February is Black Historical past Month in america. To honor this, AJF highlights our earlier articles and movies about Black producers and/or Black writers all month lengthy.

Karen Smith
We interviewed the founding father of the We Wield the Hammer program, which teaches the fundamentals of metalworking utilizing copper, brass and sterling silver to younger African women and girls who wouldn’t in any other case take into account a profession within the discipline. WWTH offers a chance for inventive equality, financial empowerment and entry to a occupation that has historically been out of attain of girls around the globe. This system is free to college students. Smith lives in Oakland, CA, however plans to increase this system to different cities and nations.

WWTH got here out of two apprenticeships that Smith created for himself in Senegal in 2018 and 2019. The interview begins by speaking about WWTH, then returns to Smith’s time in Senegal. Learn extra.

Creating the Future
This group sharpens the facility that the group nurtures by way of relationships, shared inside and exterior progress, communication and communication. Exploring a future in motion and follow, CTF transforms into the wants of the actual second and particular person. Its versatility is certainly one of CTF’s greatest qualities, and it additionally permits the group to the touch so many lives and inventive practices. Chava Krivchenia carried out an interview with CTF director Corey Pemberton and assistant director Annie Evelyn, proven left, discussing the origins and way forward for Crafting the Future and its significance for the craft group on the whole.

Artists Devyn Vasquez and Tanya Crane belong to the Crafting the Future group. His work reveals the time and connection between artist and materials. This relationship between time and materials is fueled and strengthened by the help of the communities and the work of Crafting the Future. The article additionally throws mild upon the work of Vasquez and Crane. Learn extra.

LaMar Gayles, Jr.
Gayles served as a jury member for the 2023 Susan Beech Mid-Profession Scholarship. She might now be greatest recognized for curating the exhibition she. Divine Legacies in Black Jewellery, He centered on exploring and presenting the histories and legacies of Black jewelry, whereas working to introduce the viewers to the totally different names and personalities related to this discipline. In an interview with him, she illuminates among the contexts through which the exhibit is understood. Learn extra.

Kim Jenkins
Reviewed Jenkins Style Jewellery: Barbara Berger Assortment, Proven by the Museum of Artwork and Design in 2013. Berger has amassed 4,500 decorative objects over fifty years, and 450 of them are on show within the exhibition. Berger’s ties to her father’s diamond fortune and her second husband’s enterprise in diamond mining are downplayed, positioning the collector as a meritocratic visionary and emphasizing her daring and visionary strategy to organizing her private wardrobe. Learn extra.

Jenkins is an impartial researcher dwelling and dealing in New York. Whereas writing for the AJF, she taught style historical past and idea at Pratt Institute and Parsons The New Faculty for Design. She is presently the director and principal investigator of The Style and Race Database, a one-of-a-kind studying platform about style and race that she co-founded. She obtained her MA in Style Research from Parsons The New Faculty for Design in 2013.

Tiff Massey
In 2019, Massey was awarded the Susan Beech Mid-Profession Artist Fellowship. Identified for his cutting-edge interactive artwork, Massey Every day Arsenalis an immersive technological and hip-hop medium that makes use of ornamentation to shift focus from object to participant whereas documenting the second. Massey obtained a $20,000 money grant to supply the mission. Learn extra.

Massey is an interdisciplinary artist from Detroit, MI. She holds an MFA in metalworking from the Cranbrook Academy of Arts she. Massey creates works impressed by African requirements of financial vitality, together with each large-scale and wearable sculptures, music and efficiency. His work has been extensively exhibited in each nationwide and worldwide museums and galleries. He carried out as a part of 2018. Detroit-Berlin: One Circle Pageant on the HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin.

Website particular set up Every day ArsenalThe Metallic Museum’s exhibition from July 24 to September 26, 2021 drew upon up to date observations of sophistication and race by way of the lens of an African diaspora.