Crafting a Day In The Country
Call it what you will, a staycation, a mini-vacation, or a day trip, the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton is a delightful spring destination. Although barely an hour out of Boston, the museum is situated on twenty-two acres of woodland lining the shores of Potter’s Pond. The setting offers an irresistible invitation for a country walk. More sedentary nature lovers, however, may enjoy the water views and sculpture garden, dining /al fresco/ on the patio. Either brown-bag it or do take-out from the museum’s new café.
New England’s only museum devoted to contemporary craft currently features two major exhibitions: Craft in America: Expanding Traditions; and Days of Spring: Memories of Intimate Connections.
This is the last opportunity to see Craft in America: Expanding Traditions, which will be at the museum only through May 25. Based on the three-hour documentary, Craft in America, PBS televised about two years ago, this is the exhibition’s only East Coast venue and the last stop on a national tour. The show explores the range and development of crafts made of clay, wood, metal, glass and fiber from before the Civil War to 2007. Many of the 150 objects were meant to be used, and they were.
The dean of furniture-makers, 92-year-old Sam Maloof has a double rocker in the show. It’s a symphony of sinuous lines, graceful arms, tapered runners, and wood rubbed to a satiny sheen. In 1982, a Maloof rocker was the first piece of contemporary furniture purchased for the White House. (A 2008 film about Maloof will be screened at the museum Wednesday evening, May 6.)
Self-taught Massachusetts furniture artist Judie Kensley Mckie is represented by an elegant table, its top supported by sleek greyhounds. Her animal themed furniture has earned her an international reputation and is collected by many museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Craft in America features imaginative and colorful glass by a variety of artists from around the country, including pioneering studio glass artist Dale Chihuly. Although he maintains his studio in Seattle, he studied and taught at The Rhode Island School of Design, where he inaugurated the art glass curriculum.
Many New Englanders have work in the exhibition. Jewelry maker Bruce Metcalf, formerly a teacher at Massachusetts College of Art, lives in Amherst. The exhibition also showcases early 20^th century examples by the Deerfield (MA) Society of Blue and White Needlework. Subsidized by the Works Project Administration in New Hampshire during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Mary and Edwin Scheier produced their fine pottery.
Renowned artist Jack Lenor Larsen, whose imaginative textiles are in the exhibition, will talk about his book and afterwards sign copies of /The Craft Collections at LongHouse Reserve/ on April 26. (Several special programs are planned to complement the exhibition. For a complete list and details, call the museum at 508-588-6000.)
Born in Germany in 1955, wood turner and sculptor Christian Burchard, attended Boston's Museum of Fine Arts School. Sculptures from his “Basket” series are on displayed. In addition, the museum has mounted a solo show of his “Torso” series of wall hangings in separate gallery.
His ivory colored wall hangings in the "Torso" series resemble fragile laundry frozen in time while flapping in the breeze. It’s difficult to believe that the delicate one-eighth inch thick slices of Pacific madrone, wood from the root of a tree from the arbutus family, have been sliced with a chainsaw, bleached, dried, shaped, and the surface worked by the artist.
“I think of it as black and white photography,” says Burchard, “removing color to highlight the structure.” Each textured piece is unique, almost ethereal, ultimately the creative expression of art and nature. Christian Burchard’s Torso sculptures will be at the museum through November 20.
