As the weather gets colder and the days grow shorter, we are finding ourselves spending more time reading. As advocates of craft, design, and artistic expression, there’s no better season to delve into publications that explore the ever-evolving world of fine craft. From exploring the intersection of making and artificial intelligence to investigating the history and future of prairie beadwork, and reflecting on feminist approaches to curating, the recent publications below shed light on the rich and diverse conversations happening in craft today.
Craft and Design Practice from an Embodied Perspective, Edited by Nithikul Nimkulrat and Camilla Groth (2024)
This book, co-edited by Canadian textile artist and theorist Nithikul Nimkulrat, and Norwegian craft and design scholar Camilla Groth, brings together contributors from multiple disciplines to discuss craft and design practice from an embodied perspective. Contributors examine topics such as the embodied basis of craft activities and material manipulation, experiential knowledge and skill learning, reflection in and on action, and material dialogues.
Fleece and Fibre: Textile Producers of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands by Francis McCabe (2023)
Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands are part of a unique geographical region that can grow and process its own raw textile materials with transparency. This book explores the region’s vibrant fleece and fibre community and introduces the public to this ever increasing land-based textile economy. Richly illustrated with captivating photography, Fleece and Fibre presents the many fibre types produced along the Salish Sea—including sheep wool, llama, alpaca, mohair, cashmere, linen, flax, and hemp—and explains where and how they are currently being grown, processed, and used.
Bead Talk: Indigenous Knowledge and Aesthetics from the Flatlands, Edited by Carmen L. Robertson, Judy Anderson, and Katherine Boyer (2024)
In Bead Talk, editors Carmen Robertson, Judy Anderson, and Katherine Boyer gather conversations, interviews, essays, and full colour reproductions of beadwork from expert and emerging artists, academics, and curators to illustrate the importance of beading in contemporary Indigenous arts. Taken together, the book poses and responds to philosophical questions about beading on the prairies: How do the practices and processes of beading embody reciprocity, respect, and storytelling? How is beading related to Indigenous ways of knowing? How does beading help individuals reconnect with the land? Why do we bead? Showcasing beaded tumplines, text, masks, regalia, and more, Bead Talk emphasizes that there is no one way to engage with this art. The contributors to this collection invite us all into the beading circle as they reshape how beads are understood and stitch together generations of artists.
Encountering Craft Methodological Approaches from Anthropology, Art History, and Design, Edited by Chandan Bose and Mira Mohsini (2023)
This book reflects on the methodological challenges and possibilities encountered when researching practices historically defined and classified as “craft.” The contributions are written by scholars whose work focuses on various craft practices across geographies. Each chapter contains detailed case study material along with a theoretical analysis of the research challenges confronted. They provide valuable insight into how methodologies emerge in response to particular research conditions and contexts, addressing issues of decolonization, representation, institutionalization, and power. Informed by anthropology, art history and design, this volume facilitates interdisciplinary discussion and touches on pressing issues related to craft research today.
Intelligence artificielle, culture et médias, Edited by Véronique Guèvremont and Colette Brin (2024)
This book takes a multi-faceted look at the growing influence of artificial intelligence (AI) on the arts, exploring both the opportunities and risks posed by this evolving technology. Artistic creation, the safeguarding of cultural heritage and diversity, and intellectual property issues are among the topics addressed. While several essays express a certain confidence in AI to support creators and excitement about the intersection of art and artificial intelligence, the majority of authors share their concerns and questions about the technology. The book is both a guide for reflection and a marker for measuring the evolution of these issues in the years to come.
Nova Scotia Folk Art: An Illustrated Guide by Roy Cronin (2024)
A photo-filled, narrative guide to the uniquely Nova Scotian folk art genre from former Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Roy Cronin. Nova Scotia Folk Art features profiles of 50 artists—some obscure and some well-known. With more than 100 colour images, this illustrated guide explores the exhibitions, collections, and festivals that allowed these Nova Scotia artists to move their creations from the roadside to the museum, and, in so doing create its own genre: Nova Scotia Folk Art.
Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects, Edited by Sequoia Miller (2024)
Magdalene Odundo is a Kenyan-born British ceramicist whose extraordinary works have been widely celebrated for their beauty and universality. Gardiner Museum Chief Curator Sequoia Miller sheds light on the colonial and material traditions that inform Odundo’s ceramics, showing how the artist deftly blends cultural and ethnographic sources to give expression to the postcolonial experience. This illustrated catalogue discusses Odundo’s method and puts her ceramic forms into conversation with global contemporary art. With a foreword by Susan Jefferies, Magdalene Odundo: A Dialogue with Objects provides new perspectives on the artist, revealing the profound complexities of her work while deepening our understanding of modernism more broadly.
Curating as Feminist Organizing, Edited by Elke Krasny and Lara Perry (2024)
What makes curating feminist organizing? This book brings together twenty curatorial case studies from diverse regions of the globe. Reflecting on their own curatorial projects or analyzing feminist-inspired exhibitions, the authors in this book elaborate feminist curating as that which is inspired to challenge gender politics not only within but also beyond the doors of the museum and gallery. Connecting broader feminist politics to their curatorial practices, the book provides case studies of curatorial practice that address the legacies of racialized and ethnic violence, including colonialism; which seek to challenges the state’s regulation of citizenship and sexuality; and which realize the drive for economic justice in the organizations and roles in which curators work.
The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art, Craft, and Visual Culture Education, Edited by Manisha Sharma and Amanda Alexander (2023)
This companion demonstrates how art, craft, and visual culture education activate social imagination and action that is equity- and justice-driven. Specifically, this book provides arts-engaged, intersectional understandings of decolonization in the contemporary art world that cross disciplinary lines. Chapters highlight and illustrate how artists, educators, and researchers grapple with decolonial methods, theories, and strategies—in research, artmaking, and pedagogical practice. Each chapter includes discursive questions and resources for further engagement with the topics at hand. The book is targeted toward scholars and practitioners of art education, studio art, and art history, K-12 art teachers, as well as artist educators and teaching artists in museums and communities.
Aesthetics of Repair: Indigenous Art and the Form of Reconciliation by Eugenia Kisin (2024)
Aesthetics of Repair analyzes how the belongings called “art” are mobilized by Indigenous artists and cultural activists in British Columbia. Drawing on contemporary imaginaries of repair, the book asks how diverse forms of collective reckoning with settler-colonial harm resonate with urgent conversations about the aesthetics of care in art. The discussion moves across urban and remote spaces of display for Northwest Coast–style Indigenous art, including galleries and museums, pipeline protests, digital exhibitions, an Indigenous-run art school, and a totem pole repatriation site.
We’d love to hear from you! Whether you’re diving into one of the books from our list or exploring other craft-related reads, let us know in the comments what’s been inspiring you this fall and winter. Are there any books or catalogues that have sparked your creativity or shifted the way you think about craft? Share your recommendations, reflections, and any projects you’ve been working on that connect to your reading.