Anna Fariello

Anna Fariello, Curator and scholar, Anna Fariello is a former Smithsonian Renwick Fellow in American Craft. Her research at the Smithsonian focused on the southern craft revival and led to her work with Western Carolina University, where she developed the online archive, Craft Revival: Shaping Western North Carolina Past & Present. 

Author of 7 books, numerous book chapters and articles, she has presented over 150 conference papers and invited lectures, and directed over 30 federal, state, and private grants. Among her publications, she is author Craft & Community: John C. Campbell Folk School (2018), the From the Hands of our Elders series of three books on Cherokee arts and crafts (2009-2013), art editor for the Encyclopedia of Appalachia (2006), and co-author of the textbook, Objects & Meaning: New Perspectives on Art and Craft (2003). Book chapters include “Olive Dame Campbell” in North Carolina Women (2015) and “Lexicon of Studio Craft” in Extra/ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art (2011). Since 1990, she has curated over 30 exhibitions for regional and national museums, almost all focusing on American craft.

Fariello has been honored with a 2010 Brown Hudson Award from the North Carolina Folklore Society, a 2013 Guardians of Culture award from the Association of Tribal Archives and Museums, a 2016 Preservation Excellence award from the North Carolina Preservation Consortium, and a 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southern Highland Craft Guild.

She holds a B.A. in art from Rutgers University; an M.A. in Museum Studies/Art History from Virginia Commonwealth U.; and an M.F.A. from James Madison University.

Dave Ellum

Dave Ellum is Dean of Land Resources and Professor of Ecological Forestry at Warren Wilson College. He holds a BS in Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences from North Carolina State University, and an MF in Professional Forest Management and a PhD in Silviculture and Forest Ecology from Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Dr. Ellum has spent his career studying forest groundstory plants and their important role in maintaining healthy forest ecosystems. His current research focuses on non-timber forest products, especially the propagation and management of native forest plants of medicinal value. Dave oversees Warren Wilson College's Farm, Garden, Forest and Landscape as well as the College's Craft Crews. In this capacity, he is working to integrate Land and Craft into a productive system for interdisciplinary learning, research and community outreach. Dave has been at the College for 13 years, hails from CT and lives in Asheville with his wife and two children.

Faye Junaluska

Faye Junaluska is a master basket maker in Cherokee, NC and is a member of the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, Inc., the nation’s oldest and foremost Native American cooperative.

Jeffrey A. Keith

Jeffrey A. Keith is a historian, musician, and essayist whose writing explores two primary historical interests: rural life and U.S. foreign relations. He is a Professor of Global Studies at Warren Wilson College, and he is currently working on a digital oral history project about Appalshop, a media collective that was established in eastern Kentucky in 1969. Jeff has published work in magazines, journals, books, and exhibit catalogs exploring an array of topics, but his curiosity tends to launch him toward subjects that pertain to the ways people construct group identities through popular and folk culture.

Jenni Sorkin

Jenni Sorkin is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She writes on the intersection between gender, craft, material culture, and contemporary art, working primarily on women artists and underrepresented media. Recent projects include a chapter titled "Alterity Rocks: 1973-1993,” in Art in Chicago: A History from the Fire to Now. Maggie Taft and Robert Cozzolino, eds. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2018); an essay on cultural appropriation for the upcoming exhibition Pattern & Decoration, curated by Anna Katz at LA MOCA, and an extensive essay on textiles and otherness in the catalog for the exhibition Outliers and American Vanguard Art, curated by Lynne Cooke at the National Gallery of Art in 2018.  She has published widely as an art critic, and her writing has appeared in Artforum, Art Journal, Art Monthly, East of Borneo, NU: The Nordic Art Review, Frieze, The Journal of Modern Craft, Modern Painters and Third Text. In 2004, she received the Art Journal Award. She holds a PhD in the History of Art from Yale University, and is the recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (2014-15), the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design (2012), the Getty Research Institute (2010-11), and the ACLS/Luce Fellowship in American Art (2008). In 2016, she co-curated, with Paul Schimmel, “Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947-2016,” the inaugural exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles. In 2016, she published Live Form: Women, Ceramics and Community (The University of Chicago Press), which examines American post-war ceramics practice and artistic labor through the lens of gender. She is the recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (2014-15), the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design (2012), the Getty Research Institute (2010-11), and the ACLS/Luce Fellowship in American Art (2008). She sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Modern Craft, and publishes and lectures widely.

