This season, brace yourselves for an identity crisis. The art and artists being featured are driven by it. Clearly, creativity thrives in the absence of a defined self. In an attempt to come up with something highly personal and unique, artists are pulling deeper than ever from within them.
Equipped with more free admissions, night operating hours and themes suited for the politically apathetic as well as the activist in us, the new season is determined to strengthen community engagement at whatever cost. If it takes virtual reality or drawings by a former prisoner to attract audiences, so be it.
The lineup ranges from obscure deep-ocean photography and digital art to masterpieces and letter writing. It will take a serious look at craft and glass art as well. It almost sounds too good to be true. Mark your calendars and see for yourself.
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach: Despite the construction underway, the museum’s schedule this year is as varied and ambitious as ever. Visitors are wise to take advantage of the free admission offered through December 2018. Exhibitions will be housed on the building’s east side.
After taking a break last year, the Rudin Prize for Emerging Photographers is back beginning Nov. 10 through Jan. 15. This biennial group exhibition conceived in 2012 highlights emerging photographers who are picked by a panel of known artists. It culminates with one of the photographers being awarded the $20,000 Rudin Prize, named after the late New York City real estate developer Lewis Rudin. This year’s participants will be announced in the fall.
The museum’s RAW (Recognition of Art by Women) series is growing up. For its sixth installment (Feb.4-April 16), we will be treated to 25 abstract paintings by Austrian artist Svenja Deininger, who studied at the notable Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. This will be the first solo museum exhibition for the Vienna-based painter, who creates intuitively and seems to leave no visible brushstrokes on the canvas.
Letter writing is not something you would expect an art museum to explore, but that’s precisely what the Norton will do from April 18 through early July. Pen to Paper: Artists’ Handwritten Letters from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art will feature the handwriting of Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, Ray Johnson and Georgia O’Keeffe, among others. The exhibition will revisit the lost art of letter writing and, in the process, reveal the personal feelings driving these artists to take up a pen, instead of a brush.
In addition to these large-scale shows, the museum will continue to run its Spotlight series, which are exhibitions purposely featuring very few pieces to allow a more personal interaction in an intimate setting. Among those planned for this season, is Question Bridge: Black Males (Oct. 18-Dec. 18). The curious thing about this art installation/project originated in 2012 is that it never stays the same. It consists of more than 1,600 questions and answers recorded on video from more than 160 men in nine American cities. It aims to expand our notion of the black male population in America and crush the limited definition regularly provided by the media.
William Merritt Chase’s Shinnecock Hills, Autumn masterpiece will follow Dec. 22 through Jan. 29. It is one in a series of landscape paintings the artist and teacher produced in the late 1880s inspired by the scenery of his summers in Long Island. Chase’s multifaceted career includes still lifes and portraits, but it is his Shinnecock paintings that stand out as fine examples of American Impressionism.
The recently acquired Super Blue Omo, by Nigerian-born artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby, follows Feb. 2 through March 5. Crosby was featured in last year’s RAW exhibition. This is the second time we will be treated to her unique perspective of life in America, where she has lived since 1999. Her multi-layered large-scale works combine drawing, painting and collage on paper. They often depict domestic settings and an identity split between her native Nigerian culture and her adopted home.
Picture a large print holding 70 squares of bright and pale color and you will get an idea of what Spencer Finch’s Back to Kansas (March 9-April 9) looks like. But can we really see it? That’s what the artist is after. He wishes for visitors to stop and view the colors change as the light changes. Designed to mimic a film screen, Finch’s Back to Kansas explores the subjective perception of color. It gets its title and color palette from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, which the artist watched and paused several times to match colors he found interesting.
Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach: Modern masters including Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, Marsden Hartley, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko will be the focus of When Modern Was Contemporary: Selections from the Roy R. Neuberger Collection (Dec. 3-Jan. 29). Among the oil paintings is Willem de Kooning’s Marilyn Monroe from 1954; it is Marilyn like we have never seen her before. The exhibition will feature works by 52 of the 20th century’s most influential artists and introduce us to the man who spent his life supporting them. Neuberger developed a passion for art in the 1920s, while in Paris. By the time he died in 2010, at the age of 107, he had collected more than 1,000 paintings, drawings, collages and sculptures. Also included in the show is Pollock’s drip canvas Number 8, 1949, for which Neuberger is said to have paid $800.
