PMA Craft Show 2025 Volume 46.2
At The Pennsylvania Convention Center
November 7 - 9, 2024, Preview Gala November 6
www.PMACraftShow.org
KRISTIN GEREAU | Fiber Wearable
Next year marks the semiquincentennial of the United States of America, and it’s shaping up to be altogether more tumultuous than could have ever been expected. Handwork 2026, a collaboration among luminaries in the craft field to celebrate American craft, is having its inauguration this November, as part of CraftMONTH in Philadelphia.
Anchoring all this is a venerable institution, the Philadelphia Museum of Art Contemporary Craft Show, now in its forty-ninth year. Show director Nancy O’Meara has kept the ship sailing smoothly for the majority of the show’s existence, and for her the mission is simple: get people in the door, get sales for the craft artists. Nothing’s more important than that. Craftspeople need to make a living, and the PMA Craft Show is one of the foremost marketplaces in the country for selling handmade treasures.
It is also part of an evolving conversation about American craft and where it’s headed. As other notable craft shows, like the American Craft Exposition in Chicago, or the ACC shows in San Francisco and Atlanta, have closed, there remain fewer and fewer venues for high level American craft. From outdoor shows to galleries, there has been a winnowing of the available marketplaces for craft and art across America, and while reflective of recent global events like Covid-19 and an uncertain economy, it also speaks to the losing of our better values in the Age of Information.
These days, our time seems to be spent squinting at smart phones, scrolling through social media, or having AI content slipped in front of us. The media landscape is full of quick hits of strong emotions, conflict and hype. Where did our peaceful lives go?
That spaciousness, that ability to pause and reflect, still exists in our technological world, and the Philly show is a few days of that precious calm, for those who attend. With one hundred and ninety-five artists representing some of the best in American craft, in a rainbow of media categories, there’s a special, quiet reserve of energy to be found at the show.
Unlike the modern, mass-produced and plastic-filled existence we currently find ourselves inhabiting, the artists and designers at the PMA Craft Show know how things work. They know how things are made, and run their own businesses. Many wear multiple hats, because when you’re a craftsperson, particularly one starting off on one’s own, you need to not only make your work, but build the website, take photographs, do the bookkeeping, send newsletters to your email list, and do all the packing and shipping of any sales. That’s without studio repairs, procuring materials, and all the detritus of the everyday that clutters up one’s schedule.
YOUNGJOO YOO | Jewelry
That spirit of entrepreneurship, of respect for traditional handwork and the creative innovation to be found at the heart of the best craftspeople’s work reflects the best of American, and human, values. But it’s a quiet strength, that takes time and endures, and that’s easy to overlook. The marvels on display, and some are indeed marvelous, contain all the more meaning for being focii of knowledge. Skills passed down through generations, even indirectly, and honed over years and years went into each ceramic vessel, thrown on a wheel or shaped by strong hands, or a silver ring, carefully soldered together element by element.
A ring by Youngjoo Yoo is an example of the latter. Yoo lives in Niles, Michigan, and went to the University of Iowa, Iowa City, where a famous Korean immigrant, Chunghi Choo, taught her own unique style of metalworking. She takes delicate repeating geometric shapes, likely stamped out of sheet silver or gold, and solders them end to end. While identical in shape, these diminutive objects are close cousins to that miracle of nature, the snowflake, as the edges of each star differ just slightly from the next. A small flower, with a silver stem and gold petals and leaves, contrasts with the repeating pattern that forms the background. The silver twig is deftly textured. At each of these steps, it was Yoo’s hands which were the transformative tool in turning raw materials into a perfect work of art.
That level of skill and ability took years of hard work. However, as a country, we no longer reward hard work as we used to. We give it lip service, we revere it as a national religion, yet more and more, it seems Americans are paid less, purchase cheaper things out of necessity, and are glued to free, cheap content pumped out over smart phone apps and computer screens.
The end result of this direction is a spiritual impoverishment. We’re losing traditions, ancestral knowledge, respect for taking the difficult path, understanding of how the world works and how things are made, and what are we getting in return? A poor imitation of life, reflected through our screens.
