Join ClayHouston, the Ceramic Department of the Glassell School of Art and Houston Center for Contemporary Craft for a lecture with Carol Sauvion, the creator, executive producer and director of Craft in America, the documentary series celebrating American craft and the artists who bring it to life. The Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated PBS series is now in production for Season 6.
Sauvion’s other projects include a 300-page book, Craft in America: Celebrating Two Centuries of Artists and Objects; a vortex website; and the Craft in America Center, which is located in Los Angeles and open to the public. In 2010, Craft in America partnered with the Smithsonian American Art Museum to present Crafting a Nation, a symposium organized to consider the state of contemporary craft.
The Craft in America project is currently partnering with craft organizations to produce exhibitions and craft programs. The Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco and the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles will present an exhibition to accompany the upcoming Service episode of the Craft in America series. (HCCC will hold a special preview screening of this episode on October 22, 2014). Other projects include the creation of a craft curriculum for high schools with Kutztown University of Pennsylvania and outreach to arts magnets in Los Angeles.
Craft is Sauvion’s lifelong passion. For the past 34 years, she has been the director of Freehand, her Los Angeles gallery specializing in functional craft. Prior to her involvement in the gallery, she was a potter for 10 years. She continues to make pots as an avocation.
Sauvion will be in Houston for the opening of CraftTexas 2014 on Friday, September 26th, at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. She served as one of three jurors for the eighth biennial exhibition, which showcases the best in Texas-made contemporary craft in clay, fiber, glass, metal, wood and mixed media.
Above, from left to right: Carol Sauvion. Photo by Mark Markley. Caleb Siemon, “Banded Low Bowl, Cranberry/Apricot,” 2006. Featured in Craft In America: Expanding Traditions. Blown glass. Photo by Lloyd Solly.