Handmade Meaning: The Value of Craft in Victorian and Contemporary Culture
James Watrous Gallery, Overture Center
Madison, Wisconsin
December 17, 2010-February 6, 2011
Directions, location, and hours.
Today’s do-it-yourself (DIY) craft movement isn’t your grandmother’s knitting. Or is it? This exhibition raises provocative questions about amateur and professional art practice and the role of craft in shaping identity and creating community. A collaboration between the James Watrous Gallery, the UW-Madison Material Culture Program and the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database, Handmade Meaning explores the relationship between rarely seen Victorian “fancywork”–hand-painted china, hair wreaths, and fine embroidery–and work by contemporary artists who incorporate traditional women’s craft processes and materials. Many of the Victorian objects, which are drawn from local historical societies and museums throughout Wisconsin, have never been exhibited outside their home communities.
Like a 19th century crazy quilt, the exhibit has come together in bits and pieces, with knowledge gathered from a variety of sources over time. The project started in Spring 2010 with a seminar class led by Ann Smart Martin of the Department of Art History at UW-Madison along with Martha Glowacki, director of the Watrous Gallery and Emily Pfotenhauer, project coordinator for the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database. Undergraduate and graduate students in the seminar prepared a preliminary object list, researched individual makers and drafted object labels.
The header image to this blog features work from both contemporary artists and Victorian women.
From left to right:
Celebrating Lace (bracelet)
Hai-Chi Jihn, Milwaukee
Collection of the artist
Lace Doily
Anne Marie Kittleson Dahle, Mount Horeb, ca. 1880-1900
Mt. Horeb Area Historical Society
Seed Wreath
Beaver Dam, ca. 1885
Dodge County Historical Society
Box for My Ashes
Mary Dickey, Sauk City, 2002
Collection of the artist
Handmade Meaning 