A Shared Legacy: Folk Art In America (Feb. 11-March 26) will showcase more than 60 works, including landscape, portraits and sculptures, by 19th-century American artists who were self-taught or barely trained and did not follow the academic models. In fact, most of those featured remain unidentified. In that sense, the exhibition will feel more personal, but it remains to be seen whether the show can push our notion of folk art beyond flea-market art. Drawn from the collection of Barbara L. Gordon, the selection features works created between 1800 and 1925 in the rural areas of New England, the Midwest, and the South.
Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton: It is not every day that a museum displays the faces of those serving time in prison; let alone portraits done by someone with a criminal record. Venezuelan-born artist Jose Alvarez, born Deyvi Orangel Pena Arteaga, was already known for playing the 2,000-year-old spirit of a shaman named Carlos – an act that involved a trick of stopping his heart onstage and using crystals for psychic power – when he was arrested in 2012 for identity theft. Jose Alvarez, (D.O.P.A.): Krome (now through Jan. 8) features a series of portraits he did of his fellow detainees using ballpoint pens and whatever paper was available. Though his comeback has been through pop-psychedelic compositions, these simple portraits done during his two-month stay in the Miami-based detention center are more powerful in that they are not just human faces but the faces of immigration, identity and deportation.
Beginning Oct. 18 through Jan. 8, the museum will surrender a large space to a series of exhibitions highlighting Hungarian art from the turn of the 20th century to the present day. Hungarian Art: A Century of Rebellion and Revival will feature more than 70 paintings by that country’s most important artists. The works, including portraits, nudes, drawings, watercolors and pastels, are drawn from the collections of Christian Sauska and Nancy G. Brinker, who served as U.S. ambassador to Hungary shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. Among the artists represented will be Béla Uitz, László Fehér – whose portrait of Brinker is featured – and József Rippl-Rónai, who is considered the founder of Hungary’s modernist art movement.
Complementing the paintings will be a smaller selection of about 30 photographs from the early to late 20th century. In partnership with the Hungarian Museum of Photography in Budapest, Hungarian Photography will feature the works of André Kertész and Robert Capa, among other photographers. Photographs by Sylvia Plachy, Kertész’ friend and pupil, will be on display as well during this time. Her eye developed amid quietness and constant assimilation to foreign lands. Plachy’s family left Hungary in late 1956 and crossed into Austria by train. It was there that she received an Agfa box camera from her father. Two years later, the family moved again, this time to New Jersey. Plachy, who attended the Pratt Institute, went on to become a staff photographer at the Village Voice. Her work is now in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Houston Museum of Fine Arts.
A new site-specific installation by Szilárd Cseke, the Hungarian representative to the 2015 Venice Biennale, concludes the Hungarian art program. Though he graduated as a painter, Cseke has been creating installations since the mid-1990s using found objects, industrial materials and neon lighting to emphasize the themes of migration and the search for identity.
Ever wonder what a woman’s psyche looks like? Artists Rhonda Mitrani, Patricia Gutierrez, and Marina Font will reconstruct it through four installations presented under RPM Project: The House Inside My Head (Oct. 18-Jan. 8). Through video, sound and sculpture, the artists will touch upon familiar struggles for women, their domestic role (ex., folding laundry) as well as the boundaries in today’s feminine culture.
Who knew glass could be bold, controversial or political? Glasstress (Jan. 31-July 2) will feature about 30 glass installations created by contemporary artists from around the world in collaboration with the international organization Glasstress, Venice and glass artisans of Berengo Studio, Murano. The exhibition is a new initiative by the museum to stretch the traditional notion of “craft.” The pieces included incorporate video, photography, industrial design, and video games, and will ask us to see the medium in a new, serious light.
