There’s a fascinating exhibition—Stephen Burks: Shelter in Place—currently on display at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The exhibition showcases the work of Stephen Burks, an award-winning, New York-based product designer. I counted nearly 100 pieces on display ranging from furniture to textiles to lighting fixtures to decorative items. But this exhibition doesn’t only display objects, it presents them within the context of Burks’s design practice.
“Burks advocate[s] for hand production as a strategy for innovation within industrial production” states the High Museum exhibition overview. “We integrate what we think of as handmade techniques into industrial production” Burks said in a 2022 interview with Curbed. It’s an intriguing concept—a novel approach which the exhibition thoughtfully lays out for the viewer to consider. I’d never be able to do justice to the depth and breadth of this exhibition in a single blog post so, instead, I’ll share a few favorite objects and stories.
Visitors to the Stephen Burks: Shelter in Place exhibition are greeted by the display shown below. The eye-popping piece at center stage, called Broom Thing, clearly signals Burks is no ordinary designer! Broom Thing, described as an abstract ambient object, is made of dyed broomcorn and sugar maple wood. Stephen Burks is listed as the designer and, surprisingly, Berea College Student Craft is listed as the maker.
I’m familiar with Berea College having traveled to the charismatic town of Berea, Kentucky last summer. Berea is considered the Folk Arts and Crafts Capital of Kentucky. I was attracted by the Festival of LearnShops which is a series of short workshops on a wide variety of subjects such as sustainable living, Appalachian crafts, fiber arts, jewelry making and painting barn quilts. You can learn more about my visit in the posts: Have Barn Quilts Made a Comeback?, Lessons Learned from my First Barn Quilt Block and All Around the Amethyst Cabochon. Quilt squares, such as the trio shown below, are sprinkled throughout Berea. These were spotted in front of the Berea College Farm.
Berea College, located in the heart of the town, was founded in 1855 as “the first interracial and coeducational college in the [USA] South and consistently ranks among the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges…. [It] offers a high-quality education to academically promising students with limited economic resources. … Berea College is one of only eight federally recognized Work Colleges in the United States … [It engages] students in the purposeful integration of work, learning, and service … all resident students have jobs… [and] no Berea student ever pays tuition.”
Berea College Student Craft, the maker of Broom Thing, is an essential part of Berea College’s Labor Program. “The program provides opportunities for over 100 students each term to study, produce, and teach about craft with a focus on woodworking, fibers, ceramics, and broom-making. In addition to nurturing makers, [they] are committed to helping students express their identities and hone their design skills to share authentic student-designed products.”
The connection between Stephen Burks and the Berea College Student Craft is explained on the Design Within Reach website: “In 2018, Berea College invited industrial designer Stephen Burks to design new products for students to make. Instead, Burks used the opportunity to create a collaborative process involving students in the design. His partnership proved transformative for Berea by broadening its scope and vision for student creativity and their relationship to craft.”
The Broom Thing exhibit card elaborates “Burks’s mentorship within the Berea College Student Craft program was grounded in his ability to innovate traditional crafts to create modern, and sometimes experimental, forms. Berea students trained in the broomcraft workshop were utilizing established methods and yielding the same results.”
I imagine the traditional methods used by the Berea students would be similar to those I learned at the John C Campbell Folk School. Mark Hendry, a full-time artisan and instructor specializing in Brooms and Basketry, taught us the traditional methods of turning dried broomcorn (shown on left below) into beautiful, one-of-a-kind, artisan brooms. See the FanningSparks’ blog post Swept Away by Broom Making for the full story.
Upon closer examination, the long, fibrous, seed branches of the broomcorn are clearly visible in Broom Thing.
The exhibit card continues “Broom Thing, which Burks created alongside these students, is a radical new expression of a broom as a non-functional object … The brightly colored, ambient work embodies the transformative power of what is possible in craft when experimentation collides with tradition.”
A 2022 Wallpaper* article elaborates, “Among Berea College’s departments, Burks was most fascinated by traditional broom craft. ‘The broom craft department is still dyeing their own broom corn and still making brooms in a way that they’ve been making for the past hundred years – one of the last places in America to produce brooms traditionally,’ he says. His collaborative piece with the department is ‘Broom Thing’, an abstract ‘ambient object’ combining 26 brooms into a 4ft diameter sphere, a design that took the craft outside of its traditional function. ‘I felt like I had to go in search of a new form, a new way to use this technique that hadn’t been done before. It is quite surprising in its suggestion of what could be possible in each of the craft sectors if we pursued a more conceptual object rather than a functional one.”
Another splendid outcome from the Berea College initiative is Community Baskets. The exhibit card provides this background: “An important practice in Appalachian and Shaker traditions, basketry is one of the oldest forms of design. In making Community Baskets at Berea College, students were taught the basic principles of wood construction, such as color, graduations, treatments, flexibility, and strength, using the traditional composition of oak and aluminum to bend and hold each part together in layers.”
“Using this project as an example, Burks encouraged students to move away from the minimalist manufacturing of craft objects to instead let their hand show through in their designs. The hand of the artist separates craftspeople from mass production; encouraging students to accept this human aspect of design is one of Burks’s most important contributions to the program.”
