Visual arts | Ohio Designer Craftsmen presents ‘The Best of 2020-2021’ exhibit

The COVID-19 pandemic set the kibosh on a lot of points, which includes the “The Finest of 2020” at the Ohio Craft Museum. But the museum and the Ohio Designer Craftsmen organization that presents the once-a-year exhibition merely waited a bit, merged the decades and are now presenting “The Finest of 2020-2021.”

© Eileen Woods
“Cosmic Passage #1” by Eileen Woods

The exhibition, which proceeds at the museum via July 11, consists of 79 operates by 59 artists and is whole of surprises and excellence in craft. In her statement, juror Susan Ewing, director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, stated that she sought performs of clay, fiber, glass, metallic and blended media that “brought some thing remarkable to the viewer.”

© Mary Ann Tipple
“Annie Corridor Fulfills Aunt Kitty” by Mary Ann Tipple

“I seemed for nuance and irony, class, experimentation and beauty in the personal reflections and common considerations and narratives,” she wrote. “I also looked for magic, when it all arrived with each other.”

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The exhibition of will work by artists — mostly from Ohio but all of them members of Ohio Designer Craftsmen — is thematically assorted and unpredictable. A function that strikes the viewer with its magnificence and splendor stands up coming to a piece that speaks volumes about modern day violence. An amusing quilt is positioned not far from a curious sculpture developed of even additional curious elements.

Benjamin Johnson, of Chesterland, Ohio, is represented with several performs, such as the graceful “Sequential Optical Sequence,” a tall, engraved blown-glass vase with a design and style that travels upward to the vessel’s impossibly slim neck. Not much absent is a trio of performs from Kimberly Chapman’s disturbing “A is for Active, S is for Shooter” sequence, marking 2018, the deadliest university-capturing year in American record. The a few porcelain varieties made by the Moreland Hills, Ohio, artist include a lady donning a mask of bones (“I’m Wearing My Skeleton Costume So No A single Can See Me”), a box with bullet holes (“First Mask”) and a little one with no mask (“Sacrificial Lamb”).

Westerville artist K. Dana Kagrise’s “Game Changer” is a squat, spherical sculpture in which scores of cough fall packages have been pressed into a doughnut condition, like the coils of a compressed Slinky. Not much absent is Elyria artist Mary Ann Tipple’s significant and daring quilt “Annie Corridor Satisfies Aunt Kitty,” portraying two girls in gentlemanly apparel standing back again to again versus a track record of Paris images and notes in script French.

© K Dana Kagrise
“Game Changer” by K. Dana Kagrise

There are several more quilts in the exhibit, all worthy of inspection. Gahanna artist Beth Schillig employs circle motifs in “Roundabout” and “Dream Weaver,” her quilts designed of vibrant, hand-dyed materials. Patty Kennedy-Zafred of Murrysville, Pennsylvania, put silkscreen pictures of American women on top rated of feed sacks in her creative quilt “American Portraits: Property Harvest.”

A few Columbus artists produced these unusual items: the sensitive glass bead and lace “Dogwood Broach” by Mikelle Hickman-Romine the a few-dimensional “Streets,” a maplike see of pen and ink properties superimposed with highways by Robert Schaffer and, from Eileen Woods, two “Cosmic Passage” portraits of senior citizens popping out from blue and purple backgrounds of moons, planets and constellations.

© Beth Schillig
“Roundabout” by Beth Schillig

Perrysburg’s Tom Muir’s “Beekeeper’s Earrings” are displayed with a photograph of a girl putting on them alongside with dozens of bees who have hopped on to the earrings manufactured of beeswax comb.

Joanna H. Manousis of Maumee gained the exhibition’s $1000 Obstacle Award for Excellence with “Bottled Pear,” a delightfully odd and attractive assemblage of glass bottle, bronze twig and bronze pears.

In its transforming elements, procedures and themes, craft has advanced into the 21st century, blurring lines concerning sort and functionality and in the approach, injecting a small shock and awe.

Consistently completed and unforeseen, “The Ideal of 2020-2021” was worthy of the hold out.

The complete exhibition can be viewed on the net at www.ohiocraft.org. Afterwards this summer time, “The Very best of 2020-2021” will journey to the Mansfield Arts Center, managing Aug. 15 to Sept. 12. Barring a different pandemic, a new edition of the annual show, “The Best of 2022,” will open in Columbus future Could.

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At a look

“The Very best of 2020-2021” carries on as a result of July 11 at the Ohio Craft Museum, 1665 W. 5th Ave. Hrs: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays via Fridays, 1 to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Admission is free of charge. Contact 614-486-4402 or visit www.ohiocraft.org.

This short article initially appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Visible arts | Ohio Designer Craftsmen offers ‘The Greatest of 2020-2021’ show