Social media was filled with people wearing their own handmade masks, often in showy patterns, images that bespeak anxiety and pride in equal measure. This was just one way that a nation on lockdown began turning to craft, as if by ancient instinct.

Glenn Adamson, Craft: An American History, Bloomsbury, 2021.

We are thrilled to announce the inaugural collaborative event run with Garland Magazine – The Art of Masks. For details of the event – including a recording, please follow the following LINK.

“The Art of Masks” is an interview series that appears in the current issue of The Journal of Modern Craft (14.1, March 2021). In 2020, curator Caroline Kipp organised a series of conversations to reflect on the way that scientists, historians, artists, designers and craftspeople engaged with the making and wearing of masks during the pandemic. This raised issues of the materiality of sanitisation, adornment at a time of social distancing, and how the mask has become a canvas for political, social and cultural identity.

In this event, we hear from contributors and others who have reflected on the creative value of mask-making and its histories. This is the inaugural collaborative event between The Journal of Modern Craft and Garland/Reinventing the Wheel, that we aim to run three times a year, coinciding with the publication of each issue of The Journal of Modern Craft.

Speakers include:

Caroline Kipp
Alison Matthews David
Kate Kretz
Maegen Black
Anna Battista
Andrew Groves & Danielle Specher
Farieda Nazier