The High Museum exhibition overview quotes Burks: “Hands have power. Hands have imaginative power. Hands have communal power. Hands have political power. And hands have economic power. Even today, the hand is capable of doing things that machines cannot. My work is about finding opportunities for innovation in the space between handcraft and industry while hopefully extending craft traditions into the future.”
Basketry is another traditional craft taught at the John C Campbell Folk School. My first basketry experience, as shared in the blog post Weave a Market Basket, was making this market basket with basket reed. Susan B Taylor, a highly-regarded, talented basket maker, taught the class.
I had the opportunity to make a second basket in the class Cannon County Style, White Oak Egg Basket taught by award-winning, master basket maker Sue Williams. Made of white oak with rib-and-split basic construction, the egg basket was a fun challenge. As explained in the blog post, You CAN Put All Your Eggs in this Basket, we followed the traditional basket making techniques of Cannon County, Tennessee.
But art objects from the craft-related experiments at Berea College were only one facet of the Shelter in Place exhibition. Other works, such as this Kida Swing, showcased Burks’s product designs. This inviting seat was designed by Burks for DEDON, a German company specializing in handcrafted luxury outdoor furniture. The Kida Swing is a stunning demonstration of “the union of industrial materials with high-level craft technique”.
As explained on the exhibit card: “This airy design is a departure from DEDON’s dense weaving style, demonstrating how collaboration leads to innovation when there is space for creativity. Kida Swing was the result of a weeklong workshop in the Philippines. Burks challenged the traditional weaving techniques of the master weavers there, who in turn helped him innovate on Kida Swing’s design.”
Burks’s Kida Swing is beautifully illustrated on DEDON’s website (see screenshot below) with the explanation: “Stephen Burks’ award-winning collection is as delightful to look at as to use. The hanging longue chair is the first collection to be wrapped rather than woven in 834 meters of DEDON Fiber Touch, and features a cradle-like organic form that’s open, airy, light and inviting. Once inside, users can luxuriate in KIDA’s comfy cushion, which covers the entire seating area, and feel, in Burks’ own words, “as free as the breeze” when swinging.”
Another facet of the exhibition is “a speculative project called Shelter in Place that emerged out of questions about creative agency and ideas of radical home making during the global pandemic lockdown.” Several fascinating prototypes from this initiative were displayed but my favorite was Burks’s Spirit House. Interestingly, a replica of Burks’s original work on paper and a rendering of his design were on display allowing the viewer to trace the evolution of this project.
“Inspired by the human need for ritual, Spirit House is the direct result of Burks’s respect for global cultural traditions and his desire to incorporate them into his life, not just as designs. The partially pitched roof structure, two walls, and an open construction pay homage to the spirit houses found across Southeast Asia.” states the exhibit card. I was immediately reminded of the spirit houses, like the one pictured below, which I saw in Thailand several years ago.
“Creating a definitive space of spiritual reverence, the pedestalled room supports mementos, objects that hold memory, and typically a lit candle. Here, Burks has replaced the candle with an electric bulb.”
“This object welcomes ceremony and open communication with much-needed spiritual practices, which many of us reconnected with during the pandemic.”
I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to view and consider the Stephen Burks: Shelter in Place exhibition. It’s a thought-provoking look into the fascinating world of leading-edge design.
More Info
The Stephen Burks: Shelter in Place exhibition is on view through March 5, 2023 at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia.
Stephen Burks is the founder and principal of Stephen Burks Man Made – an internationally recognized product development consultancy based in New York. Over the past twenty years, the studio has engaged the transformative power of craft techniques as a strategy for innovation for some of the world’s leading design-driven brands.
The following articles are quoted in this blog post:
. Stephen Burks Wants to Finish a 20-Year-Old Conversation With Fran Lebowitz, a 2022 article in Curbed
. Stephen Burks and Kentucky Students Push Craft Boundaries, a 2022 article in Wallpaper*
. Crafting Diversity at Berea College – Evolving Craft, a recent article in Design Within Reach
Berea College offers a high-quality education to academically promising students with limited economic resources. Check out the Berea College website for more information about the college and the Berea College Student Craft program.
To view products from this program, check out the Design Within Reach website. They are the exclusive retail partner of the student-made Crafting Diversity Collection, designed by Stephen Burks Man Made in partnership with Kentucky’s Berea College.
See the DEDON website to learn more about this German company which specializes in handcrafted luxury outdoor furniture.
The following FanningSparks blog posts are mentioned in this blog post:
. Have Barn Quilts Made a Comeback?
. Lessons Learned from my First Barn Quilt Block
. All Around the Amethyst Cabochon
. Swept Away by Broom Making
. Weave a Market Basket
. You CAN Put All Your Eggs in this Basket
The mission of the John C Campbell Folk School is to “transform lives, bring people together in a nurturing environment for experiences in learning and community life that spark self-discovery.” You can learn more on their website. You may also enjoy my previous posts about the Folk School.
Today’s Takeaways
1. “The hand of the artist separates craftspeople from mass production.” Stephen Burks
2. “Collaboration leads to innovation when there is space for creativity … Burks challenged the traditional weaving techniques of the master weavers there, who in turn helped him innovate” Stephen Burks: Shelter in Place exhibition
3. “My work is about finding opportunities for innovation in the space between handcraft and industry while hopefully extending craft traditions into the future.” Stephen Burks
Comments are closed.