Running simultaneously will be Mediterranea: American Art from the Graham D. Williford Collection, which includes paintings by late 19th and early 20th-century American artists who, instead of taking the Grand Tour pointing to Germany and France, set their eyes on Spain, the Middle East, and North Africa. Together, these oil paintings, watercolors and etchings, present an American view of the Mediterranean region, its people, landscapes and past.
If the name Salvatore Meo does not ring a bell, that’s because he remains virtually unknown. An exhibition named after him aims to change that and crystallize him as a pioneer of assemblage art who anticipated the Arte Povera movement. His mixed-media works largely consisted of discarded items such as rusty wires. A native of Philadelphia born to Italian parents, Meo moved to Rome in 1949 where he lived until his death in 2004. Despite having been an influence on Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly, Meo owes his anonymity to his humble compositions and his difficult character. The works on display come from his studio, which has been preserved in its original state since his death. Salvatore Meo runs Jan. 31 through July 2.
Flagler Museum, Palm Beach: More than a century ago, Edward Curtis set out to capture and document the traditions and ways of life of the Native Americans. Three decades and nearly 50,000 photographs later, he presented to the world a 20-volume, 20-portfolio set of handmade books documenting more than 80 distinct tribal groups. He called it The North American Indian and it was his masterpiece. Curtis’s quest to preserve the legacy of the Native Americans might not have paid off on a personal level – he had been long forgotten when he died in 1952 – but our generation can definitely enjoy his rediscovered works now. A selection of these rare vintage photographs will be the focus of Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks, beginning Oct. 11 through Dec. 31. The exhibition features both iconic and little-known prints created in seven different photographic print mediums including photogravure, platinum, gold-tone, toned and un-toned gelatin silver and cyanotype.
Six harem scenes once owned by Henry Flagler will be part of Harem: Unveiling the Mystery of Orientalist Art (Jan. 24-April 16). The winter exhibition will present the Muslim harem as inspiration and preferred subject of Orientalist artists and unveil some of the mystery that captivated Gilded Age artists as well. It includes paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures and rare books that explore the myths and realities of this secluded place allotted to women (servants, concubines, wives) in a Muslim household. This strict control over women’s role and appearance had the unintentional consequence of lending them a sense of enigma and danger, which fed the curiosity of Western artists. Imagination played a big part in transforming such an obscure world into sensual and erotic depictions.
Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, Delray Beach: Once considered a children’s craft practiced solely in Japan, origami, which means “paper folding,” has now evolved into a highly expressive, global art form. Contemporary examples of this practice will be the focus of Above the Fold: New Expressions in Origami beginning Oct. 14 through Jan. 29. Nine international artists turn paper into sophisticated and complex compositions that defy science. In their hands, paper acquires dramatic, bold shapes. Each has created pieces specifically for this traveling exhibition.
Three years after being shown at the Society of the Four Arts, Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920-1945 (Feb. 24-May 21) returns. This time it will feel closer to home. The exhibition of nearly 200 works drawn from the Levenson collection will take a look at the modern Japan of the 1920s and 1930s and the country’s response to the modern wave that brought jazz and short skirts. Paintings, ceramics, lacquerware, jewelry and graphic design introduce us to Japan’s contribution to this movement. It is hard to imagine this notoriously traditional nation being influenced by external Western tendencies, but Japan did surrender to the short-hair chic, modern girl. It even gave her a name: moga. The show will offer yet another opportunity to see tradition-innovation paired well.
In celebration of its 40th anniversary, the museum will present highlights from the recent gift from the Mary Griggs Burke Collection. Building a Legacy: Gifts from the Mary Griggs Burke Collection (June 9-Sept. 17) will showcase more than 60 works of art, including paintings, prints, ceramics, lacquerware and textiles.
Armory Art Center, West Palm Beach: A multimedia exhibition featuring works by the new faculty members who join the Armory this fall is the focus of New & Now: Work by New Faculty, Fall 2016 running through Nov. 26. The juried exhibition Women of the Visual Arts: The Artful Spirit, featuring paintings, drawings and photography, follows Oct. 22 through Nov. 28. Meanwhile, Crossing Boundaries (Dec. 10-30) will showcase professional female artists in collaboration with the Florida Chapter of the National Association of Women Artists. Details are still pending on an intriguing exhibition titled Champions: Caribbean Artists of South Florida planned for Jan. 14 through Feb. 12.
