Super Natural Image Courtesy of Judith Schaechter
Welcome to the home of the 2026 CraftNOW Symposium!
Radical Americana; Throughlines
The 2026 theme, Radical Americana: Throughlines, considers how Philadelphia’s craft traditions, objects, and ideas connect the city’s past with the work of artists today. The theme grows out of the broader Radical Americana initiative developed by The Clay Studio and cultural
partners during the nation’s 250th anniversary year. CraftNOW’s November programming carries that conversation forward, using objects, materials, places, and artistic traditions to uncover the connections between Philadelphia’s history and its living creative community.
Run of Show
9:30 Coffee service begins/registration
10:00 Opening Remarks
Award of Excellence
Memoriam for Ted Hallman
10:15 Individual Talk – Souleo – History of Buttons
11:00 Individual Talk – Jonathan Wahl – Cliveden
11:15 Panel – Isabel Brown – Glen Foerd & Andalusia artists
12:00 Networking Lunch – RSVP required
1:00 – Moore Gallery tour & Book Signing
1:30 Individual Talk – Jenni Johnson – Wharton Esherick
1:45 Individual Talk – Amiee Koran – M.O.M.
2:30 Individual Talk – Adam Chau – PMA Presidential China
2:45 Individual Talk – Dennis Ritter – Stenton
3:00 Coffee Break
315 Individual Talk – Lyla – Historic Yellow Springs
3:30 Individual talk – Jake Foster – William Way LGBT
3:45 Individual talk – Toni Greenbaum- Art Smith
4:00 Panel – Susie Silbert & Philadelphia glass/pipe artists
4:45 – Closing Remarks
5:00 – Audience questions/comments
5:00 Happy Hour & Book Table – connect with symposium participants, share stories of craft, and explore the Galleries at Moore.
Souleo:
The Button in Philadelphia
Souleo is an acclaimed interdisciplinary writer, curator, and impresario. His work merges literature, fashion, and art to document and amplify the stories of the emerging and underrepresented. On August 10, 2027 he will release his debut book, Showing Out: Fashion in Harlem published by Rutgers University Press. He is also the co-curator with Barbara Paris Gifford of the upcoming exhibition Harlem by Hand at the Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY) opening October 9, 2027. To learn more: SouleoUniverse.com
Jonathan Wahl:
Radical Tinware
Jonathan Wahl’s work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MFA Boston, the Houston Museum of Fine art, The New York Historical Society and the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC. It has been featured or reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, The New Yorker, Architectural Digest, Oprah Magazine, W Jewelry, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Metalsmith Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, the Aventurine, Advocate and The Antiques Magazine, among others. Wahl has been awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Emerging Artist Fellowship from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, one for Craft and one for Drawing and the Pennsylvania Society of Goldsmiths Award for “Outstanding Achievement.” He was also named one of the top 10 jewelers to watch by W Jewelry in 2006.
Isabel Brown, and John Vick, alongside Jessica Eldridge, Sophie Glenn, Jody Graff, and Cait McCormack
Panel Discussion: Fabrications for Gilded Rooms
Glen Foerd and Andalusia, two historic mansions on the Delaware River, co-present Fabrications for Gilded Rooms, a panel discussion with exhibiting artists Jessica Eldredge, Sophie Glenn, Jody Graff, and Cait McCormack. At Glen Foerd, Jessica Eldredge layered screen-printed, painted, and embroidered patterns to capture the memory of a moment in time and space, and Cait McCormack turned hand-crocheted botanical sculptures into patterned upholstery memorials. At Andalusia, Sophie Glenn fabricated a traditional furniture form in painted steel, trading joinery for welded seams, while Jody Graff collected leaves for collage quilts that trace and celebrate botanical legacies. Each artist’s site-specific installation harmonizes and reinterprets the materiality of these grand estates, inviting a close look at both the new works and their old settings. This panel will explore meticulous assembly, symbols of memory, and how creative perspectives help keep historic homes relevant to audiences today.
