Featured Speaker Textile Study Group of NY
Featured September 2023 speaker for the Textile Study Group of NY.
BIRD BOOK
Self-published by blurb.com in 2017. A gift book for a bird or textile lover that's 7" x 7", available in hardcover ImageWrap. The book contains photographs of twenty-one birds hand embroidered by the artist that are often seen and heard on the artist's property in Bucks County, PA.
NEWS
In 2017, I became a docent at the James A. Michener Art Museum, and in November 2020, I was named Docent of the Year 2019. I host a meditative art program titled The Art of Stillness. Since April 2020, I have been involved in producing and presenting 30+ of these hour-long Michener Art Museum programs via Zoom.
Published December 2016, Pear Tree Farm: The History of a House in Bucks County, PA
History and Photography Hardbound Book, self-published by Blurb
2017 -- In the collection of the James A. Michener Art Museum Library and the Spruance Library (Bucks County Historical Society) of the Mercer Museum, Doylestown, PAMini-Exhibition 2013 on Shifu Art
Poking, Kapangan
Philippines
November 6, 2013 OpeningBucks County Artists: A Cross-Section (with Paula Chamlee, Alex Cohen, and Deborah Bruns Thomas)
Hicks Art Center Gallery, Bucks County Community College
November 1 - December 15, 2012BIO
I have been an artist and educator for over fifty years. I hold an MFA in Fiber Arts/Textiles from Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI. Additional degrees in painting, drawing and printmaking include a MA from the University of Guam, and a BA from the George Washington University and Corcoran School of Art. While living on the island of Guam for sixteen years (1973-89), I spent a cumulative six months in Japan studying traditional hand papermaking that I combined, through five artist-in-education grants, with a study of historical Pacific Island fiber arts for the purpose of creating handmade tropical fiber paper.
As a certified art teacher I taught in the island's Gifted & Talented public schools arts program, at the Guam Council on the Arts & Humanities, and the University of Guam, as well as maintaining a freelance illustration and graphic design business (Fine Lines). In 1982 I published my first book, Papermaking in Micronesia, as the first artist known to have made paper from tropical fiber in the western Pacific. A second book, also titled Papermaking in Micronesia, was published in Japan.
Returning to the mainland USA for an advanced degree, I worked for eight years at Cranbrook (an educational community that helped shape American design), as a student in the Academy of Art (1989-91), then as manager/buyer of books (2,000 titles) and product developer for The Store @ Cranbrook Art Museum (1993-99). This included initiating the Cranbrook Design Center for the sale of student and alumni artwork, and co-coordinating the publication of A History of Cranbrook: A Life Without Beauty Is Only Half Lived.
After Cranbrook, I lived for two years (2000-02) in NYC absorbing the urban world of art, architecture, and exhibition, while taking classes at the Center For Book Arts. The next move was to a 178 year-old farmhouse with barn in Bucks County, PA. While being involved in restoring the house/barn and creating gardens, I documented a sense of this place in artist and published book form. In 2016, after ten years of research, I published a history and photography hardcover book about my house built in 1845 -- Pear Tree Farm: The History of A House in Bucks County, PA. In 2023, I moved to New Hope, PA.
Solo and group exhibitions have been both national and international.
Since 2012, I have sought alternative ways of exhibiting my work, so that viewers have the opportunity to handle my artist books.Selected Exhibitions:
Overall: Accounting For Time, Barn Installation, Doylestown, PA,
2022
Bucks County Artists: A Cross Section, Hicks Art Center Gallery,
Bucks County Community College, Newtown, PA, 2012
Meraviglia: Innovations in the Book Arts, Lafayette College,
Easton, PA, 2006
Expressions, Schick Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs,
NY, 2002
Drawing The Thread, Southwest School of Art & Craft, San Antonio,
TX, 2000
Crossings: Incomplete Notebooks, Network Gallery, Pontiac MI, 1999
Merging Boundaries, Ann Arbor Art Center, Ann Arbor, MI, 1998
Alterations, el dorado, inc., Kansas City, MO (Partially supported
by the Surface Design Association/ International Conference, 1997
Cloth Reveries, Janet Wallace Fine Art Center, Macalester College,
Saint Paul, MN, 1996
Stories of Wander, Elgin Community College, Elgin, IL, 1995
Contemporary Fiber: On The Edge, General Electric Corporate
Headquarters, Fairfield, CT
The Sybaris Gallery, Royal Oak, MI, 1994 (Solo Exhibit)
Message and Medium, Detroit Artists Market, MI, 1992
A Sense of Place, Installation, Detroit Focus Gallery, MI, 1992
Solo and Group Exhibitions in Guam, Saipan, University of Hawaii,
Tahiti, and Japan, 1983-88Published Articles About Work:
Surface Design Journal: "The Twelfth Gift" by Margo Mensing, Fall
1997
FIBERARTS: "Imagination and Sensation–Gerry Craig reveals the
artistic power of textiles," Nov/Dec 1995/Vol.22, No.3