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Close-up view of the back of a wooden chair, a rectangular shape with concave edges and, embedded into it on deer hide, glass beads in white, brown, blue, red, green, and orange forming graphic abstract shapes.
Year of Glass: Contemporary Native American Beadwork
Teri Greeves embellishes traditional woodwork with glass beads to celebrate her Kiowa culture and ancestry.
A photograph of two individuals working on a solar panel. The solar panel is seen from the side, dissecting the image from lower left to top right. The two individuals are behind and largely obscured by the panel. In the background is natural imagery of the Southwest of the United States.
Power Is in Our Hands: Native Renewables
Written by Wahleah Johns Access to electricity is a human right, essential to people’s health, security, and livelihoods. Of the 20,000 families in the United States without access to electricity, three-quarters live on the Navajo Nation. Despite their lands providing fossil fuels that have powered the West for 50 years, these families have been left...
Image features a blouse with a round neckline and stitched pleats on either shoulder. Three snap closures on left proper shoulder. Long sleeved with banded cuff and snap closure. At the waist, belt loops are sewn on the seam. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Thematic Textiles
Inspired by the popularity of their printed series of fabrics entitled American National Parks (Spring 1927) and Wonder Caves of America (Fall 1927), H.R. Mallinson & Company maintained their creative momentum by returning to other American themes first visited during the “Designed in America” campaigns of the World War I period. Motivation also came from...
Sawtooth
Author: Noga Bernstein September is New York Textile Month! In celebration, members of the Textile Society of America will author Object of the Day for the month. A non-profit professional organization of scholars, educators, and artists in the field of textiles, TSA provides an international forum for the exchange and dissemination of information about textiles...
The People are Beautiful Already: Indigenous Design and Planning
Theodore Jojola, professor in the Indigenous Design + Planning Institute at the University of New Mexico, discusses the unique nature and power of indigenous design and planning.
Pure Blend / Puras Misturi
Coffee vending machine designed by a street vendor.   “We are buying artifacts from all over the country, made by common people, to constitute a collection of popular design. Our intention is to show the extraordinary resourcefulness of our material culture.” – Adélia Borges   Brazilian curator and former director of the Museu da Casa...
Research Chronicles
Follow my field research chronicles on twitter, starting in Kumasi, Ghana at the International Development Design Summit organized by Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and MIT. The summit aims to create equity in the distribution of research and development resources by focusing on the needs of the world’s poor, bringing together students,...