Jennifer Johnson:
In Place: A Year of Making at the Wharton Esherick Museum
Jennifer Johnson, a Philadelphia-based sculptor, works primarily in clay. Her practice explores how architecture is the product of its history and connects it to the present moment through ceramic models, mosaics, and site-responsive installations that investigate geometry, color, and the built environment. In This talk, Jennifer will be speaking on how Craft, regionalism, site-specificity, and an American vernacular were essential to her creative journey as the 2026 Wharton Esherick Museum (WEM) Artist-in-Residence.
Aimee Koran:
What would a Union for Moms look like? Maternal Order of Makers (M.O.M.)
Aimee Koran is a Philadelphia-based visual artist whose practice examines invisible labor—particularly reproductive, emotional, and caregiving work—and its relationship to systems of value, power, and recognition. Working across sculpture, photography, textiles, and installation, she transforms materials drawn from domestic life, medical technologies, and institutional production to reveal the labor embedded within everyday objects. Her work situates personal materials within broader feminist, economic, and labor histories, using lived experience as evidence rather than autobiography.
Dennis Ritter:
Places Within: Reflections on Historical Research, and the Influence of Personal Experience on Art Making
Dennis Ritter is an artist and educator whose studio work explores the role of objects as foundational markers for personal identify and cultural histories. Working with clay as his primary material, his work manifests as large-scale still life sculptures, digital photographs, site-specific installations, and community art. Within this work he explores themes of labor, social justice, and identity.
Lyla Kaplan:
Thy Friend Potter
Lyla Kaplan began making pots on a treadle wheel in high school in central Ohio and settled in Downingtown, PA. Lyla Kaplan have a BA in Cultural Psychology and Russian from Ohio State University and an MS in Psychology from Virginia Tech. Lyla Kaplan am currently pursuing an MA in Art Therapy and Counseling at Cedar Crest College in Allentown. From 2006–2010, she curated Down to Earth Exhibits and Events, to celebrate connections between functional art and sustainable food systems. Most recently, Lyla led the curation of Radical Compassion: Art as Social Action at Historic Yellow Springs.
Jake Foster, Williams Way LGBT Center:
Crafting Queer Resistance: From Philly’s Bicentennial to its 250th
Jake Foster (he/they) is an arts administrator, curator, writer, and visual artist. His artwork uses photography, drawing, and sculpture to reflect on queer spaces and aesthetics. Foster received a MFA in Studio Art at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2021, and a BA in Art at Rutgers University-Camden in 2017. He has had solo exhibitions at the Noyes Museum of Art and at The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington, Delaware, and currently serves as Exhibition Manager for the William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia.
The Radical Americana of Glass Pipes: A Philadelphia Tradition
One of the most vibrant craft movements in the United States has strong Philadelphia roots, and odds are you have never heard of it: The art of glass cannabis pipes. A primarily rural art form that got its start in the milieu surrounding Grateful Dead concerts in the 1980s, pipemaking took root in Philadelphia in the 2000s and has been transforming the city and the artform ever since.
Using the recently published book High Style: The Art of Cannabis Pipes as a jumping off point, this lecture highlights the consistent efforts Philadelphia pipemakers and collectors have made to increase understanding and representation of this truly radical form of Americana. It discusses their radical transformation of Fishtown and Kensington, through the formation of collective studios, galleries, the publication of books and documentaries, and more recently, the creation of the largest artist-run art fair in the craft space.
Susie J. Silbert is a former curator at The Corning Museum of Glass, a teller of stories that haven’t been told, and an advocate for artists and the creatively engaged. She has published and curated widely, and her field redefining exhibitions have traveled nationally and internationally. Her new book, High Style: The Art of Cannabis Pipes—the first to put the history of glass cannabis pipes within a broader historical context—was published by Marquand Books and the Toledo Museum of Art. Learn more about it and the show it was set to accompany in The New York Times.
Marble Slinger is a leading voice of the glass pipe movement. A pipemaker since 1997 known for his innovative use of sandblasted imagery, he is also highly regarded as a historian of the movement. His acclaimed documentary of the scene Degenerate Art (2012), debuted at the South by Southwest festival and enjoys a cult following around the world. His writing has appeared in This is a Pipe (Pipe Publishing, LLC, 2018) and Smoked Volume 1 (GritCityInc, 2008) as well as numerous online publications. More recently, he co-founded the streetwear brand Parking Lot Collective, whose mission is to help pipemakers take their creativity beyond the material of glass by producing quality art, apparel, and unique products.
