Craft Ecologies
Promotional image for Craft Ecologies. Over a dark brown background with an image of intertwined roots, text reads: “Craft Ecologies; Guest Curators: Pamela Vázquez Torres + Emma Wood; Fresh Eye Arts + Gallery.”
Featured Artists
Claire Fall Blanchette, Anthony Chapin, Renée Crowley, Ann Dinh, Lara Felsing, Willa Faye Flink, Anne Søgaard Frandsen, Alla Hale, Vivian Hou, Andrea Jacobs, Ella Lang, Erin Lavelle, Cecilia McKinnon, Theo Trotter
About Craft Ecologies
Craft Ecologies builds on an ongoing curatorial interest in ecological interdependence and more-than-human systems. It expands this inquiry toward material practices that sustain and carry knowledge, bringing together artists whose practices engage biomaterials and material traditions through contemporary approaches to making.
Viewed through a broader historical lens, biomaterials have long been part of human handcraft and craft traditions, continually reimagined and repurposed in response to contemporary issues. Rather than framing biomaterials through innovation or future-oriented narratives, the exhibition considers how materials and traditional forms of making actively shape relationships between people, place, labor, material histories, and shared environments. Materials are understood as sites of relation where cultural, ecological, and embodied knowledge is formed and re-formed through practice.
The exhibition is also grounded in a context where material practices continue to play an active role in how communities respond to changing conditions, from everyday acts of care and maintenance to moments of collective strain and adaptation. Craft Ecologies recognizes these practices as ongoing forms of care, resilience, and retelling, shaping how communities navigate ecological and social change.
Important dates
Applications due: September 6
Exhibition Dates: October 1 - November 22
Opening Reception: October 2, 6-8pm; Masks-required viewing hour from 5-6pm
Black and white image of Guest Curators Pamela Vázquez Torres (left) and Emma Wood (right).
About the curators
Pamela Vázquez Torres (she/her) is an art historian, curator, producer, and interdisciplinary artist from Mexico based in Minneapolis. She has collaborated on public art and curatorial projects presented locally and beyond. Since 2021, she has been part of the winter public art on-ice program Art Shanty Projects. She was awarded a 2023 Creative Response Grant from the City of Minneapolis and was an Emerging Curators Institute Fellow (2022–2023).
Emma Wood (they/them/hen) is a Swedish-American interdisciplinary artist and arts facilitator based between Denmark and Minneapolis. Their work has been exhibited internationally, and they have received fellowships and residencies from The Emerging Curator’s Institute, Franconia Sculpture Park, Cafesjian Art Trust Museum, Chicago Fire Arts Center, The American Swedish Institute, Art Shanty Projects, and Venice Glass Week. Emma is currently pursuing a Bachelor's in Craft: Glass and Ceramics at the Royal Danish Academy in Denmark.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