The 2017 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Exhibition: EG2 will feature the winning submissions for the Palm Beach and Martin County Regional 2017 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards competition, the largest of its kind for middle and high school students in the country. It will be on view Feb. 25 through March 8. The winners go on to exhibit at the National Awards exhibition in New York City in May and get recognized at an awards ceremony in Carnegie Hall.
Chasing the Sun: Dennis Aufiery Retrospective (December 10-30) will bring us works created by the longtime Armory painting teacher and Jupiter resident who died in 2015. Aufiery received numerous awards for his paintings including the Josef Albers Fellowship to the Skowhegan School, and Thomas Eakins prize from the Pennsylvania Academy.
Vivid paintings of flowers and animals with a graphic quality will be the focus of Joan Luby: Vibrant Vision – A Lifetime of Joy in Creativity and Color (Jan. 7-Feb. 4). A professional artist who served on the Armory’s board of directors from 2007 to 2008, her work is part of the collection at the Philatelic Museum in the Palais des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland.
The annex gallery will house Perspectives in Fiber: Moving Beyond Tradition beginning Jan. 7 through Feb. 10. The juried exhibition produced by the South Florida Basket and Fiber Guild will present contemporary approaches to fiber art. Wall works, sculptural works, vessel form/basketry, and wearable works will be included.
Artists-in-Residence Exhibition (Feb. 11-March 10) will introduce the works produced by artists during their eight-month tenure. This year’s residents are Jenny Day and Spence Townsend in painting/drawing, Alicia Boswell in jewelry/metalsmithing, Chad Steve in ceramics, and Andy Denton in sculpture. Meanwhile, the 2017 PBCATA Members Exhibition (Feb. 15-25) will present recent works by local artists who are art educators and members of the Palm Beach County Art Teachers Association.
The Armory Faculty Show and All Student Show, both running March 18-April 14, will present works in all media by the Armory Art Center faculty members and students, while the 2D Student Summer Show (June 10-July 8) will focus on drawing, painting, digital media and printmaking and the 3D Student Summer Show (July 15-Aug. 11) will highlight works in jewelry, glass, fiber, ceramics, and sculpture.
The Lighthouse ArtCenter, Tequesta: Eyes Wide Open: Camera in Hand ends Oct. 29. It features the photography of Louis Jawitz, Jack Bates, Nancy Brown, Jenna Huttula, Don Lacy, Jane Saull, Barry Schein, Barry Seidman, and Tom Winter. The exhibition features subjects ranging from underwater and wildlife photography to industrial and travel.
A four-day retrospective of Fern Samuels, who worked on a variety of media including oil painting, printmaking and book illustrations, runs Nov. 8-12. Fern Samuels: Retrospective Exhibition celebrates the life of the Palm Beach Gardens artist who died last year at age 84. There is no such thing as the perfect age to create, but is there a magic number for art dimensions? Size Matters: 6×6 (The BIG and Small Art Exhibition) running Nov. 17 through Dec. 15, suggests so. The exhibition will feature pieces in a variety of media that are either 6 feet by 6 feet or 6 inches by 6 inches.
A three-part interactive exhibition combining art and science will follow Dec. 22 through March 4. Part I: Illuminating the Deep: Explore. Learn. Act. partners artist Steven Bernstein and Dr. Edie Widder, who specializes on bioluminescence – the light chemically produced by many ocean organisms – to bring us elusive creatures from the deep ocean. Part II: The Fine Art of Exploration will consist of a group of original paintings by Else Bostelmann featuring the rarely seen wonders of the ocean’s mysterious depths. Bostelmann documented what ecologist William Beebe saw during his historic record-setting dive off the coast of Nonsuch Island in Bermuda in 1934. The artworks, on loan from the Bostelmann family, were created for National Geographic. Part III: Google Tilt Brush will let visitors create 3-D light paintings using a digital brush and a virtual reality Vive headset. Their creations will be viewed by other visitors on the computer monitor and in larger scale through digital projection.
