Developing a new project takes time, so while Kinship + Craft was getting started and there was only an Instagram account and a temporary webpage, the #MakerMonday series was a way to celebrate the work of creatives. Since then, Kinship + Craft has featured the work of makers nearly every other week and continues to do so.
In this series, the makers have the option to submit a photograph of themselves and two to four photographs of their work, which will then be shared on the Kinship + Craft Instagram. Additionally, they can add any text they would like to share about their work, promote any upcoming exhibitions, projects, or launches, and include any social media links or hashtags they use. (Not all chose to include a photograph of themselves, which is why some do not include them.)
The #MakerMonday series is one that helped us stay connected to the core purpose of this project while it was developing. We look forward to sharing more stories in the months to come and hope you enjoy their work!
The Makers
Lucie Touré
Lucie Touré is a paper and textile designer based in Paris, France. After first studying embroidery at the ESAA Duperré, Lucie went on to earn a Masters degree in Textile and Texture Design at École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (the National School for Decorative Arts). Following this, she went on to hone her skills in embroidery and textile printing for six years, working for ateliers to produce the products of prestigious ready-wear brands and high-end fashion houses.
Lucie founded her own studio in 2018 to specifically apply her expertise to paper. She has become known for creating stunning, handcrafted paper-based adornments for French brands, including her most recent collaboration with Guerlain. Through slicing, layering, sewing, and weaving, Lucie elevates the use of paper to sculptural art. Her creations are designed and crafted primarily for the luxury sector for applications in fashion, interior design, window displays, and more.
Hannah Zenger
Hannah Zenger is a ceramic artist who works and lives in Stuttgart, Germany. With her work, Hannah illustrates the extreme range of physical traits clay can display. From her delicate, powdery works on paper to heavier, block-like forms or the more velvety, seemingly elastic, extruded spirals (as seen below).
Hannah states, “My task as an artist is to show people things in a different way. In clearly thought-out, complex and analytical processes, I work to make the invisible, such as the void or physical forces visible.”
In addition to her ceramic work, Hannah is also a co-founder of werkraum18, an interdisciplinary collective with studios and a gallery in Stuttgart West. There, she and fellow Stuttgart-based creatives exhibit their work and facilitate performances in the vitrine-like gallery space, including their more recent pandemic-friendly #closedbutactive cultural program.
Chuma Maweni
Chuma Maweni is an artist based in Cape Town, South Africa, who works in both clay and wood with distinctive style. His interest in ceramics began as a childhood curiosity when he shaped figures of cows and bulls from mud on the riverbanks near his home, but it has since developed into a robust artistic practice.
Following his graduation in 2002 from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University with a degree in Ceramics, Chuma fine-tuned his craft and shared his knowledge by teaching in and around Cape Town. During his time working at Art in the Forest (a ceramics studio, gallery, and outreach center run by potter Anthony Shapiro), Chuma “mentored and taught other ceramicists while honing his personal approach.” He subsequently inspired local attention for his series of teardrop-shaped vessels and conical pots made with pit-firing techniques used by the Nguni tribes before him. As explained by his gallery, Southern Guild, the pieces’ “dark, porous surfaces, striking silhouettes and smoky scent established him as a distinctly contemporary ceramicist dedicated to his craft.”
Chuma opened his own studio in 2016 in Cape Town. His work has gone on to exhibit around the world.
Annie Johansson
Annie Johansson is a fiber artist from Sweden, who, in her own words is, “totally sold on textiles as a material, technique, and language because of its deep-rooted relationship to the body and corporeality.” She creates sculptures out of fiber that “explore the physical relationship that our bodies negotiate with objects, spaces, materials, and more recently our sensual and sometimes sexual relations to textile objects.” Annie enjoys the slow-making aspects of textile-based work and explores the expressions of the material through techniques such as weaving, felting, and embroidery, amongst others.
In addition to her work in fiber, Annie and artist Andreas Engman recently moved into a new studio space in Gamlestaden, Gothenburg, Sweden. They imagine the space as both a studio and a public, trans-disciplinary space for contemporary art. Currently called Temporary Stabilisations (a name they like due to its openness to change and mimicry of the artistic process when it goes public), it “refers to life, in general, being more fluid in terms of gender, identity and sexuality.”
