The First Friday Preview 

For nearly 30 years, art lovers in Philadelphia have reserved the First Friday of every month for gallery hopping. To bring this tradition to you virtually, CraftNOW invites curators and artists for intimate previews on Thursday nights. 

In June, we are hosting R & Company in New York and highlighting their current exhibition Objects: USA 2020, which hails a new generation of artist-craftspeople by revisiting a groundbreaking event that redefined and elevated American craft. Hosted by R & Company’s Evan Snyderman, son of Philadelphia’s renowned craft gallerists Ruth and Rick Snyderman, this program will include interviews with artists Anna Von Mertens and Jaydan Moore. 

On the Agenda –

The Objects: USA 2020 exhibition surveys American handmade arts through a curated selection of 100 artists, including 50 of the most impactful contemporary makers working today and 50 historical artists, whose work viewed together is a testament to the diverse, pluralistic, and hybrid state of handmade objects in American culture today.

Anna Von Mertens’ “Portraits” series references contemporary auratic photography. Fascinated by this collision of pseudoscience and abstraction, Von Mertens set about making textile versions of historic portraits including, the Mona Lisa, Velázquez’s Philip IV, and Whistler’s Mother, giving an aura to each subject in what she considered an appropriate palette of the utmost sincerity.

Jaydan Moore was born into a family of tombstone makers in California and spent his childhood rummaging through other people’s objects. Today Moore’s work reclaims antique pieces of silver and silver plate, collaging them into expressionist compositions. This method yields a complex set of ideas about the meanings embedded within inherited materiality while honoring the latent value of the objects, shaped skillfully by the hands of late artisans.