Clark is acclaimed for using everyday fiber materials, such as hair, flags, and found fabric, as well as a range of textile techniques–including weaving, braiding, quilting, and beading–to examine issues of history, racial injustice, cultural legacies, and reconciliation. We Are Each Other shows how her community-centered projects facilitate new collective encounters across racial, gender, and socioeconomic divisions. In addition to her large-scale installations, the exhibition features a range of her photographs, prints, and sculpture.

The Houston presentation of We Are Each Other, hosted within both HCCC’s and HMAAC’s galleries, is an abridged version of the exhibition with the same name organized by Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Ml; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Clark’s work centers on race and Black experience, and the exhibition is rooted in both audience and context, as each organizing institution is located in American cities with substantial populations of residents with a lineage to the African diaspora, and each is dedicated to celebrating and collecting contemporary art and craft traditions.

Read the full press release.

Header image: Sonya Clark, Detail of “Whole Hole,” 2015. Plastic combs, 120 x 120 inches. Courtesy the artist.

Call for Artists
All artists working in clay, fiber, glass, metal, wood, and found/recycled materials are encouraged to apply to CraftTexas 2025. The online application is open February 1 – April 30, 2025. Learn more.

The Artist Residency Program at HCCC provides local, regional, and international artists with a space for creative exploration, exchange, and collaboration with other artists, arts professionals, and the public. HCCC Curatorial Fellow Zaynab Hilal notes, “The Artist Residency Program offers artists the ideal opportunity to refine their craft while also trying their hand at new techniques. This exhibition features the prototypes, experiments, and meticulously crafted works of the 2023-2024 cohort. I am excited to present the diverse array of pieces that emerged from the artists’ time in Houston, where they mingled, shared ideas, and drew inspiration from the city’s culture.”

In Residence: 17th Edition was curated by HCCC Curatorial Fellow, Zaynab Hilal.  

Learn more about the Artist Residency Program here.

Designing Motherhood invites audiences to consider why and how designs have been developed to facilitate reproductive health, and to ponder the political, economic, and social implications of medicalizing reproduction. The exhibition explores experiences of (in)fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, parenthood, and early childhood through blown-glass weaning vessels and hand-carved rocking chairs to art jewelry inspired by breast pump flanges, pacifiers, and nipple shields.

“Handcrafted objects are the intermediary space between the womb and the world. From handwoven swaddling cloths and knitted baby blankets to embroidered baby carriers and basket-woven bassinets, craft is often the first human experience of the material world,” notes HCCC Curator and Exhibitions Director Sarah Darro. “HCCC’s presentation of Designing Motherhood draws out the intertwined properties of labor, care, embedded history, material intelligence, and intergenerational knowledge shared by craft and parenthood, ultimately asserting such reproductive experiences as forms of craft themselves.”

With the aim of spotlighting contemporary experiences around human reproduction, this multivalent project consists of a traveling exhibition, a book published by MIT Press, an Instagram account, a design curriculum, a Narrative Portraiture project, and ongoing public programs with community partners across the globe. “Our aim was to have this exhibition speak to all visitors in some way,” states the Designing Motherhood curatorial team. “We wanted to showcase the beauty, elegance, and ingenuity of so many quotidian objects related to the arc of human reproduction, and for our visitors to stop and contemplate the social and cultural context surrounding these designs.”

Designing Motherhood is curated and organized by design historians and writers Juliana Rowen Barton, Director of the Center for the Arts and Curator of Gallery360 at Northeastern University; Michelle Millar Fisher, Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts within the Contemporary Art Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Zoë Greggs, Executive Assistant at BlackStar Film Projects; Gabriella Nelson, Associate Director of the Voices for Health Justice program at Community Catalyst; and Amber Winick, an independent early childhood and design researcher and curator. Since 2021, the exhibition has traveled to the MassArt Museum in Boston and the Bill and Melinda Gates Center in Seattle. Opening concurrently with HCCC’s exhibition is another iteration of Designing Motherhood at the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design (ArkDes). Learn more about the exhibition here.

