From The Ground Up At Smithsonian American Art Museum

Exhibition: "From the Ground Up: Renwick Craft Invitational 2007", March 9 - July 22, 2007, at Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street N.W. Farragut North (Red line) and Farragut West (Blue and Orange lines) Metrorail stations.

A biennial exhibition series at the Renwick Gallery was established in 2000 to honor the creativity and talent of craft artists working today. The 2007 invitational features the work of Paula Bartron, Jocelyn Châteauvert, Beth Lipman and Beth Cavener Stichter. The artists were chosen by Susanne Frantz, independent curator and former curator of 20th-century glass at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York; Lloyd Herman, independent curator and founding director of the Renwick Gallery; and Jane Milosch, curator at the Renwick Gallery.

Bartron, an American who resides in Stockholm, Sweden, creates blown and cast glass sculptures with an emphasis on minimal geometric forms and pure lines. Châteauvert, who resides in Charleston, S.C., uses handmade paper and metalsmithing techniques to create ethereal jewelry, lighting designs and installations.

Lipman, who resides in Sheboygan Falls, Wisc., translates 17th- and 18th-century still life paintings into three-dimensional blown and lampworked glass sculpture. Cavener Stichter of Portage, Ohio, creates clay sculptures that focus on human psychology articulated through animal and human forms. Milosch is the curator of this exhibition.

Credit:

The Ryna and Melvin Cohen Family Foundation generously supports "From the Ground Up: Renwick Craft Invitational 2007."

The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum is dedicated to exhibiting American crafts
and decorative arts from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Museum hours are from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily, except Dec. 25.

By www.americanart.si.edu