1972
Jurors Jeff Sclilanger, Robert Turner,
and Peter Voulkos shock applicants
to the dccadcs-old Ceramic National
exhibition by rejecting all slides sub-
mitted, pointing to a rift between ama-
teurs and professionals, and sparking
a debate about elitism.
■►1972
Jim Melchert performs his conceptual
work
Changes: A Performance with
Drying Slip,
in which he and art and
design colleagues dip their heads in
liquid clay and sit in a studio cooled
at one end, heated at the other, to
experience the effects of slip drying.
•►1970
Robert Smithson creates
Spiral Jett)*,
a 1,500-foot-long,
15-foot-wide coil of basalt rocks
and soil, in Utah’s Great Salt Lake.
It becomes a major landmark,
literally and figuratively, in the
new medium of earth art.
◄■1970
Back to the land: Dawn
of a golden decade for
crafts, high and low.
While serious craft
artists flourish, so does
their bane, the macrame
plant holder.
◄•1970
Gerhardt Knodel becomes
artist in residence in fiber
at Cranbrook, sparking
worldwide interest in cloth
as an essential part of his-
tory. He becomes Cran-
brook director in 1996.
■►197З
The Artist-
Blacksmith’s
Association of
America is
formed.
1970
L. Brent Kington, mctalsmith and
teacher, organizes a workshop on the
little-practiced art of blacksmithing,
drawing about 50 people, many com-
plete novices. Teachers add forges
at their schools; blacksmithing
begins a resurgence.
■►1971
Pilchuck Glass School
is founded in Stanwood,
WA, by artist Dale Chihuly,
his students, and benefac-
tors John H. and Anne
Gould Hauberg.
■►1971
James Carpenter
and Dale Chihuly
create the mixed-
media installation
20,000 Pounds o f
Ice and Neon
i n
Providence, RI.
◄■1970
Society of North American
Goldsmiths hosts its first
conference, drawing about
100 metalsmiths. The SNAG
exhibition “Goldsmith 70”
shows at NY’s Museum of
Contemporary Crafts.
i
97
i
Joan Lyons founds VSW Press
at Visual Studies Workshop,
the first of the artist-run offset
presses that power the rise of
multiple bookworks. In 40 years
VSW Press publishes more than
450 artists’ books and art criticism.
■►1972
The
Wharton
Esherick
Museum
opens in
Paoli, PA.
■►1972
The Renwick
Gallery, the
Smithsonian
American Art
Museum’s
showcase for
craft, opens.
T C
■►1971
Kathryn (pictured) and
Howard Clark establish
Twinrocker, the first
production-based hand-
made paper mill in the
U.S. since the late 1920s.
1972
“Woodenworks: Furniture Objects
by Five Contemporary Craftsmen,
featuring work by Wharton Esherick,
George Nakashima, Sam Maloof,
Arthur Espenet Carpenter, and
Wendell Castle, opens at the
Smithsonian’s Rcnwick Gallery.
■►1973
Helen Williams Drutt
develops the first college-level
course on modern craft history.
In 1974, the Helen Drutt
Gallery opens as one of the
first U.S. showcases devoted
to contemporary craft.
■►1971
Carole King’s introspective
Tapestiy
is one of the year’s top-selling
albums, its title song a paean to
a textile of “wondrous woven
magic.” Seeing the cover photo,
women long to sit by a window
with cat and needlework.
1974
The Craft and
Folk Art Museum,
founded by Edith
R. Wyle (grand-
mother of actor
Noah Wyle),
opens in L.A.
1975
The Bellevue
Arts Museum
(WA) is found-
ed by the Pacific
Northwest
Arts and Crafts
Association.
♦ >973
With Rosey Grier’s
Needlepoint for Men,
a how-to book by the
football star, fiber art
gets some macho cred.
«■
197
*
“Deliberate
Entanglements,’
large-scale fabric
sculptures curated
by Bernard Kester,
opens at the UCLA
Art Galleries.
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a m e r i c a n c r a f t
a u g / s c p n