Nathan Purcell, better known as JustAnotherGlassblower (JAG), is a Philadelphia artist, gallerist and designer whose work spans glass, ceramics, interiors, and hospitality. For the past three decades, he has played a pioneering role in the pipe movement, both through his own glassblowing practice and as a platform-builder for artists in the field. In 2009, JAG published Smoked, Volume 1, the first book on pipemakers and pipemaking. In the following year, he founded Easy Street, the first high end gallery featuring pipes. Today, he runs JustAnotherGallery and Framers Cafe in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood and has begun exploring ceramics, creating custom tableware for the cafe.
Maxwell Jacobs (Kinda) grew up in artistic family in Texas surrounded by craft and counterculture. After moving to Austin for college, he left school in 2008 to begin an old-school apprenticeship with a local pipemaker Within just a few years, Jacobs had developed a signature style combining seamless silver-fumed designs with detailed isometric patterns. This distinctive work led to numerous collaborations, culminating in his first solo show at Front Street Gallery in Philadelphia in 2015. His relationship with the city’s growing pipe movement eventually led him to relocate to the city and, in 2021, to found Parlay, a decentralized glass art fair now in its fifth year. His work is featured in the Stourbridge Glass Museum in England, and the collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody.
Recent Symposium History
2025: Intention
In 2025, the theme of Intention explored the conscious choices behind artistic creation, asking why we make art and how meaning is shaped through materials and processes. Every decision in art—whether in concept, medium, or execution—reflects the maker’s values, experiences, and desires. This theme invited artists, designers, and craftspeople to examine the motivations behind their work, encouraging a more purposeful and aware approach to creation. Intention also emphasizes care in the act of making, including the preservation of materials, traditions, and cultural heritage, and the role of craft in healing and restoration.
2024: Connectivity
CraftNOW’s 2023 Connectivity which explored family, community, and how craft connects us in an increasingly divided world. Keynote Speaker Patricia Wilson Aden, President and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance spoke on Philadelphia’s creative ecosystem. Other presenters included Dr Tariem Burroughs presenting research on craft and public health, panel discussions on artificial intelligence and craft reality TV and presentations by four emerging scholars.
2023: Craft Works
CraftNOW’s 2023 symposium centered on the theme Craft Works. Through this theme, scholars, artists, and other speakers explored diverse and changing ideas around work that permeate every aspect of the craft landscape. Craft Works will also pay tribute to the important contributions of gallerists Ruth and Rick Snyderman to Philadelphia’s craft community through their gallery, Snyderman Works. Presenters included Asiyah Kurtz, executive director of Camden Fireworks, and Philadelphia craft scholar Helen Drutt. Panel discussions on creative placemaking and Korean/American curatorial partnerships and two emerging scholars completed the program.
2022: Public | Private
CraftNOW’s 2022 symposium and programming centered on the theme Public | Private and explored continually evolving concepts of shared versus personal space. The keynote speaker was be Michael Lewis, architectural critic for the Wall Street Journal and author of Philadelphia Builds: Essays on Architecture, Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind, and City of Refuge. Other presenting institutions included Craft in America, The Center for Art in Wood, Wharton Esherick Museum, varying divisions of the Philadelphia Mummers Parade, and four emerging scholars.
2021: Environmental Effects
CraftNOW’s 2021 symposium Environmental Effects examined how communities and interiors shape our experiences, when sustainability issues are expressed through craft, and the greater impact of our contemporary material culture. Longer presentations were complimented by shorter Pecha Kucha style talks. Dr. Kelli Morgan was keynote having contributed the chapter Crafting Diversity in our recent publication Craft Capital: Philadelphia’s Cultures of Making.
2020: Cultures of Making
CraftNOW’s 2020 symposium Cultures of Making examines the many ways community, activism, research, and connection develop out of collaborative craft practices in the neighborhoods of Philadelphia to the Santa Clara Pueblo and beyond. Keynote speakers Vashti DuBois, Executive Director of The Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia, and Hinda Mandell, editor of Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats, are central to each day’s conversation as we talk and think about the role of craft as a tool for provocation and exchange, especially in this heightened time of social unrest.
Questions?