Hambidge and American Craft Council highlight artists, announce new craft fair

On Thursday, March 19, the Hambidge Center kicked off its month-long annual art auction, Hambidge Hive, in Lindbergh’s Uptown Atlanta building. This year’s event is also significant as it is the setting for the announcement of the American Craft Council’s (ACC) newest national craft fair, Atlanta Craft & Design, which will come to Atlanta in November of 2027. Surrounded by 360-degree views of the Atlanta metro, the enormous 15th floor exhibition packs artwork from more than 200 artists into a 30,000-square-foot space flooded with natural light and brimming with creative potential. 

The Hambidge Center, a nonprofit dedicated to nurturing creativity, is notable for its artist residencies in the remote north Georgia mountain pass community of Rabun Gap. The opening reception, ATL Ascent, featured local cuisine, a micro market curated by the ACC, gallery displays and site-specific installations from visiting artists who traveled from as far away as Honolulu.

“I’ve been really impressed by the generosity of the Atlanta arts community,” said Jason Friedes, an artist visiting from New Haven, Connecticut. Friedes’ installation, My Living Room, is a 1:1 recreation of that titular space built with materials he reclaimed from dumpsters at Yale University. 

Transporting this unwieldy symbol of anti-consumerism south was no simple task, but Friedes said Hambidge staff were helpful throughout the process, explaining, “Everyone I’ve met has been really kind and willing to lend an extra hand and be like, ‘You can stay with me for a couple days when you come down.’”

Screened In by Smithville, Tennessee, artist Jasmine Best is a similarly immersive environment made to mirror a recognizable space. Crafted from textiles, this soft sculpture memorial to the archetypal Southern matriarch’s front porch summons detailed memories — furniture, plants and screened walls — of these mostly abandoned third places. “We have sunrooms in the backyard, but the idea of that community of the front yard where you call to your neighbors is disappearing,” Best lamented.

Meanwhile, Philadelphia artist Pam Korman’s piece, If These Shadows Could Talk, also explores ideas around matrilineal identity by displaying dozens of carefully illuminated doilies that the artist collected from her grandmother, her great-aunt and a particularly bountiful Facebook marketplace listing. 

“I love the fact that there are so many people here doing things with found objects,” Korman extolled. “We’re finding a way to use them that speaks to really important things in our world without necessarily just creating something new.”

For Noushin Mousavi, an Iranian artist living in Knoxville, Tennessee, collecting materials is a social entry point when meeting locals. “I have usually started any conversation with a simple question. ‘Are you a tea person or a coffee person?’ Then, boom, [the] conversation is started,” she explained. Mousavi began asking new acquaintances to save their used teabags for her, and after two years of collecting, she compiled the stained pieces into the suspended patchwork on display, titled It will be odd to throw them away now. 

Another artist utilizing food packaging as his primary medium is Honolulu-based Ben Roosevelt, who transformed a collection of used plastic Starbucks snack containers into a candy-colored tropical beach pastiche. Bright Side expresses childlike joy on its surface, but Roosevelt said the work is rooted in complicated feelings about overconsumption and his habitation on colonized territory.

“Am I celebrating this place? Am I destroying this place?” Roosevelt wondered. “It’s a big contradictory mess for me. I’m still trying to figure it out.”

Midway through the event, Hambidge Executive Director Jamie Badoud addressed ebullient patrons about art’s ability to strengthen communities during turbulent moments. 

“There’s lots of powers trying to divide us,” said Badoud, ushering a line of artists to the front of the crowd. “There’s a lot of beautiful making going on that helps us get through times like this. These artists are from across the country, and they want to talk to you about their work. They’re telling wonderful stories.”

“Hear ye! Hear ye!” proclaimed ACC Executive Director Andrea Specht as she unrolled a farcical scroll to announce the 2027 ACC craft fair in Atlanta. A collaboration between ACC and Hambidge, Atlanta Craft & Design will be the first Southern ACC fair since the Covid pandemic, featuring around 100 makers, designers and studios. Based in Minneapolis, this national membership-based nonprofit has supported artists through artist markets, special events, storytelling and advocacy spread across the nation for more than 80 years. 

“ACCs work in Atlanta — past, present and future — is successful because of the community that Jamie talked about. The generosity and the spirit of service that exist here,” Specht enthused about the longstanding friendship between both nonprofits. “We stand on the shoulders of giants.”

“Sometimes the Hambidge auction is just this big fun event, and we’re proud to be that. But we are also proud to celebrate all of the disciplines and lift up the artists,” Badoud said, surveying the room. “If the installations don’t sing the way the artists hope, then we’re not satisfied.”

Hambidge Hive is on display now until April 18, with a closing auction party on the final day from 6 p.m. to 8pm. Guests may register for gallery visits, bidding and special programming on the Hambidge website. The installation works will remain on view through June 27. To learn more about the ACC and stay in the loop about the future Atlanta Craft & Design fair, check out the American Craft Council website.

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Dustin Timbrook is a creative generalist working in art, film and music. He volunteers on the board of directors for Avondale Arts Alliance. Timbrook loves spending time with his family, playing with dogs and gardening.