Join HCCC for a free, virtual panel discussion in celebration of Houston Center for Contemporary Craft’s 20th anniversary. The panel brings together a group of locally and nationally distinguished artists and thinkers to reflect on how HCCC has grown over the past 20 years and what the future of craft as a field looks like. The audience is invited to participate during the Q&A portion of the program. Featuring panelists Antonius-Tin Bui, Annie Evelyn, Justin Favela, Piero Fenci, and Susie J. Silbert; moderated by HCCC Executive Director, Perry Price. The event takes place at 6 PM CDT.
The 20th Anniversary Panel Discussion is generously underwritten by Scott and Judy Nyquist.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS
**Antonius-Tin Bui**
Antonius-Tin Bui is a shapeshifter whose artistic practice is as non-binary as their own identity. They play in the realms of hand-cut paper, community engagement, performance, and soft sculpture to visualize hybrid identities and histories that confront the unsettling present. Their ever-changing, queer, gender-fluid Vietnamese-American experience informs the way they employ beauty as a refuge for fellow marginalized communities. Bui’s honors include fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Vermont Studio Center, Kala Art Institute, Halcyon Arts Lab, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and Yaddo.
**Annie Evelyn**
Joy, laughter, and the unexpected are at the heart of Annie Evelyn’s work. She uses furniture’s inherent interactive qualities and relationships to the human body to create new and surprising experiences.
From 2014 – 2017, Evelyn was a resident artist at the Penland School of Craft in North Carolina, and, in 2016, she was awarded The John D. Mineck Furniture Fellowship. She received both her BFA and MFA from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Evelyn is currently the assistant professor at Tennessee Tech University. Her work has been featured on the cover of American Craft magazine and published in Agata Toromanoff’s book, Impossible Design. She has been awarded multiple Windgate Furniture residencies at universities across the county. Evelyn had a solo show, Multiple Impressions, at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in 2017. In 2018, she was a finalist for the Burke Prize for contemporary craft and her work was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design (MAD). In 2019, Evelyn co-founded Crafting the Future, a collective of artists working together to provide equitable opportunities in the arts.
**Justin Favela**
Based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and known for large-scale installations and sculptures that manifest his interactions with American pop culture and the Latinx experience, Justin Favela has exhibited his work both internationally and across the United States. His installations have been commissioned by museums including the Denver Art Museum in Colorado and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, and he had a solo exhibition, All You Can Eat, at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in 2019. He is the recipient of the 2018 Alan Turing LGTBIQ Award for International Artist. Favela hosts two culture-oriented podcasts, “Latinos Who Lunch” and “The Art People Podcast.” He holds a BFA in fine art from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
**Piero Fenci**
Piero Fenci received his undergraduate degree in Latin-American studies with a minor in art history from Yale University, and he earned his MFA from the prestigious New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Professor Fenci has been with Stephen F. Austin State University since 1975 and has distinguished himself as both an artist and educator. His ceramic vessels have been featured in magazines and books such as Ceramics Monthly, American Ceramics, The Contemporary Potter, and Clay and Glazes for the Potter.
In 2004, he spearheaded the founding of the first university program in contemporary ceramic art in the history of the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, at la Universidad Autonoma de Chihuahua in Chihuahua City, where he continues to travel yearly, serving as a visiting professor in the School of Fine Arts to mentor the program. Professor Fenci has earned an international reputation as a ceramist, exhibiting his work from coast to coast, as well as in Italy, Russia, and Mexico. In 2012, he was named a “Texas Master” by the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and was the fourth person (and the first ceramist) in the state to be honored with that award. His work is represented in many private and public collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Scheiner-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art, Alfred, NY; and in the Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, Texas.
**Susie J. Silbert**
Susie J. Silbert is the curator of postwar and contemporary glass at The Corning Museum of Glass. She got her start in the studio studying glass, ceramics, and textiles at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lived in the community of the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina for four years. In 2008, she worked with Cindi Strauss at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on an exhibition of the glass collection of Dallas-based collectors, Dennis and Barbara DuBois. She fell in love with curating and with Houston, and after getting her MA at the Bard Graduate Center, moved back to the city for one glorious year to serve as the curatorial fellow at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. She still loves Houston.
