What Interests You?

Craftivism

Craftivist histories, criticisms, and a masters thesis!

Artist Profiles

While Mary specializes in collaborative pairs (hey Robyn and Dianne, Linda and Ellen!), she covers solo artists, too.

Academic / Other

Digital-Handicraft? The Value of the Vessel? Get weird and theoretical.

Some Social Practice
compiled and written by Ellen Mueller

Featured in "Some Social Practice"

a compilation of zines and texts from Ellen Mueller
Highly recommend this graphic and accessible text!

The Menstrual Cup Project

"Looking Into An Empty Vessel"

a collaboration spearheaded by Rick Nickel on the value of the vessel featuring myself, Rick, Amelia Butcher, Sophia Capaldi, Carole Epp, and Rob Hunter under editor Jill Foote-Hutton for Studio Potter. 

"Toward a Digital-Handicraft Practice," co-authored with Theresa Slater
we're honored to be the first chapter in "Critical Digital Making in Art Education"   edited by  Aaron Knochel, Christine Liao, and Ryan Patton, published by Peter Lang
"Baumstark and Slater assert craft is a position, rather than a set of practices or materials, developed through tacit feedback. Their chapter explores interaction techniques for touch, including touchless interface and single or multiple finger techniques, and how these gestures foster collaborative critical making and practices, particularly between the discourses of the digital and handmade... These relationships between the digital and handmade assert an awareness of the physical nature of digital technologies eschewing our conceptual relationship between code and plastic bodies." (introduction)

"Tools for Uncertain Times"  in Studio Potter, June 2020

on the collaborative work of
​Linda Tien and Ellen Kleckner

“If your collaboration is an implement, what are the materials of your joinery? What’s your glue?” I ask. “We only have one, pretty loose rule: No adhesive,” they say. In a practice that centers on unlikely combinations of material, this one seems challenging. But the hesitation to use tape or glue forces the two to reckon with the material practices of craft histories. Time-tested methods of joinery, like tension-setting or riveting, run the material gamut in the Archive as a clay handle holds a wooden-backed wire scrubber, or a knitted body connects to a pair of small wheels, or a leather band connected to wooden dowels is topped with ceramic tips. " 
Click the title above to read more!

"Considering Performance with Habiba El-Sayed:

in Fusion: A Magazine for Clay and Glass, edited by Margot Letner