Lisa Jarrett

Lisa Jarrett is an artist and educator. She is Assistant Professor of Community and Context Arts at Portland State University’s School of Art + Design. She is co-founder and co-director of KSMoCA (King School Museum of Contemporary Art) in NE Portland. Her intersectional practice considers the politics of difference within a variety of settings including: schools, landscapes, fictions, racial imaginaries, studios, communities, museums, galleries, walls, mountains, mirrors, floors, rivers, and lenses. She exists and makes socially engaged work within the African Diaspora. She recently discovered that her primary medium is questions.

Karen Bell

Karen Bell is a true “southern belle.” Originally from South Carolina, she is a classically trained vocalist who studied vocal performance at Columbia College, S.C.  and earned her Bachelors of Music from Berklee College of Music.  

Karen has worked with many talented musicians, performing throughout New England, the U.S. and international locations. In her 30 plus years in the Boston area alone, Karen has successfully served as bandleader, host (emcee) and/or vocalist for various events and top corporate bands in New England.  During this period, she has also written and recorded for other artists and projects. 

Outside of performing, Karen worked with the Center for Women and Enterprise, Big Brothers, Big Sisters and other organizations. These experiences, along with her focus at Berklee in performance, coaching and music industry experience, enabled her to serve as the general manager of an entertainment agency she helped launch early in her career. 

In 2005, Karen was appointed director of the alumni office for Berklee College of Music, advancing to senior alumni officer for Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory at Berklee. In this role, she connected college and conservatory alumni to the greater Berklee community, including current students. A tenured administrator, Bell recently accepted the position of academic assistant to the dean of the Professional Performance Division for Berklee. As primary advisor to performance majors, Karen provides advice and insight through curriculum and program initiatives to student performers excited about their musical journey at Berklee and beyond.

Karen launched The Bell Affair in 2012 bringing together all of her many talents into one enterprise combining her experience as a recording and performing artist with her industry and administration knowledge. Taking on the dual role of founder of the business and bandleader for The Karen Bell Band, Karen provides extraordinary musical entertainment for any occasion. Additionally, some of the other services she offers are:

- Event production including artist referrals for those in search of entertainment,

- Consulting and event management for artists with contracted professional appearances, and 

- Educational programming and coaching marketed towards female artists, yet available for any artists and non-artists.

It is a blessing to have found her purpose and her passion in life, advocating for artists, particularly female artists, and being a conduit to strengthen the connection between artists and their audiences.  She looks forward each and every day to her continued work as an artist and entrepreneur.    

Kevin Murray

Kevin Murray is an independent writer and curator and Adjunct Professor at RMIT University. Major current roles are managing editor for Garland Magazine and the Online Encyclopedia of Crafts in the Asia Pacific Region.  In 2000-2007 he was Director of Craft Victoria where he developed the Scarf Festival and the South Project, a four-year program of exchange involving Melbourne, Wellington, Santiago and Johannesburg.  He has curated many exhibitions, including 'Signs of Change: Jewellery Designed for a Better World';  'The World of Small Things'; 'Symmetry: Crafts Meet Kindred Trades and Professions'; 'Water Medicine: Precious Works for an Arid Continent'; 'Guild Unlimited: Ten Jewellers Make Insignia for Potential Guilds'; 'Seven Sisters: Fibre Works from the West';  'Common Goods: Cultures Meet through Craft' for the 2006 Commonwealth Games and Joyaviva: Live Jewellery Across the Pacific that toured Latin America.  His books include Judgement of Paris: Recent French Thought in an Australian Context (Allen & Unwin, 1991), Craft Unbound: Make the Common Precious (Thames & Hudson, 2005) and with Damian Skinner, Place and Adornment: A History of Contemporary Jewellery in Australia and New Zealand (Bateman, 2014). He is currently a Senior Vice-President of the World Craft Council Asia Pacific Region, coordinator of Southern Perspectives and Sangam: A Platform for Craft-Design Partnerships. He teaches at RMIT University, the University of Melbourne, Swinburne University and University of New South Wales. More information is at www.kevinmurray.com.au. 

Louise Goings

Louise Goings is a master basket maker in Cherokee, NC and is a member of the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, Inc., the nation’s oldest and foremost Native American cooperative.