Promising artists – ages 5 through 18 – will exhibit their works May 3-25 in the 47th Annual Kindergarten through 12th Grade Show. Schools from throughout Palm Beach and Martin counties will be represented.
Cultural Council of Palm Beach County, Lake Worth: An exhibition showcasing 42 artists currently teaching at the Armory Art Center is currently shown in the Council’s main gallery. Selections from the Armory Art Center ends Nov. 19. 15 Surfboards by 15 Shapers will follow beginning Dec. 2 through Jan. 21. This exhibition will showcase surfboards as works of art. West Palm Beach photographer and FAU graduate Tony Arruza collaborates with surfboard hand-craftsmen from around the world to arrive at the finished pieces. The pieces are not canvases in the shape of surfboards, but rather functional surfing instruments that can very well serve as wall art.
X x X (Feb. 3-March 18) will feature a variety of 10 inch-by-10 inch works created by county residents and judged by celebrated collage artist Bruce Helander, a Rhode Island School of Design graduate who lives in West Palm Beach. Words once again are explored in Mark My Words (March 31-May 27), an exhibition featuring local artists who use words as inspiration and subject matter. The Cultural Council Biennial 2017 (June 23-Sept. 2) will showcase more works by local artists.
Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens, West Palm Beach: Now on view through Nov. 13 is an exhibition-sale called Botanicals: Antique Engravings and Lithographs, featuring rare works from the 16th through the 19th centuries featuring images of plants, fruit, architectural renderings and coats of arms. Five human-scale bronze sculptures by Todd McGrain will be the focus of The Lost Bird Project (Jan. 12-June 30). The exhibition examines the loss of bird species while reminding us of Ann Norton’s wish to preserve green space for native and migrating birds. McGrain is known for his smooth bronze memorials of extinct North American birds, which stand permanently at the exact location related to a particular bird’s decline. Framed drawings of his sculptures will also be featured.
Cornell Museum, Delray Beach: The relationship between artist and subject is the focus of A Life in Portraits running now through Jan. 15. The exhibition features more than 50 portraits by contemporary American artists who have created portraits of art patron and collector Joan Quinn, the legendary West Coast editor of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. The selection, drawn from a collection of 300, includes works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe and Helmut Newton, whose 1984 photo captured the Los Angeles native’s renowned habit of sporting many watches.
Fame, as seen through the eyes of artists enjoying it, is the inspiration behind Fifteen Minutes, also running through Jan. 15. Titled after Andy Warhol’s famous statement, the group show includes contemporary works shown in galleries and museums worldwide.
The Crest Theatre Galleries will continue showcasing works by adult and youth students enrolled in the School of Creative Arts as well as by local artist groups, such as the Delray Art League.
Palm Beach Photographic Centre, West Palm Beach: Rock and roll is the focus of Dead Images: Photographs of the Grateful Dead (Nov. 17 through Jan. 4). Drawn from the archives of Robbi Cohn, who has photographed musicians since 1984 and is the only licensed Grateful Dead photographer, the exhibition will cover the last decade the band performed.
Special Exhibition of Photographs by Albert Watson (Jan. 24-March 11) will feature the Scottish photographer’s iconic images of some of the world’s most famous people, from rock stars and rappers to actors and celebrities. The director of more than 100 TV commercials, Watson’s work has been featured in Vogue, Rolling Stone and Time magazine and is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Most recently, the New York City-based photographer, who snapped that famous photo of Steve Jobs, took his own real estate photos for the listing of his $21 million penthouse.
Photography of Place (March 25-May 6) will present photographs by more than 20 artists who are best known for their portrayals of specific geographic places. The artists range from grand masters to accomplished amateurs and are as diverse as the places they capture on film.
Following the prestigious annual POYi (Pictures of the Year International) photojournalism competition at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism, PBPC will showcase the pictures and photojournalists honored during it. 3rd Annual Best in Show Festival runs May 13 through Aug. 12. Meanwhile, the works of its members will take the stage during the 21st Annual Members’ Juried Exhibition (Aug. 26-Oct. 28).
