Craft Perception and Practice: A Canadian Discourse

Canada’s ceramists, tapestry weavers, and other craft artists are recognized amongst the world’s finest artisans. Nationwide the craft industry has more than 25,000 practitioners and annual sales in excess of $1 billion, making it one of Canada’s unrecognized success stories. Craft Perception and Practice celebrates the excellence of Canadian crafts by bringing together twenty-four essays and critical commentaries by sixteen independent critics and curators, professional artists, art historians, and studio art instructors. Highly readable texts by internationally published authors Glenn Allison, Amy Gogarty, Paula Gustafson, Paul Mathieu, Gil McElroy, and Anne McPherson-as well as by noted Canadian painter Mary Pratt-discuss the conceptual, social, and cultural significance of craft media, engage linguistic and feminist theories, and consider aspects of tactile, sensual, and tacit knowledge in the context of works by a distinguished group of Canadian craft artists that includes Prix Saidye Bronfman Award winners Steven Heinemann and Léopold L. Foulem. The inaugural edition of a three-volume series, Craft Perception and Practice features substantive writing about contemporary Canadian craft presented at conferences, in national and international periodicals, and in exhibition catalogues during the past decade. Illustrated with 37 full-page colour photographs. Indexed.

“This important volume promises to provoke critical discussion on the personal, social, and aesthetic programs of artists who work in craft media.” – Dr. Stephen Inglis, Director General of Research, Canadian Museum of Civilization