2021 Arrowmont Roundtable: RENEWAL

ARROWMONT CRAFT CONVERSATIONS is a video series that highlights artists in the Arrowmont community. Our partnership with Arrowmont faculty and community members has contributed to Arrowmont’s longevity, growth as a school of arts and crafts, and our reputation as an institution that welcomes everyone. The artists who appear in this series exemplify the characteristics that represent the School — they span generations and are among the most experienced, capable, and innovative in the arts and crafts world.

Scheduled the day after Earth Day 2021, an Arrowmont Instructor Roundtable discussion centered around RENEWAL was held April 23, 2021.

Three Arrowmont instructors whose works focus on environmentalism were joined by special guest moderator, Dr. Daniel Wildcat:

• Bryant Holsenbeck: Fiber, basketry and mixed-media artist
• Zeke Leonard: Furniture, instrument woodworker
• Emmy Lingscheit: Printmaker

Bryant Holsenbeck / website “I make art inspired by the natural world using the cast-offs of our society that I find everywhere I look. Currently I am using plastic bags and textile scraps to make the animals I see around me. And with the help of local communities, I am using plastic debris from our watersheds and oceans to make large-scale environmental installations” Bryant Holsenbeck is a sculptor and environmental artist with roots in basketry. She is also an installation artist who utilizes the “stuff” our society has used once and thrown away. Holsenbeck has taught at Arrowmont, Penland School of Craft, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and in Australia. In 2018, her book The Last Straw: A Continuing Quest for Life Without Disposable Plastic was published chronicling her work and environmental concerns. Zeke Leonard / zekeleonard.com “I am a furniture designer and maker living in Syracuse, New York. My former career as a theatrical set designer was a continuous cycle of making beautiful things and then putting them in the trash. Now I am trying to reverse that process, by taking cast-off objects and making them into beautiful things. I work on commission, using locally found objects and materials to create one-of-a-kind pieces that will live on for generations.”

Zeke Leonard is an Assistant Professor in the School of Design at Syracuse University, a member of the Environmental and Interior Design Faculty, and the coordinator of the School of Design’s first-year experience. His research involves the role of social responsibility and environmental stewardship in design and fabrication practices.  He regularly partners with community groups and organizations to find ways to put local resources to better use.

Emmy Lingscheit / website “An overarching interest of my prints, drawings, and sculptural works is to explore intersections of social justice and environmental justice. My work critically investigates the interdependencies and exchanges between the biological and the man-made, using visual seduction, irony, and productive ambiguity to attune the viewer to our postnatural world.” Emmy Lingscheit is an artist and educator living in Urbana, Illinois and is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she is the printmaking coordinator. She holds a BFA from St. Cloud State University in Minnesota and an MFA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Lingscheit exhibits her work widely, including recent solo shows at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the Lawrence Arts Center, and the Indianapolis Art Center.

Dr. Daniel Wildcat (Guest Moderator) / website Dr. Daniel R. Wildcat is a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma. He is director of the Haskell Environmental Research Studies (HERS) Center and member of the Indigenous & American Indian Studies Program at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas. In 2013 he was the Gordon Russell visiting professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College. Dr. Wildcat received B.A. and M.A. degrees in sociology from the University of Kansas and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. from the University of Missouri at Kansas City. He has taught at Haskell for 30 years.

Dr. Wildcat is an accomplished scholar who writes on indigenous knowledge, technology, environment, and education. He has been an invited speaker on American Indian worldviews at Goddard Space Flight Center, National Museum of the American Indian, Harvard Medical School, Dartmouth College, University of Kansas Medical School, Kansas State University, University of California (Riverside) and many other institutions of higher education. Dr. Wildcat frequently speaks to community groups and organizations on the issue of cultural diversity. In 1992 Dr. Wildcat was honored with the Heart Peace Award by the Kansas City organization, The Future Is Now for his efforts to promote world peace and cultural diversity.

He is the author and editor of several books: Power and Place: Indian Education In America, with Vine Deloria, Jr.; Destroying Dogma: Vine Deloria’s Legacy on Intellectual America, with Steve Pavlik. His most recent book, Red Alert: Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge, suggests current global climate change issues will require the exercise of indigenous ingenuity – indigenuity – and wisdom if humankind will reduce the ecological damage well underway.