A Diverse Variety Of Artwork On Display At This Year’s Atlanta/Southeast Craft Week
Bharatanatyam Dancer chair created by woodworker Sabiha Mujtaba.
Sabiha Mujtaba
A diverse variety of artists and their rich traditions are on display at this September’s Atlanta/Southeast Craft Week, presented by the American Craft Council. The week of online and live pop-up showcases feature works for sale by over 200 artists. Lynn Pollard, juror, and organizer for Craft Week, joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom along with two featured artists, Sabiha Mujtaba and Maria White.
“We focused on all Southeastern artists. We wanted to show the great breadth and depth of craft in the Southeast,” said Pollard. “We have just-starting-out, super young craftspeople. We have the work of old masters. We have gallery work. We have traditional craft show work. We even have some pieces that are so special that they’re not presenting them; we’re just presenting them for people to see what Southeastern craft is all about.”
Mujtaba, whose work is featured in Craft Week, uses wood as a canvas for her sculptures, furniture, and other objects. She first embarked on her journey with the medium of wood at art school, where many building materials were available to explore, including plaster, clay, brick, and metal. “Woodworking and metalsmithing became one of the most important things I enjoyed, and when I moved to Georgia and Atlanta, I was actually given an opportunity to apprentice with a woodworking shop, and that’s where my career started,” said Mujtaba.
Mujtaba shares a studio with her daughter, who makes metal jewelry. Mujtaba’s own wood crafts are influenced by her Pakistani cultural background; her heritage became an important ingredient in her artistic expressions when she first became interested in furniture design. But her woodwork takes on myriad forms beyond furniture; Mujtaba says she makes “almost anything… It’s almost a collaborative experience with the client.”
White, an artist based in Charleston, South Carolina, works in pottery. Her career, beginning in undergraduate school in South Carolina, took her to Los Angeles for thirteen years, where she honed her craft in throwing pottery before bringing it back East to her home state. Her Mexican background helped to inspire her focus on handcrafts. “My mother, who is first-generation Mexican-American… died when I was young, so I always grew up around her making things and sewing, which she learned from her mother,” said White. “So I definitely feel her influence in craft and in art…. As an adult, I have passionately been connecting with cousins and family in Mexico, and have found so much inspiration with the excellence in the craft that exists in Mexican work, Mexican craft.”
White describes her work as “understated; very simple in form.” She added, “I love a really clean, elegant form. However, I really enjoy playing with texture and light; capturing light on a facet, or absorbing light in shadows.” White even creates a line of translucent works of pottery. “I’m very interested in how translucent a clay body is, the shape of the form, and how light may dance or be absorbed in a piece.”
Not to be pigeonholed, White’s talents extend to the film as well as the tactile. She directed a documentary, released in 2017, about female hunters in the Southeast called “The Debutante Hunters,” which won the Audience Award for Best Short Documentary at Sundance Film Festival. Most recently she worked on a docuseries on artist Michael Sherrill, a designer who works primarily on metal, clay, and glass, for whom she once apprenticed.
These and other craft makers can be discovered throughout the showcases at Atlanta/Southeast Craft Week, both online and in-person. Online events are from Sept. 20 – 26, and the live pop-up at Buckhead Village takes place Sept. 23 – 25. More information is available at www.craftcouncil.org/show/season/atlantasoutheast-craft-week.
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