About

Crafting Blackness: 100 Years of Black Craft History in Tennessee 1920-2022 is a research and curatorial project led by BIPOC art historian and curator Karlota Contreras-Koterbay, covering a century of history of craft making by African Americans in the state of Tennessee.

The research product includes a compendium: Quilted Narratives: Black Bodies Making Form with image-rich database of Black Tennessee artists, collection of Bibliography with artists statements or Q&A/video narratives; culminating into a series of exhibitions with public engagements focusing on Black Tennessee craft artists and craft-making in Tennessee.

Co-directors of the project are Dr. Earnestine Jenkins and Bonnie Matthews. “Dr. Jenkins is a scholar of art history and visual studies, interested in the dynamic response to centuries of exchange throughout the African Diaspora across regions, cultures, and histories. Having trained in the fine arts, art history, and history her methods-theories of analysis are comparative and interdisciplinary. Her specific research interests encompass American art & culture; researching African American artist of the 20th century; 19th and 20th century African American photography and photographic culture; the relationship between the arts-politics-leadership, including 19th early 20th century Ethiopia, and Black visual culture studies of the urban south. Jenkins’ most recent monographs are Black Artists in America: 1930s-1950 Exhibit Catalogue, Yale University Press and Dixon Galleries and Gardens, Memphis, Tennessee, 2021; and Race, Representation, and Photography in 19th Century Memphis: from Slavery to Jim Crow. London: Ashgate, 2016.” (Source: University of Memphis)

Scroll down to learn more about Karlota and read about the genesis of the project from Tennessee Craft.

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Tennessee Craft

In the summer of 2020, Tennessee Craft’s leadership began to earnestly assess diversity across its programs and membership. In the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and calls for justice that followed, an organizational reevaluation led to a response statement that outlined a series of steps to address inequities in program services and representation. The Governing Board committed to review artistic standards to determine if they reflected bias, increase the diversity of the board leadership and membership, cultivate relationships with organizations serving underrepresented populations, evaluate use of language and create opportunities for members of marginalized populations to pursue craft careers by addressing the barriers they themselves identified. The Governing Board also specifically committed to “researching the continuance and transfer of craft traditions among African Americans over the course of Tennessee’s history, including during the time of enslavement and following emancipation. We anticipate applying for a humanities grant that will facilitate a written history, photographic essay, and exhibition focused on the long history of Black craft making in our state.”

As the only statewide organization in Tennessee committed to serving, elevating and promoting craft artists and craft art, Tennessee Craft exists for all craft artists in Tennessee, regardless of background or demographics. However, a study of participants in 2020-2021 revealed that less than 3% of artists in most programs were Black, in comparison to 17% of the population of the state. Over the organization’s 55 year history, Black artists had been proportionally less represented in programs, exhibitions and membership, mirroring elisions from the historical narrative in which Tennessee Craft is traditionally situated. The organization’s interest in pursuing a historical study as a key first step in addressing diversity, equity and inclusion was to elevate the Black artists who had ably produced work during the era of the modern craft movement, but did not have equitable access to the marketplace and public sphere to share their work with craft enthusiasts.

The first step in the process was to define the parameters of the study. A subcommittee of Tennessee Craft’s Community Engagement Committee led by fiber/textile artist Christi Teasley of Shakerag Workshops researched the limited scholarly and curatorial work that had been done on this topic and assessed the primary concerns of the scholarship. In determining the timeframe, the committee acknowledged the groundbreaking research led by Dr. Tiffany Momon (Sewanee) and fellow scholars of the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive, documenting Black craftspeople during the period of enslavement in Tennessee. The committee also esteemed the scholarship of Dr. Earnestine Jenkins (University of Memphis) to explore the work of Black craftspeople in Memphis in the post-emancipation era. With this work already leading the field, the committee agreed that the timeline of the project should coincide with the development of the modern craft movement in Tennessee, a narrative that Tennessee Craft has valued throughout its own history.

Starting with the development of craft schools in Southern Appalachia, most notably Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, followed by the development of the studio craft movement in the mid-twentieth century, a professionalization and elevation of craft art steadily grew to the creation of the Tennessee Association of Craft Artists in 1965, most well-known to this day for the Best of Tennessee Craft biennial hosted in various museums around the state, leading regional craft fairs, and a statewide network of members and regional chapters. Ultimately, the committee decided that the study’s timeframe would be 1920-2020, to complement and follow the work of Drs. Jenkins and Momon and mirror the arc of Tennessee’s modern craft movement.

