On the bottom floor of the Erb Memorial Union, sandwiched between study areas, lives a place chock full of creativity, passionate artists and free resources. Carrying the tagline “Immerse, Innovate, Inspire,” the Craft Center aims to provide students and community members with resources to create whatever they please, using a wide variety of mediums.
This January, the Craft Center released a new month-long exhibition on the third floor of the EMU. Entitled “Process and Projects,” the exhibition aimed to share artist’s creative processes along with their finished pieces. From glassblowing to embroidered mixed media pieces, the exhibition showcased many of the different mediums available at the craft center. The pieces were created by passionate staff members and student workers, showcasing emotional events and themes through artistic means.
Within the center, there are multiple studios for different mediums, including darkroom photography, woodworking, glassworking, paper arts, printmaking, fiber arts, jewelry and metalsmithing, painting and drawing and ceramics.
“It is a place to belong,” Jennifer Salzman, director of the craft center, said. “You don’t have to be good at anything in particular or defined by a major. You don’t have to be part of a team. You can simply come and be yourself and find where you want to be.”
Salzman created a piece for the exhibition herself, entitled “Peggy’s Life.” The embroidery and photography mixed media piece weaves common threads of the life of her recently deceased mother, Peggy, and her own. “Peggy’s Life” incorporates an embroidered poem and printed photography. Salzman created the piece to celebrate the life of her mother and to illustrate the connection they continue to have in their hearts.
“I don’t really look at it as a piece about grieving,” Salzman said. “I look at it as a piece about remembrance and love and continuing that connection even though she’s gone.”
Noelle Pflanz, administrative programming assistant in the craft center, created a similarly themed piece for the exhibition. Pflanz put together a large embroidery piece inspired by barn quilts. Barn quilts are large quilts that are customized to showcase a family’s history and displayed on the side of a barn. Pflanz grew up in upstate New York, where barn quilts were a prevalent part of the landscape and an important symbol during her childhood.
Pflanz’s piece is all about family and natural landscapes. She started the piece right after her stepfather was diagnosed with brain cancer and worked on the piece for six months, finishing it the day after he passed away.
“When we came up with the idea for ‘Process and Projects,’ it really hit home for me because, throughout the process of making this piece, I was really processing what it means to be at home and to be with family,” Pflanz said. “It was a really important piece.”
The two family-inspired pieces by Salzman and Pflanz illustrate the craft center’s importance as a place of emotional expression, personal process and creation of meaningful products.
“Process and Projects” featured a variety of other pieces with differing ideas and mediums. A glass blown abstract lamp entitled “Fire Box” by Samuel Decker, pro-staff member, stood out among the pieces featured. A colorful acrylic painting of a young woman sitting beneath the moon also caught eyes among the collection. Painted by Emerald Sky, a student staff member, the piece is entitled “A Love Letter to the Moon.”
The exhibition also included photos highlighting technical processes within the craft center, hence the name. Close-up photos of welding, embroidery, glass blowing and ceramics littered the walls in between the various art pieces.
The exhibition was intended to inspire students and community members to explore art in any way possible, whether through emotional expression or by trying out a skills workshop. Students of any major can visit the craft center during open hours and see what it has to offer.
