Dispatches, Fall/Winter 2020
In light of the global pandemic, craftspeople everywhere have been forced to pivot from their regular operations to new and unfamiliar ways of connecting to audiences. New Brunswick craftspeople and organizations are no different. Craft NB is taking strides to help members navigate the online world through various means: a brand new online marketplace as an extension our existing website; the creation of online professional development tools and courses; a brand new digital Christmas market in lieu of our traditional in-person one; and a revisit of membership benefits to see how we can best adapt and serve in this new digital era are among the many things on the horizon.
— Craft New Brunswick
Aestival Festival Fundraiser, Craft Nova Scotia
Aestival Festival is Craft Nova Scotia’s only annual fundraiser. All funds raised go towards the programs and services we provide to support the fine craft community. This will be increasingly important in the time of a global pandemic. Due to COVID-19 the event has been postponed until October 2, 2020.
Tickets to the Aestival Festival are $80, and ticket holders are guaranteed to leave the evening with a handcrafted object donated by one of Craft Nova Scotia’s members. Only 100 tickets will be sold. A total of 105 donated objects will be displayed and when your number is called you have 20 seconds to choose which object you want. If your number is drawn first, you’ll have 105 items to choose from. If your number is drawn last, you’ll have six to choose from. At the end of the evening we’ll hold a lottery to raffle off the five remaining items.
— Craft Nova Scotia
Life at the MCC is chugging along, but program planning is a bit choppy due to the whole COVID thing. Two visiting artist “masterclass” style workshops have been cancelled, hands-on workshops are on hold, our big holiday sale is cancelled and may go online, a new Zoom artist talk series is still in the planning phase, fall fundraiser is questionable, various partnerships are caught up in deliberations about what will be possible this fall ... you get the point ... a lot of chaos. We’re doing an online mask auction in August/early September, but that will be over by print time.
So, the text below highlights a fall exhibition where the details are fully hammered out and I can say, with a high degree of assurance, that it will take place as stated below.
In September-October 2020, the Manitoba Craft Council is presenting LURE, a solo exhibition of ceramic work by Winnipeg artist Peter Tittenberger. The body of work presented in LURE arises out of MCC’s earlier Neurocraft project in which craftspeople and neuroscientists were paired to create work inspired by the brain. Tittenberger was matched with neuroscientist Dr. Gilbert Kerouac whose research focus is on the role of the thalamus in fear and anxiety. This new series explores the lure — be it natural or manufactured, obvious or hidden — as a trigger for desire. The question of what or who is being lured and why is left to the viewer. LURE is on Sept. 4-Oct. 31, 2020 at the Shirley Richardson Craft Gallery, C2 Centre for Craft, 1-329 Cumberland Ave., Winnipeg, Man.
— Manitoba Craft Council
Peter Tittenberger, 1. Lure (snare I), 2019. Ceramic and piano strings, 18 x 18 x 36 cm. 2. Lure (tchotchke I), 2019. Ceramic and monofilament, 30 x 20 x 20 cm.
Craft is Story is a community display that compares traditional craft and contemporary craft, exploring the identities of various traditional Indigenous and settler craft movements in the Northwest Territories. Curated by Janet Dean and Sarah Swan, in partnership with the NWT Arts Program, the exhibition groups traditional items such as fish scale art, carvings and beadwork with items that playfully disrespect northern traditions or abscond with them altogether. In the NWT, both kinds of craft are concerned with story — personal family stories, stories of changing domestic life, stories of beauty and life on the land, and the stories of the materials themselves. The display, at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife, runs from September 2020 to March 2021.
— Craft Council of NWT
The Saskatchewan Craft Council is fortunate: when the pandemic was announced, our staff had been using workplace apps like Slack for some time. This greatly helped us communicate, though we did experience many other changes to our process and projects. Every necessary change to the exhibition schedule or updated information about the pandemic felt like playing Jenga: contracts and letters needed to be rewritten; artist talks were turned into streamed experiences; protocols and materials for re-opening were written and ordered; and guided private tours of the gallery became a new norm. Our staff needed to very quickly become proficient with new programs. While the challenges this time has brought are certainly not behind us, we have a greater understanding of our resiliency now. To reuse a somewhat weak analogy, now that the Jenga tower has become taller (and stranger) we are learning what we can build with those pieces we thought we knew so well.
— Saskatchewan Craft Council