In defining the scope of the project, the committee also considered the labels “craft art” and “craft artist,” expanding the media employed at the time in Tennessee Craft’s programs, with the inclusion of instruments and dolls, for example. With an understanding that contemporary craft categories might exclude the work of talented Black craft artists, the committee sought to leave these parameters open enough to fully represent the creativity and accomplishment of Black craft artists. However, in keeping with the mission focus on “craft” mediums, the committee ultimately placed an upper limit on the percentage of two-dimensional artists surveyed in this initial project. In these early days, Tennessee Craft also opened and promoted an online form for the community to recommend artists to the project and to provide imagery. From the beginning, this history was conceived as a community-sourced project with vital scholarly underpinnings.

Tennessee Craft issued a call for researchers in the spring of 2022. Dr. Earnestine Jenkins and Dr. Tiffany Momon served as panelists and enthusiastically recommended Karlota Contreras-Koterbay from East Tennessee State University to lead the project. The initial deliverables included a long[1]form essay and database of 30 artists with bibliography and suggestions for future programming. However, Karlota’s extensive experience as a curator and producer of exhibitions at ETSU and across the nation celebrating Black artists soon exponentially expanded the reach and public access to the project. Karlota has taken seeds from Tennessee Craft and planted a garden of opportunities for exhibitions, research and public understanding of Black craft artists across the state beyond our wildest envisioning. We are excited to see the myriad of ways in which this work will grow and thrive in small and large venues throughout Tennessee, engaging diverse audiences and continuing to shine a light on Black craft artists who have honed their craft—whether rural or urban; in the West, Middle, or East; and professionally trained or self-taught.

While the curatorial torch has been firmly passed to Karlota and the esteemed community of co-curators, exhibition partners and funders she has tirelessly nurtured and developed in the past year, Tennessee Craft looks forward to continuing to collaborate on the project in alignment with its mission to elevate craft artists working in Tennessee. We anticipate supporting online resources so that access to this history is available regardless of geography or economic means, overcoming barriers that might include transportation, age, physical ability or social aptitude. Our ultimate hope is that this work becomes a central component of Tennessee’s cultural narrative, with craft artists taking rightful prestigious places in the state’s Black heritage alongside the musical icons of Beale Street, the writers of the Black Renaissance, and our most celebrated visual artists.

For too long, craft art has been viewed as merely subsistence, a fallback when resources were too limited for boughten goods. While the majority of Tennesseans grew up with (and likely cherished) items made by family members or friends- -quilts, furniture, dolls, pottery, baskets, clothing, or jewelry, these dear creations have not always been celebrated for their artistic creativity and skill in manipulation of medium– the hallmarks of accomplished craft art. While such treasures were frequently made by people without socioeconomic power or were consigned as “women’s work,” the ability to craft something useful and delightful to behold is, to the contrary, an expression of strength. Black craftspeople were duly honored and the history of craft explored in ‘Then and Now: A Black Craft Symposium’ hosted by the Tennessee State Museum in partnership with Tennessee Craft in February 2022. From exploration of 19th-century artifacts in the Museum’s collection to a panel featuring contemporary Black craft artists, the symposium underscored the cultural relevance and import of Black craft-making throughout the state’s history.

Public venues and scholars who recenter the work of Black craftspeople powerfully transform our understanding of craft and craftspeople in Tennessee. Initial inspiration for this historical project was kindled by Thaxton Waters II at the Racial Equity in Arts Leadership Symposium organized by Vanderbilt’s Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy and Metro Arts/Nashville Office of Arts and Culture in March 2019. Best known then for his Art History Class Lifestyle Lounge and Gallery, celebrating the work of Black artists at live engagements in North Nashville, Thaxton described the carpentry and furniture making of his forebears and related how many formerly enslaved craftspeople had passed down craft traditions for which makers who were not Black were later celebrated. Thaxton painted a future where more Black Tennesseans would own their own land and businesses and not be reliant upon economic systems that excluded them from power. In this vision, the ability to skillfully create the things you need or want, bringing joy to your life and your loved ones, is not subsisting or second-best, but ultimately the exercise of freedom, agency and voice.