Sara Clugage

Sara Clugage is a dilettante. She lives and works in Brooklyn, where she is the editor-in-chief of Dilettante Army, an online journal for art and critical theory. In addition to weaving and writing about weaving, she is part of the Leadership Collective for the Wikipedia campaign Art+Feminism, and she creates salon dinners themed on the economic models and culinary styles of different periods in art history. She has written for The Journal of Modern Craft, Surface Design Journal, Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, and Pelican Bomb. She holds an MA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Christina Burke

Christina E. Burke has been Curator of Native American and Non-Western Art at Philbrook since July 2006. During that time she has helped acquire three major collections of Native art, curated exhibitions and installations, and helped develop the satellite facility Philbrook Downtown (opened in June 2013) which houses the museum’s Native American collection, as well as library and archival materials related to the collection. As a cultural anthropologist with an interest in Native art and material culture, she has extensive museum experience (beginning in 1988) including at the National Museum of Natural History and the Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. She has worked on a variety of collaborative projects with Native people and written extensively on historical and contemporary Native art. 

Judith Leemann

Judith Leemann is an artist, educator, and writer whose practice focuses on translating operations through and across distinct arenas of practice. A long-standing collaboration with the Boston-based Design Studio for Social Intervention grounds much of this thinking. Leemann is Associate Professor of Fine Arts 3D/Fibers at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and holds an M.F.A. in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her writings have been included in the anthologies Beyond Critique (Bloomsbury, 2017), Collaboration Through Craft (Bloomsbury, 2013), and The Object of Labor: Art, Cloth, and Cultural Production (School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MIT Press 2007). Leemann’s distributed audio project reading aloud is produced every spring at the intersection of her studio, teaching, and research practices. Recent exhibitions include arvensis (of the field) (Proof Gallery, Boston, 2017), WOUND (Cooper Union Gallery, New York City, 2016), Virtually Physically Speaking (A+D Gallery, Columbia College, Chicago 2014), and Resonating Bodies (The Soap Factory, Minneapolis, 2013). Leemann is a frequent contributor to national and international gatherings, whether formal conferences or informal working groups. Her current pedagogical research is anchored by the Retooling Critique working group she first convened in 2017 to take up the question of studio critique’s relation to educational equity. More at www.judithleemann.com

Lisa Vinebaum

Lisa Vinebaum is a scholar, artist, and educator exploring collaboration and community, with an emphasis on the mobilization of fiber and textiles in projects for social, economic, and racial justice. Published writings include commissioned book chapters and essays in edited anthologies, academic journals and exhibition catalogues, most recently Makers, Crafters, Educators: Working for Cultural Change, Exhibiting Craft and Design: Transgressing the White Cube Paradigm 1930-present, Counter-Signals, The Handbook of Textile Culture, and The Companion to Textiles and (forthcoming). Lisa Vinebaum is an Associate Professor of Fiber and Material Studies, and affiliated faculty in Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Other professional positions include Associate Editor of the international peer-reviewed journal Textile: Cloth and Culture, and adjunct faculty at the MA in Critical and Historical Craft Studies at Warren Wilson College. Dr. Vinebaum holds a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London. She is currently working on a book manuscript titled Social Fabrics: The Art of Community.

Marilyn Zapf

Marilyn Zapf is the Assistant Director and Curator at the Center for Craft, a national arts nonprofit headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina. She has curated a number of exhibitions including the nationally-traveling Michael Sherrill Retrospective (Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC, 2018) as well as Made in WNC (Center for Craft, Asheville, NC, 2015) and Gee's Bend: From Quilts to Prints (Center for Craft, Asheville, NC, 2014). Marilyn is a trustee of the American Crafts Council, a program advisor for the MA in Critical and Historical Craft Studies program at Warren Wilson College, and has published articles and reviews in international publications, including Art Jewelry Forum and Crafts Magazine (UK). She holds a MA in the History of Design from the Royal College of Art and Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England, and a BA (English Literature) and BFA (Jewelry and Metalworking) from The University of Georgia. Her areas of research include craft, postmodernism, and de/industrialization.

T’ai Smith

T’ai Smith is associate professor of modern and contemporary art history at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver where she has taught since 2012. Her research focuses on textile media, concepts, and economies. Author of Bauhaus Weaving Theory: From Feminine Craft to Mode of Design (University of Minnesota Press, 2014), she has published in Art Journal, Grey Room, Texte zur Kunst, and Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturforschung, among other journals. She has also contributed to numerous museum catalogues and edited volumes, including Modern Women (Museum of Modern Art, 2010), Anni Albers (Tate Modern, 2018), and Anni Albers, On Weaving: New Expanded Edition (Princeton University Press, 2017). She is currently finishing a book manuscript, Fashion After Capital.