Craft in Focus Festival in New York

Sat, Jun 3 - Sun, Jun 4  2017

June 3 and 4, the first NY edition of the Craft in Focus Festival takes place at Industry City, Brooklyn. The Craft in Focus Festival presents over a hundred hands-on workshops for all ages, inspiring lectures by renowned international craftsmen, master classes for professionals and outstanding documentaries on master craftsmanship. Workshops, lectures, films, and masterclasses focusing on master craftsmanship. This is the only festival where attendees get hands-on experiences in the art of craftsmanship. The rich programming engages a wide audience: from families to master craftsmen.

We picked some of our highlights underneath: 

Workshop Suminagashi (Japanese Marbling)

In the Suminagashi workshop students will learn the basics of suminagashi, a Japanese marbling technique. The history and ideology shaping suminagashi will be covered, as well as basic fundamental tools and materials. Students will learn how to create and pull suminagashi monoprints on paper and fabric, and leave with enough knowledge and skills to continue exploring on their own.

Workshop Fashion & Textiles: Learn how pleating works

Dutch Fashion designer Mattijs van Bergen plays with classical silhouettes that are defined by a surprising use and mix of high quality fabric and creative craftsmanship. Sculptural use of draped pleating is an essential aspect of the label’s signature craft. During this workshop, you will learn the craft of how pleating is created, with paper and card moulds, and you will see the how pleating can totally change the texture of a fabric. From fluent to stiff and from plain to luxurious, pleating chances the movement of a fabric. Mattijs van Bergen mastered how to use this technique in his fashion designs.

Masterclass Drawing hands with a pencil

This master class ‘Drawing hands with a pencil’ will be taught by internationally renowned Dutch artist Daan Noppen and is meant for (semi-) professional artists and art students. The participants will work on a drawing, under the guidance of Noppen. Hands as a subject: they are difficult to capture, and yet say so much about a person. In this master class the artist will also provide insight into the distinction he makes between the craftsmanship of drawing and the artistry.

Daan Noppen is best known for his realistic larger than life drawings of portraits and bodies. Physics and it’s relation to our being, our emotions, plays a big part in his work. The artist plays with notions of reality by projecting time as a physical dimension. Rather than becoming something ‘scientific’ this opens up a visual world of our hidden layers of our desires, our pain and our cry for being loved.

Film ‘Still Life. Ron Mueck at work’

A small studio in London. An impression of great disorder mixes with the intimate conviction that you are in an extraordinary place.
Ron Mueck, a secretive artist, rarely welcomes visitors, and a meeting with him leaves an impression. His reserve cannot for long hide a very sensitive nature. At regular intervals over a period of two years, Gautier Deblonde filmed the artist as he created three works destined for his solo exhibition at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art. Seeing Ron Mueck at work intrigues, impresses, surprises. His sculptures, and there are but a few of them, depict men and women whose expressions are familiar to us. Expressions of everyday life: a troubling realism at the service of a profoundly moving art.

Mastertalk Martine Gosselink – Rijksmuseum

Who were the first Dutch settlers in New-Amsterdam? Which skills did they bring to the new land? Focusing on trade and craftsmanship, Martine Gosselink will present an in-depth lecture about our shared cultural heritage, starting with the very first settlers in the 17th Century.

Martine Gosselink works at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam as Head of the Department of History.

Have a look at the full festival program and buy your tickets online!