. Being your fullest self is integral to being alive fully, and I think the voices of what we put on our body enable that to be realized.”
Of his Soundsuits, Cave is succinct in what they represent to him. “Identity, expression, protection, speaking out, staying safe, standing tall and proud.”
Art helps us process the world differently, ways that touch the heart, stir our memories, and beguile the mind’s eye. Craft takes art in the direction of three-dimensional objects, or material collages and compositions that stretch beyond putting paintbrush to canvas. The common thread is the tool, the use of the hand. And the hand touches, holds, and grasps. We could all use some holding onto, as our world seems to whirl in too many frightening directions these days.
Walk among the aisles at the Smithsonian Craft Show, and you’ll find something to hold onto. You’ll find a cause being championed, not just the money raised by the Smithsonian Women’s Committee, to help projects that enrich America’s cultural heritage and educates the public, but also an embrace of us being together as a people. Shows are fun. Being out and about, mingling with others in a beautiful, stately space, while talking to those who honor where we’ve come from, and are charting out where we’re going. What could be more wondrous?
The Smithsonian Craft Show hosts its 43rd annual event at the National Building Museum, April 23 - 27, 2024. 401 F St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001. Visit their website at www.smithsoniancraftshow.org.
STEPHEN MERRITT | CERAMICS
ELLEN MEARS KENNEDY | PAPER
JACQUELINE OSSENFORT | LEATHER
ALEXANDRA VALI | JEWELRY
AMY LYONS | MIXED MEDIA
RACHEL DAVID | METAL
JERE WILLIAMS | WOOD
Patrick R. Benesh-Liu is Coeditor of Ornament and a lifelong participant in his parents’ creative journey. From growing up in the Ornament office on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles to his first administrative work in the Vista, California building during high school, Benesh-Liu has had the fortune of being immersed in craft, culture and wearable art. Since November, he has been gathering materials for several articles. A good tip from Emily Edelstein of CraftNOW Philadelphia led him and his father, Robert, to the opening for “The Ecology of Fashion” at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Among all the Drexel University fashion students, as well as attendees dressed in their best, the opening was as impressive as the show. Benesh-Liu also brings word from Phoenix, Arizona, where another special year at the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market filled a weekend with friendship and good conversations. At the other side of the country, in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian Craft Show brings one hundred twenty artists to the National Building Museum, raising money for the Smithsonian Institution. As a longtime regular and huge fan of the show, Benesh-Liu is especially thrilled to see Nick Cave as this year’s Visionary Artist. Finally, he explores the work of Taiwanese jewelry artist Aka Chen, who works in titanium and precious gems, at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California.