Kevin Hoth
Kevin Hoth is a visual artist and educator based in Colorado, USA, who works primarily with photographic media. Through the use of digital manipulations, instant film collages (occasionally with thread, band-aids [plasters], and other additions), video pieces, and slideshow performances, Kevin has developed two significant bodies of work.
In his words, one body “deals with expanding spatial perception of [the] landscape, [while] the other deals with image destruction as sculptural creation when applied to instant film assemblages.” With his landscape project, he uses mirrors to “join multiple spaces into a singular, in-camera composition.” Whereas “[h]is cut and burned instant film work explores time-based image disruption as a transgressive, healing and synthesizing process.”
Kevin lives just outside of Boulder, Colorado, with his daughter Anya. He often gets woken up by coyotes howling, owls hooting, and horses whinnying. Walker Fine Art represents him in Denver, Colorado.
Oliver Cook
Oliver Cook is an English artist who creates sculptural forms and functional objects from alabaster stone. With the translucent properties of the stone taking center stage, Oliver’s vases, bowls, and containers become explorations in light and material.
As written by The Scottish Gallery, where Oliver will be the subject of his first solo show in September 2021: “When creating a piece [Oliver] often has a specific time of day in mind. It could be when the sun falls in a certain corner of the house or a place that always gets [the] first light in the morning…[He could place a piece] to catch and gently diffuse light amongst its surrounding.”
Oliver’s technique of working with the stone is self-taught, having developed naturally from his experience working in ceramics. All of the pieces are made by hand in Oliver’s Manchester, England studio.
Kaelin Porter
Kaelin Porter is a weaver based in Grand Rapids, Michigan (USA) who works under her brand, Okae Studio. In Kaelin’s words, she began working with fiber “as a way to experiment with how color and materials can come to life. This expression occurs mostly on the loom and in the search for yarns that create new and interesting techniques and capabilities.” More recently, she added hand-dying her yarn to the list, too!
When she was younger, Kaelin often experimented with any loose material she came across in daily life. She couldn’t wait to see what she could make from the bits and pieces that others considered disposable — to the point where she created a business selling accessories made from magazine pages. Now, with her sights set on handwoven textiles, she’s incorporated more intentionality into her creative practice and is producing beautifully made pieces that are available framed and unframed.
Coming up…on Kinship + Craft!
Juan Cortés
Juan Cortés is a textile artist and photographer originally from Chile who has lived in Mérida, Mexico, on the Yucatán Peninsula for the last four years. He started creating textile art two years ago, following a mini macramé workshop hosted by Larissa Melendez (@rake.bohodecor) at his home. At first, his work in fiber was a hobby exploration. However, during quarantine, he developed his own brand, Soskil — named after the Mayan word given to hemp or henequen, a fiber resembling sisal — and has been regularly creating works in fiber since.
Juan primarily creates wall-hangings but has also explored decor items, including lighting and mirrors. As shared in a recent video for his EN/CRUDO collection: “Creating has become part of my life. Different paths and decisions have driven me on this great adventure.” Juan customizes his work for each of his clients, letting his hands and creativity get carried away in the process.
Carolyn Lee
Carolyn Lee is a textile and yarn dyer and the owner of SybilQcrafts. Her specialty is in dyeing long, color-changing, gradient yarn, which transitions from one color to the next across an entire skein. “Whether on knitting needles or the loom, this technique harmonizes the colors as they morph from one to the next. I absolutely love how it looks and also its versatility to create blocks or stripes of colors by breaking up the skein, or create a fading pattern when worked in color-work techniques.”
Out of all fiber-based crafts, the dyeing process captured Carolyn’s interest the most due to the blend of artistry and precision needed to control it. She can direct the results and create stunning colors and combinations on yarn and fabric by varying amounts of water, dye, heat, and acidity. Carolyn wishes to reproduce natural colors in her dye work so that others can craft beautiful items themselves.
Read more about other creatives, such as textile artist Yeh Fuyu here, who weaves stories of Taiwan’s landscape, and Rita Maria Linke here, an artist who uses natural materials including beeswax and pine needles in her work!