Super Natural Image Courtesy of Judith Schaechter
Welcome to the home of the 2026 CraftNOW Symposium!
Radical Americana; Throughlines
The 2026 theme, Radical Americana: Throughlines, considers how Philadelphia’s craft traditions, objects, and ideas connect the city’s past with the work of artists today. The theme grows out of the broader Radical Americana initiative developed by The Clay Studio and cultural
partners during the nation’s 250th anniversary year. CraftNOW’s November programming carries that conversation forward, using objects, materials, places, and artistic traditions to uncover the connections between Philadelphia’s history and its living creative community.
Run of Show
9:30 Coffee service begins/registration
10:00 Opening Remarks
Award of Excellence
Memoriam for Ted Hallman
10:15 Individual Talk – Souleo – History of Buttons
11:00 Individual Talk – Jonathan Wahl – Cliveden
11:15 Panel – Isabel Brown – Glen Foerd & Andalusia artists
12:00 Networking Lunch – RSVP required
1:00 – Moore Gallery tour & Book Signing
1:30 Individual Talk – Jenni Johnson – Wharton Esherick
1:45 Individual Talk – Amiee Koran – M.O.M.
2:30 Individual Talk – Adam Chau – PMA Presidential China
2:45 Individual Talk – Dennis Ritter – Stenton
3:00 Coffee Break
315 Individual Talk – Lyla – Historic Yellow Springs
3:30 Individual talk – Jake Foster – William Way LGBT
3:45 Individual talk – ToniGreenbaum- Art Smith
4:00 Panel – Susie Silbert & Philadelphia glass/pipe artists
4:45 – Closing Remarks
5:00 – Audience questions/comments
5:00 Happy Hour & Book Table – connect with symposium participants, share stories of craft, and explore the Galleries at Moore.
Souleo:
The Button in Philadelphia
Souleo is an acclaimed interdisciplinary writer, curator, and impresario. His work merges literature, fashion, and art to document and amplify the stories of the emerging and underrepresented. On August 10, 2027 he will release his debut book, Showing Out: Fashion in Harlem published by Rutgers University Press. He is also the co-curator with Barbara Paris Gifford of the upcoming exhibition Harlem by Hand at the Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY) opening October 9, 2027. To learn more: SouleoUniverse.com
Jonathan Wahl:
Radical Tinware
Jonathan Wahl’s work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MFA Boston, the Houston Museum of Fine art, The New York Historical Society and the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC. It has been featured or reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, The New Yorker, Architectural Digest, Oprah Magazine, W Jewelry, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Metalsmith Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, the Aventurine, Advocate and The Antiques Magazine, among others. Wahl has been awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Emerging Artist Fellowship from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, one for Craft and one for Drawing and the Pennsylvania Society of Goldsmiths Award for “Outstanding Achievement.” He was also named one of the top 10 jewelers to watch by W Jewelry in 2006.
Isabel Brown, and John Vick, alongside Jessica Eldridge, Sophie Glenn, Jody Graff, and Cait McCormack
Panel Discussion: Fabrications for Gilded Rooms
Glen Foerd and Andalusia, two historic mansions on the Delaware River, co-present Fabrications for Gilded Rooms, a panel discussion with exhibiting artists Jessica Eldredge, Sophie Glenn, Jody Graff, and Cait McCormack. At Glen Foerd, Jessica Eldredge layered screen-printed, painted, and embroidered patterns to capture the memory of a moment in time and space, and Cait McCormack turned hand-crocheted botanical sculptures into patterned upholstery memorials. At Andalusia, Sophie Glenn fabricated a traditional furniture form in painted steel, trading joinery for welded seams, while Jody Graff collected leaves for collage quilts that trace and celebrate botanical legacies. Each artist’s site-specific installation harmonizes and reinterprets the materiality of these grand estates, inviting a close look at both the new works and their old settings. This panel will explore meticulous assembly, symbols of memory, and how creative perspectives help keep historic homes relevant to audiences today.
Jennifer Johnson:
In Place: A Year of Making at the Wharton Esherick Museum
Jennifer Johnson, a Philadelphia-based sculptor, works primarily in clay. Her practice explores how architecture is the product of its history and connects it to the present moment through ceramic models, mosaics, and site-responsive installations that investigate geometry, color, and the built environment. In This talk, Jennifer will be speaking on how Craft, regionalism, site-specificity, and an American vernacular were essential to her creative journey as the 2026 Wharton Esherick Museum (WEM) Artist-in-Residence.
