Matthew Shlian

Alleghany Meadows is a potter who lives in Carbondale, Colorado. He received his BA from Pitzer College and his MFA from Alfred University. His ceramics are in many private and public collections including of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Long Beach Museum of Art. Alleghany's work extends beyond ceramics to projects that engage communities—both local and national. He's the co-founder of the Artstream Nomadic Gallery—a mobile gallery in a renovated Airstream trailer that travels around the country exhibiting work of contemporary potters.

Christy Matson became a tenured Associate Professor of Fiber and Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago when she was 33, but she decided to leave full-time teaching to devote herself to weaving on her Jacquard computerized loom. She lives and works in Los Angeles, and for the past six years she has been exhibiting at a number of museums, including the Long Beach Museum of Art and The San Francisco Museum of Craft+Design.  

Tanya Aguiniga, was raised in Tijuana, Mexico and lives in Los Angeles. She's a designer/artist/craftsperson who has a BA from San Diego State University and an MFA in furniture design from the Rhode Island School of Design. Tanya the founder and director of Ambos—Art Made Between Opposite Sides—which she calls "an ongoing series of artist interventions and commuter collaborations that address bi-national transition and identity in the US/Mexico border region."

Sculptor Nancy graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1996 and now lives in Seattle. In addition to making her own work in blown glass, she was for many years a key member of Italian maestro Lino Tagliapietra's glassblowing team. She also collaborates with New York City lighting designer Lindsey Adelman. Nancy's own work is in the permanent collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, the Shanghai Museum of Art, and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA. As a woman working in the traditionally male-dominated field of glassblowing she says, "I had to work twice as hard as the boys did."

Meredith Brickell is a sculptor and activist.  She has a BFA in art and design from North Carolina State University and an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She was also a core fellow at the Penland School of Crafts. Her current body of sculpture draws from architectural forms, historical narratives, and elements of the physical landscape. Besides her studio work she is a Professor of Art at DePauw University in Indiana and founder and project leader of the House Life Project, a community-building initiative sited in abandoned houses in Indianapolis.

For over 50 years, James Carpenter has combined art, engineering, and design, using natural light and glass as key elements of his work. His major projects include the Fulton Transportation Center in New York City and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Jamie earned a degree from Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied architecture while also working on projects in glass with Dale Chihuly. He is a MacArthur Foundation fellow and the recipient of an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Make/Time shares conversations about craft, inspiration, and the creative process. Listen to leading makers and thinkers talk about where they came from, what they're making, and where they're going next. Make/Time is hosted by Stuart Kestenbaum and is a project of craftschools.us. Major funding is provided by the Windgate Charitable Foundation.

Joyce Scott is a sculptor, quilter, and performance artist. She's best known for her figurative beadwork, which often addresses issues of racism and sexism in our culture. While she has art degrees from Maryland Institute College of Art and the Instituto Allende, she also learned about making art from her mother, the quilter Elizabeth Scott. Her most recent exhibit Joyce J. Scott: Harriet Tubman and Other Truths at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton Township, NJ, combines beadwork, glass made in Murano, Italy, found objects and other materials.   Make/Time shares conversations about craft, inspiration, and the creative process. Listen to leading makers and thinkers talk about where they came from, what they're making, and where they're going next. Make/Time is hosted by Stuart Kestenbaum and is a project of craftschools.us. Major funding is provided by the Windgate Charitable Foundation.

Jen Bervin's interdisciplinary work often combines art, science and writing. One recent project is Silk Poems, a poem written nanoscale in the form of a silk biosensor in collaboration with Tufts University's Silk Lab, and also published as a book. Another project, The Dickinson Composite Series, is a series of large-scale embroideries that depict the variant markings in Emily Dickinson's original manuscripts. Jen's work as a poet and visual artist takes her in surprising directions. She says, "I love research because I don't know what I'll find." Make/Time shares conversations about craft, inspiration, and the creative process. Listen to leading makers and thinkers talk about where they came from, what they're making, and where they're going next. Make/Time is hosted by Stuart Kestenbaum and is a project of craftschools.us. Major funding is provided by the Windgate Charitable Foundation.

Matthew Shlian is an artist/designer and founder of the Initiative Artist Studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  His work ranges from drawings to large-scale installations to collaborations with scientists at the University of Michigan. He's widely known for his work with folded paper, but as a maker he doesn't see himself fitting into a particular category—he likes to work with what he has at hand—without being able to predict the results. He makes his work from what he calls 'a place of not knowing'.  

Lily Yeh is a co-founder of The Village of Arts and Humanities, for which she also has served as executive director and lead artist. Founded in 1986, the Philadelphia-based, non-profit organization aims to build community through art, learning, land transformation, and economic development. In 2002, Lily began Barefoot Artists, which continues her style of community building through art on an international level, in places such as Rwanda, Kenya, Ghana, Ecuador, and China. Lily Yeh seeks to build a more compassionate future through her collaborative work. She told the Christian Science Monitor, "I have found that the broken spaces are my living canvas. In our brokenness, our hearts reach for beauty."