Two Yale affiliates are among 400 artists whose works are being exhibited and sold during the 29th annual "Celebration of American Crafts" at the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven. The six-week national exhibition runs through Wednesday, Dec. 24.
On display are handmade wooden bowls by Edmund S. Morgan, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus, and decoratively painted tables by Katherine Kearns, director of the Teaching Fellows Program in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and assistant director of the Whitney Humanities Center.
Since retiring in 1986 after teaching at Yale for
32 years, Professor Morgan has spent about half of every day on historical research and the rest of the day crafting objects from wood and metal. A scholar of American colonial history, he notes that he prefers to work on American walnut and dogwood, rather than on exotic woods. The Yale historian began working on the lathe during World War II, when he helped manufacture metal radar equipment at the Radiation Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His handmade bowls are on display both for their craftsmanship and to illustrate the process of making art.
Ms. Kearns began painting decorative designs on tables and chairs when she arrived in New Haven and found herself in a small apartment with two young children and very little furniture. At first, she simply used markers to enhance the grain on wooden furniture that she found in thrift shops, tag sales and on the street. Her brightly colored tables on display at the "Celebration of American Crafts" illustrate her recent process of using markers, acrylics, oil paints, enamels and inks to combine geometric shapes with the inherent forms of the grain of the wood.
Ms. Kearns has been a lecturer in English at several universities and colleges for the past 15 years and is the author of several books, including the recently released "Psychoanalysis, Historiography, and Feminism: The Search for Critical Method." Her artistic endeavors, she explains, "are an extension of and escape from my training as a writer of critical analysis, with the 'text' in this case a surface of grained wood."
The Creative Arts Workshop is a regional center for the visual arts located at 80 Audubon St. Proceeds from the sale of art works during the "Celebration of American Crafts" support the center's operating costs and tuition-assistance program. The hours for the exhibition and sale are Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. (until 7 p.m. on Thursdays in December), and Sunday, 1-5 p.m. For further information, call 562-2329.