Aimee Koran:
What would a Union for Moms look like? Maternal Order of Makers (M.O.M.)
Aimee Koran is a Philadelphia-based visual artist whose practice examines invisible labor—particularly reproductive, emotional, and caregiving work—and its relationship to systems of value, power, and recognition. Working across sculpture, photography, textiles, and installation, she transforms materials drawn from domestic life, medical technologies, and institutional production to reveal the labor embedded within everyday objects. Her work situates personal materials within broader feminist, economic, and labor histories, using lived experience as evidence rather than autobiography. Koran will discuss Union Hall: Maternal Order of Makers (M.O.M.), a speculative union and participatory art project that reframes motherhood, caregiving, and making as essential forms of labor.
Additional Bios
Elisabeth Agro is co-founder of the Craft Chronicle and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Craft and Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Art Museum, where she works toward craft’s inclusion in the ever-changing global landscape of contemporary art. Her recent exhibitions with accompanying publications include The Shape of Time: Korean Art after 1989 (2023) and Boom: Art & Design in the 1940s (2025). She has advised and juried the Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale and Cheongju Craft Biennale in the Republic of Korea. Prior to joining the museum in 2006, Elisabeth held positions at Carnegie Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Topher Gent is a designer and educator based in Providence, Rhode Island. He holds a BFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and a Master of Design from the Universitetet i Bergen, Norway, where his research examined the relationship between handcraft and emerging digital technologies. His studio practice employs craft as methodology for research, where making becomes a systematic investigation into human-object relationships and materiality. His work explores how objects express traces of their creation, navigating the intersection of traditional craft processes and digital fabrication. He is currently Assistant Professor of Spatial Dynamics at RISD.
Duwenavue Santé Johnson is a distinguished federal government senior hand embroiderer, artist, teacher, lecturer, and curator. She is co-director/founder of GrioxArts and an artist in residence at Cherry Street Pier and founder of the Mason Stitch Art Collective at the Masonic Temple and Grand Lodge in Philadelphia. Her professional practice is deeply rooted in textile arts, cultural preservation, and the power of narrative. As a three-time cancer survivor, her work is guided by principles of resilience and process-based practices. She holds a specialized Federal role with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) where she meticulously executes the hand embroidery of the U.S. President’s and Vice President’s flags, and at the Institute of Heraldry in Philadelphia. In addition to her roles as lecturer, exhibitor, and docent for the Heraldics collection experience, she has been featured in interviews on NPR, ABC, CBS, and Fox News. In the visual arts, Johnson has had her work acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, as well as being considered a rising force in the contemporary art world, with recent solo exhibitions in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and NYC. Accolades include the prestigious Rebeccah Milena Maia Blum Curatorial Fellowship (2026-2027) and Radical America! Research and Exhibition Grant (2026), multiple Black Music City Grant Awards, and the Mural Arts Black Fellow 2024 grant. Holding a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Arts, she is currently pursuing a master’s degree in American history to further her artistic mission of engaging audiences and promoting dialogue, understanding, and sharing their stories through textile-inspired media, thereby fostering their appreciation of heritage and shared history. Johnson’s commitment to fostering a collective understanding through mended narratives artistic mission, thereby bridging divides and promoting social cohesion.
Dr. Matthew Jordan-Miller Kenyatta is an award-winning artist, author, and advocate whose work across urbanism and public art expands space for joy, justice, and genius. Currently, he serves as Director of Exhibitions and Public Programming at Temple Contemporary’s gallery. Dr. Matt curates public shows to help North Philadelphia and Tyler School of Art and Architecture be a beacon for art, architecture, and community imagination, most recently PYRAMID CLUB: 1937-2035 with Shawn Theodore and NAVIGATING NEW PLACES with Norman Akers. Prior, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design, he catalyzed the Justice and Belonging Fund, the Black Planners Society, and the Julian Abele Lecture. His advocacy work as a consultant writing the New Freedom District Cultural Plan for West Philadelphia. He advances cultural preservation and public art as the youngest Philadelphia Art Commissioner since 2021 and previously served as a 21st Century Historic Preservation Leaders Fellow with the U.S. Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. In October 2025, the City of Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations honored him with a Social Justice Award in Arts and Culture.