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton: Now through Oct. 22, the University Galleries in FAU’s Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters are introducing us to the work of former FAU Professor of Painting Walter Hnatysh. Walter Hnatysh Survey: The Florida Years 1989-2016 features painting, drawing and photography. Also on view now through Nov. 19 at the Ritter Art Gallery is A.E. Backus and Florida’s Highwaymen: History, Commerce and Art, which pairs the works of landscape painter “Bean” Backus and 26 African-American artists known as the Highwaymen. The selection includes original Backus works owned by FAU along with Highwaymen paintings of regional collectors.
Bumper stickers, T-shirts, digital content are internet memes are some of the pop culture political paraphernalia that will be on view with Political Sideshow 2016: From “Bitch” to (Big) “Nuts” and Beyond. Showcased in the Schmidt Center Gallery through Dec. 3, the show could not have been planned better. The presidential race is the perfect backdrop for an exhibition aiming to provoke and spark critical reflection on stereotypes, community engagement and social justice. Forget California, Florida Dreaming (Nov. 5-Jan. 21), also at the Schmidt Center Gallery, takes a look at the reasons driving people to move to South Florida. The exhibition will include contemporary, multi-generational artists who have lived or worked in South Florida.
The Fall Bachelor of Fine Arts Exhibition (Dec. 2-16) will show works by about 20 students earning a visual arts degree. It is housed in the Ritter Art Gallery, which welcomes the Spring Bachelor of Fine Arts Exhibition on April 21 through May 5.
Presenting an extensive collection of underground newspapers, magazines, photographs, audio, films, and other documents of these community activist organizations, Walls turned sideways are bridges: narratives of necessity will take us through the evolution of youth radical community activist movements that became prominent in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The exhibition recognizes the role these organizations, including the Black Panther Party, The Young Lords and American Indian Movement, played in bringing much needed social change. Their long-term social impact will be examined at the Ritter Art Gallery Jan. 20 through March 4.
Punishment as a failed solution, the criminal justice system, and the prison industrial complex are the themes explored by the next exhibition at the Schmidt Center Gallery. Sharon Daniel (Feb. 3-April 1) will consist of a series of interactive and multi-media installation projects by an artist who uses digital media art to engage the public. This time, Daniel, who was awarded the Rockefeller/Tribeca Film Festival New Media Fellowship in 2009 and teaches digital media theory at the University of California, aims to start a dialogue on the secret forces that foster and perpetuate social injustice.
David Carson, Space Cowboy, at the Schmidt Center Gallery Feb. 27 through summer 2017, will feature commissioned graphic design, photographs and other original works by the world-renowned typographic designer. A sociology major, surfer and former teacher, Carson is known for his iconoclastic style and distinctive magazine layouts. His designs tell a story that relies on the text as much as on the photography. Do not expect them to be linear. Do expect a few surprises. After all, this is an artist who painted his driveway a rainbow of colors and his surfboards plain white.
The Annual Juried Student Exhibition (March 24-April 7) at the Ritter Art Gallery will present the top works submitted by nearly 100 FAU students majoring both in and outside of the Department of Visual Arts and Art History. Meanwhile, the Schmidt Center Gallery will house the Masters of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition (April 14-May 6) focusing on five graduate students: Ingrid Barreneche, Ashley Cassens, Penelope Fedor, Michele Francoeur, Amber Tutwiler and Sammi McLean.
Art fairs: ArtPalmBeach returns Jan. 19-22 to the Palm Beach County Convention Center. Among the highlights of the 20th edition is a tribute to Spanish artist Manolo Valdes that will see the installation of his monumental sculptures on the entrance plaza of the Convention Center. His sculptures are formed of primarily aluminum, bronze, and wood. The exhibition will focus on his most recent ones, including: Flori, Ivy Dorada and Reina Mariana.
Some of the other exhibitions planned are Modernism and Other Languages and Richard Meier the Artist, which features works by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect known for his gleaming white buildings. His best known projects include the High Museum in Atlanta and the Frankfurt Museum for Decorative Arts in Germany.
Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show will run Feb. 15-21 while the Palm Beach Fine Craft Show returns Feb. 26-28 to showcase about 130 contemporary craft artists and their original creations.