HCCC Curator & Exhibitions Director, Sarah Darro, is the organizing curator of Designing Motherhood at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Developed in collaboration with local and regional community partners, a robust slate of public programming will accompany the exhibition.

Major support for Designing Motherhood has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Thanks to our program partner, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast. The mission of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast is to ensure the right and ability of all individuals to manage their sexual and reproductive health by providing health services, education, and advocacy.

Home Affairs Collective’s ArtSit

Reservations Available on Saturdays
Currently on view in Designing Motherhood, Home Affairs Collective’s ArtSit is an adjustable chair that allows children up to five years old to view art at eye level. The chair is available for families to use with assistance on Saturdays for the duration of the exhibition. Sign up here to reserve the ArtSit, and enjoy a new way to explore the exhibition with your child!

Fiber in 3D is juried by the Fiber Art Now creative team, Lori Butanis, Barbara Delaney, Cami Smith, and Beth Smith, and the corresponding installation in Houston Center for Contemporary Craft’s Asher Gallery will be selected by HCCC Curator + Exhibitions Director Sarah Darro. Details about the selected installation will be available in December, 2023.

Fiber in 3D is organized by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and Fiber Art Now.

About Fiber Art Now
Fiber Art Now is a quarterly magazine that serves more than 120,000 fiber artists across the globe. This reader-supported publication highlights contemporary fiber art and also features annual juried exhibitions, grants, and community partnership opportunities.

THIS SIDE UP is the first curatorial project of its kind to frame the materials-based knowledge and making practices radiating from the museum industrial complex within the discipline of craft. HCCC Curator and Exhibitions Director Sarah Darro notes, “THIS SIDE UP is an exhibition about the making of an exhibition. Its design and layout reflect the art object’s journey from artist studio to art-shipping transit facility to clandestine preparation room, and finally, to public presentation in the museum gallery.”

The throughline of the exhibition is an investigation of labor and visibility (or invisibility) within the field. For instance, two new series, “Passage (those that carried us)” by Vivian Chiu and “Quotidian Relics” by Adam Manley, transform the art storage crate into a conduit for larger discourses on migration, labor, and value–not only referencing the bodies of artwork they hold but also serving as a metaphor for the journey of their makers and the network of people who steward them through space and over time. On the other hand, renowned art handlers Willem de Haan and Clynton Lowry, founding editor of Art Handler Magazine, present sculptural, wearable, and editorial works that showcase the highly specialized, skilled, and often undervalued anonymous labor and making within museums. Their practices also demonstrate how art handling has informed and inspired adjacent creative production, from fashion design to meme-making and community organizing.

The exhibition and its associated programming provide visitors with a unique opportunity to experience the “behind-the-scenes” work of museums and prioritize the viewing of crafted objects that are typically obscured. By providing new visibility for these oft-overlooked and many times purposefully concealed objects, this exhibition highlights the masterful craftsmanship of these makers and their vital role in facilitating the art experience.

THIS SIDE UP is curated by HCCC Curator & Exhibitions Director, Sarah Darro. Exhibiting artists include Vivian Chiu, Willem de Haan, Clynton Lowry, Adam Manley, and more. HCCC received material donations and exhibition support from the registration, preparation, and exhibitions teams of the following museums: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA; Museum for Art in Wood, Philadelphia, PA; Wharton Esherick Museum, Malvern, PA; Mingei International Museum, San Diego, CA;  and Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI.

The Artist Residency Program at HCCC provides local, regional, and international artists with a space for creative exploration, exchange, and collaboration with other artists, arts professionals, and the public. HCCC Curatorial Fellow Cydney Pickens notes, “The resident artist experience is often characterized by the finished artwork. Uniquely, this exhibition will include photos, mementos, clippings, and sketches from each resident’s studio to illustrate the nonlinear nature of creative production and show some of the fun and silly moments from this past year.”

In Residence: 16th Edition was curated by HCCC Curatorial Fellow, Cydney Pickens. More information about the Artist Residency Program can be found here.

Hispanohablantes: los materiales de las exposiciónes están traducidos al español en las galerías.