Kerianne Quick is a nationally recognized artist/craftsperson, Associate Professor of Jewelry and Metalwork at San Diego State University, and co-founder of Secret Identity Projects and Craft Desert. Highlights from their exhibition record include Craft in America Gallery (Los Angeles), the Museum of Art and Design (NYC), Museo Franz Mayer (CDMX), the National Museum for Women in the Arts (D.C.), and Salon del Mobile (Milan). Their work is included in the collections of the LACMA, MFA Houston, and the Netherlands Design Museum (Stedelijk). They are currently researching migration and the conveyance of objects as it relates to memory, belonging, and longing.
Angelique Scott is a Afro-Caribbean-American artist and educator whose artistic practice is rooted in intergenerational traditions of care and craftsmanship. Drawing from Afro-diasporic material culture, she works primarily with clay, glass, fiber, cowrie shells, and indigo to create both functional and decorative objects. Her work is grounded in Afrocentricity and Africana womanism as frameworks for embodied understanding. Angelique received her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Art Education and Craft & Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University and earned her Masters of Fine Arts in Ceramics from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture. Her professional experience includes studio residencies at Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Vermont Studio Center, Penland School of Craft, Arrowmont, Hambidge, Ibura Arts at Blue Light Junction, and the Skopelos Foundation in Greece. She served on the Board of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts as the youngest onsite liaison, co-organizing the largest clay conference in the U.S. She currently hosts clay workshops along the East Coast and maintains a vibrant studio-based practice investigating spirituality, wellness, and communal healing through craft.
Recent Symposium History
2025: Intention
In 2025, the theme of Intention explored the conscious choices behind artistic creation, asking why we make art and how meaning is shaped through materials and processes. Every decision in art—whether in concept, medium, or execution—reflects the maker’s values, experiences, and desires. This theme invited artists, designers, and craftspeople to examine the motivations behind their work, encouraging a more purposeful and aware approach to creation. Intention also emphasizes care in the act of making, including the preservation of materials, traditions, and cultural heritage, and the role of craft in healing and restoration.
2024: Connectivity
CraftNOW’s 2023 Connectivity which explored family, community, and how craft connects us in an increasingly divided world. Keynote Speaker Patricia Wilson Aden, President and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance spoke on Philadelphia’s creative ecosystem. Other presenters included Dr Tariem Burroughs presenting research on craft and public health, panel discussions on artificial intelligence and craft reality TV and presentations by four emerging scholars.
2023: Craft Works
CraftNOW’s 2023 symposium centered on the theme Craft Works. Through this theme, scholars, artists, and other speakers explored diverse and changing ideas around work that permeate every aspect of the craft landscape. Craft Works will also pay tribute to the important contributions of gallerists Ruth and Rick Snyderman to Philadelphia’s craft community through their gallery, Snyderman Works. Presenters included Asiyah Kurtz, executive director of Camden Fireworks, and Philadelphia craft scholar Helen Drutt. Panel discussions on creative placemaking and Korean/American curatorial partnerships and two emerging scholars completed the program.
2022: Public | Private
CraftNOW’s 2022 symposium and programming centered on the theme Public | Private and explored continually evolving concepts of shared versus personal space. The keynote speaker was be Michael Lewis, architectural critic for the Wall Street Journal and author of Philadelphia Builds: Essays on Architecture, Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind, and City of Refuge. Other presenting institutions included Craft in America, The Center for Art in Wood, Wharton Esherick Museum, varying divisions of the Philadelphia Mummers Parade, and four emerging scholars.
2021: Environmental Effects
CraftNOW’s 2021 symposium Environmental Effects examined how communities and interiors shape our experiences, when sustainability issues are expressed through craft, and the greater impact of our contemporary material culture. Longer presentations were complimented by shorter Pecha Kucha style talks. Dr. Kelli Morgan was keynote having contributed the chapter Crafting Diversity in our recent publication Craft Capital: Philadelphia’s Cultures of Making.
2020: Cultures of Making
CraftNOW’s 2020 symposium Cultures of Making examines the many ways community, activism, research, and connection develop out of collaborative craft practices in the neighborhoods of Philadelphia to the Santa Clara Pueblo and beyond. Keynote speakers Vashti DuBois, Executive Director of The Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia, and Hinda Mandell, editor of Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats, are central to each day’s conversation as we talk and think about the role of craft as a tool for provocation and exchange, especially in this heightened time of social unrest.
Questions?