Humanity is capable of so much more. And here, at the PMA Craft Show, you’ll find endless examples of our better nature. Take Kiki Verveniotis, of Go Lightly Clothing. She found her path early in life thanks to her Greek aunts, whom she visited during summer voyages to her family’s island off the coast. They taught her needleworking, as it is still tradition there for every girl to sew linens and decorative textiles for her future abode when she became married. Verveniotis would take a detour to her current life of sewing, working corporate for a number of years. It was in the early nineties, in New York City, that she first launched her brand, and with it, a transition to being a maker. She makes “few-of-a-kind” series, intentionally keeping an intimate selection. Now living in Connecticut, she does most of the sewing herself. As a good student of her aunts, she wastes nothing, using scraps and ends reincorporated into a comfortable shawl or warm, embracing coat.
We used to make our own clothing, and those clothes communicated important details about who we are, what we’ve done, and what we’re looking for. While we’ve certainly gained in convenience and price, first at department stores, now ordering online through Amazon right to our doorsteps, perhaps this convenience is only temporary, and hides a large, inconvenient truth. That this process is filled with both waste and human exploitation, and at its worst, delivers empty-hearted objects that last for a year or two at most. We have to buy another pair, replace those torn and tattered clothes made from cheap, artificial materials, as the treadmill turns.
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ADIANTE FRANSZOON | Furniture
Again, a counterpoint. Shani Solomon learned printmaking in her youth, which she uses to apply her handpainted flowers, peacock eyes and the Wave at Kanagawa to her jackets and dresses. With the printmaking method, multiples are easy to do, and so Solomon’s work is a bit more affordable as a result. But her creative hand is at work in the process, and each riotous explosion of color she makes is a testament to the labor and the love that she’s put into her vocation. Not only that, but her compositions are bold, colorful, with stark contrasts that make for a powerful impression.
Of course, at a craft show like Philly, clothing and jewelry aren’t the only thing on the menu. Remarkably glazed ceramic vessels, delicate and ethereal blown glass sculptures, cast-glass Buddhas, rich mahogany-hued furniture, metal recreations of rural buildings like water towers and barns, beautiful basketry made from invasive vines, and much, much more are present. Each is an individual expression of a passion for life, of a deep drive to learn and experiment. For nearly every artist you’ll meet at the show, this passion is joined at the hip with hard work.
That’s what you’re supporting when you purchase from a craft artist at the PMA Craft Show. What you’re also doing is giving a gift to yourself. Even if it is a gift for another person, the object, whether it’s a wine glass, a stoneware vase, a handsewn coat, or an iridescent necklace of glass pendants, carries a certain kind of truth within itself. That truth is the authentic nature of its construction. Care was involved in each step of the process, and for those who have collected handmade craft before, you can innately feel the energy a well-made object holds.
We’re living in a world where everything seems to be spiraling out of control. At best, a lot of changes are happening that don’t seem to be improving our lives, and instead are making it faster, meaner, and with constant calls for our attention. The advent of AI might mean that within our lifetimes, we’ll be watching television shows made by robots, with AI-drawn actors, reading books made by AI authors, and looking at AI-produced videos on Instagram and Tiktok.
That dystopian future is on the horizon, but there is something that you can do: invest in people, not machines. The values of Silicon Valley don’t reflect human values, and if we’re to return to those human values, we need to put in the work. The artists at the PMA Contemporary Craft show already are. Together we can move towards a more humane, beautiful world. And buy a piece of art in the process!
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Patrick R. Benesh-Liu is Coeditor of Ornament and a lifelong participant in his parents’ creative journey. From growing up in the Ornament office on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles to his first administrative work in the Vista, California building during high school, Benesh-Liu has been fortunateto be immersed in craft, culture and wearable art. As time goes on, he feels ever more fervently that craft and wearable art are a vital pillar for a richer, more humane society. He reports on this year’s Philadelphia Museum of Art Contemporary Craft Show, one of the foremost in the country, and a valuable marketplace where artist and public can meet. Philadelphia has been making a national push to brand itself as the craft capital of America, and the historic city will be ground zero for kicking off Handwork 2026. This nationwide celebration of American craft involves over two-hundred fifty museums and other organizations, and elevates the best of us. Benesh-Liu gives readers an introduction to the exciting semiquincentennial event. In addition, he writes in memory of Karen Lorene, the passionate founder of Facèré Jewelry Art Gallery in Seattle, Washington, and a dear friend of Carolyn, who passed away earlier this year.
