Culled entirely from the Museum’s collection, “Spiraling, Twisting, Unraveling: Explorations in Pattern and Form” explores the dynamic landscape and languages found through contemporary craft today. The exhibition features twenty-five artists who examine dimensions of decoration, pattern and form through their varied practices to engage with some of the most pressing issues of our time. The objects featured within this gallery deepen the legacies of the studio craft movement that has flourished in the United States since mid-century and complicate the limited understanding of how we interpret the hand-made.

Within “Spiraling, Twisting, Unraveling,” delicate lines, trailing threads and endless spirals are used as devices to unearth themes of the natural world and the alternative concepts of eternity, life cycles, space and time represented across millennia through diverse cultures. In tactically rich and materially diverse objects –– from ceramics to stoneware, fiber to woodwork –– the artists each consider the expansive geographies of form, pushing the boundaries of their chosen medium while also sparking necessary conversations, stories and narratives that are part of our everyday lives.

Artists like Jiro Yonezawa (Japan, b. 1956) and Christine Joy (United States, b. 1952) explore the abstract form and dynamism of the spiral through wood and bamboo, where conversations of the natural world and renewable materials emerge. Makers like Antonella Cimatti (Italy, b. 1956) and Linda Lopez (United States, b.1981) highlight their interest in the poetic potential of everyday objects and the tension between fragility and durability. Others like Irene Vronik (Ireland, b. 1952) are chiefly concerned with exploring the tactile qualities of clay, discovering a vernacular and lyrical freedom within the often technical and practical confines of the medium. Taken as a whole, “Spiraling, Twisting, Unraveling” offers the gallery space as a location for deep looking at manifestations of form.

“Spiraling, Twisting, Unraveling: Explorations in Pattern and Form” is organized by ASUAM Senior Curator Alana Hernandez and ASUAM Curator Brittany Corrales and made possible by generous funding from Windgate Charitable Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with a Community of Practice composed of Carol Eckert, visual artist, Yaritza Flores Bustos, visual artist, and Yu Yu Shiratori, visual artist.