Donald McLean III is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, known to fans as the "American Troubadour" or "King of the Trail". He is best known for his 1971 hit "American Pie", an eight-and-a-half-minute folk rock song that has been referred to as a "cultural touchstone". His other hit singles include "Vincent", "Dreidel", "Castles in the Air", and "Wonderful Baby", as well as renditions of Roy Orbison's "Crying" and the Skyliners' "Since I Don't Have You".
"American Pie" is a song by American singer and songwriter Don McLean. Recorded and released in 1971 on the album of the same name, the single was the number-one US hit for four weeks in 1972 starting January 15 after just eight weeks on the US Billboard charts. The song also topped the charts in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In the UK, the single reached number 2, where it stayed for three weeks on its original 1971 release, and a reissue in 1991 reached No. 12. The song was listed as the No. 5 song on the RIAA project Songs of the Century. A truncated version of the song was covered by Madonna in 2000 and reached No. 1 in at least 15 countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. At 8 minutes and 42 seconds, McLean's combined version is the sixth longest song to enter the Billboard Hot 100. The song also held the record for almost 50 years for being the longest song to reach number one before Taylor Swift's "All Too Well " broke the record in 2021. Due to its exceptional length, it was initially released as a two-sided 7-inch single. "American Pie" has been described as "one of the most successful and debated songs of the 20th century".
Peter Seeger was an American folk singer-songwriter, musician and social activist. He was a fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, and had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene," which topped the charts for 14 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, Seeger re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture, workers' rights, and environmental causes.
Manhattanville University is a private university in Purchase, New York, United States. Founded in 1841 as a school at 412 Houston Street in Lower Manhattan, it was initially known as the Academy of the Sacred Heart. In 1917, the academy received a charter from the Regents of the State of New York to raise the school officially to a collegiate level, granting degrees as the College of the Sacred Heart. In 1937, it became known as Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, and from 1966 to 2024 as Manhattanville College.
In pottery, a potter's wheel is a machine used in the shaping of clay into round ceramic ware. The wheel may also be used during the process of trimming excess clay from leather-hard dried ware that is stiff but malleable, and for applying incised decoration or rings of colour. Use of the potter's wheel became widespread throughout the Old World but was unknown in the Pre-Columbian New World, where pottery was handmade by methods that included coiling and beating.
Toshi Reagon is an American musician of folk, blues, gospel, rock and funk, as well as a composer, curator, and producer.
The Clearwater Festival is a music and environmental summer festival and America's oldest and largest annual festival of its kind. This unique event has hosted over 15,000 people on a weekend in June for more than three decades. All proceeds benefit Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit environmental organization.
Otto Heino and Vivika Heino were artists working in ceramics. They collaborated as a husband-and-wife team for thirty-five years, signing their pots Vivika + Otto, regardless of who actually made them.
Maria Margarita "Margaret" Tafoya was the matriarch of Santa Clara Pueblo potters. She was a recipient of a 1984 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.
The Overbeck sisters were American women potters and artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement who established Overbeck Pottery in their Cambridge City, Indiana, home in 1911 with the goal of producing original, high-quality, hand-wrought ceramics as their primary source of income. The sisters are best known for their fanciful figurines, their skill in matte glazes, and their stylized designs of plants and animals in the Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles. The women owned and handled all aspects of their artistic enterprise until 1955, when the last of the sisters died and the pottery closed. As a result of their efforts, the Overbecks managed to become economically independent and earned a modest living from the sales of their art.
Mika Seeger is an American ceramic artist. Although not primarily a musical artist, she did record a definitive version of "Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts". She is the daughter of filmmaker Toshi Seeger and Pete Seeger, a legendary American folk musician.
Toshi Seeger was an American filmmaker, producer and environmental activist. A filmmaker who specialized in the subject of folk music, Toshi's credits include the 1966 film Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison and the Emmy Award-winning documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, released through PBS in 2007. In 1966, Seeger and her husband, folk-singer Pete Seeger, co-founded the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, which seeks to protect the Hudson River and surrounding wetlands. Additionally, they co-founded the Clearwater Festival, a major music festival held annually at Croton Point Park in Westchester County, New York.
James Bradford Brown is an American film director, primarily known for his work in documentary film. He has won four Emmys, most recently for Pete Seeger: The Power of Song. He has directed and produced four feature documentaries that received theatrical distribution. He heads Jim Brown Productions, LLC and Ginger Group Productions, Inc., production companies specializing in cultural and social documentaries and music concerts.
Frances Maude Senska was an art professor and artist specializing in ceramics who taught at Montana State University – Bozeman from 1946 to 1973. She was known as the "grandmother of ceramics in Montana". During her career, she trained a number of now internationally known ceramic artists.
John Parker is a New Zealand ceramicist and theatre designer.
Craft in America, Inc. is an American arts nonprofit organization known for its television series, also titled "Craft in America", which showcases the world of craftsmanship across the United States.
Ayumi Horie is a Portland, Maine-based studio potter. She is recognized for her unique aesthetic as well as for her pioneering use of digital marketing and social media within contemporary ceramics. She is curator of the popular Instagram feed Pots in Action and is a 2015 United States Artist Distinguished Fellow in Craft.
Jan Yager was an American artist who made mixed media jewelry. She drew inspiration from both the natural world and the lived-in human environment of her neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, emphasizing that art is a reflection of both time and place. She incorporated rocks, bullet casings, and crack cocaine vials into her works, and found beauty in the resilience of urban plants that some would consider weeds.
Ornament is a periodical magazine that documents the history, art and craft of ancient, ethnic and contemporary jewelry and personal adornment. It presents and discusses a wide range of personal adornment and wearable art, including beads, jewelry, and clothing.
Susan Hudson is an American and Navajo Nation quilter. A 2024 National Heritage Fellow, she works on ledger art quilts with historical narratives, focusing on Navajo history.
