Lois Mailou Jones (1905–1998) was an artist and educator. Her work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Muscarelle Museum of Art, and The Phillips Collection. She is often associated with the Harlem Renaissance.
D. Wayne Higby is an American artist working in ceramics. The American Craft Museum considers him a "visionary of the American Crafts Movement" and recognized him as one of seven artists who are "genuine living legends representing the best of American artists in their chosen medium."
Sonya Clark is an American artist of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Clark is a fiber artist known for using a variety of materials including human hair and combs to address race, culture, class, and history. Her beaded headdress assemblages and braided wig series of the late 1990s, which received critical acclaim, evoked African traditions of personal adornment and moved these common forms into the realm of personal and political expression. Although African art and her Caribbean background are important influences, Clark also builds on practices of assemblage and accumulation used by artists such as Betye Saar and David Hammons.
Mary Jackson is an African American fiber artist. She is best known for her sweetgrass basket weaving using traditional methods combined with contemporary designs. A native of coastal South Carolina and a descendant of generations of Gullah basket weavers, Jackson was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2008 for "pushing the tradition in stunning new directions." Mary Jackson is a recipient of a 2010 National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Paul Marioni is an American artist who works in the medium of glass.
Cynthia Schira is an American textile artist and former university professor. Her work is represented in the collections of many major public museums.
Mary Huntoon was an American artist and art therapist. The Mary Huntoon Papers are located at the University of Kansas. It consists primarily of her personal correspondences, correspondences as director of the Federal Art Project in Kansas, original poetry manuscripts, speech and lecture notes, photographs or reproductions of her artwork, original artwork, inventories, exhibit catalogs and programs, information on employment and research as an Art Therapist at the Winter Veterans Affairs Hospital in Topeka, and family photographs.
Sharif Bey is an African American artist, ceramicist, and professor. He produces functional pottery as well as ceramic and mixed-media sculptures using various forms and textures. His body of work reflects his interest in the visual heritage of Africa and Oceania and contemporary African American culture. With his colorful large-scale bead sculptures, Bey explores the cultural and political significance of ornamentation and adornment.
Melanie Bilenker is an American craft artist from New York City who lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her work is primarily in contemporary hair jewelry. In 2010 she received a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. Bilenker uses her own hair to "draw" images of contemporary life and self-portraits. The use of hair is an attempt at showing the person, and the moments left or shed behind.
Stella Waitzkin (1920–2003) was an American installation artist known for sculptural representation of books.
Paula Colton Winokur (1936–2018) was an American artist. She was one of the leading ceramic artists in the United States from the 1970s until her death in 2018.
Anna Margaretta Archambault (1856–1956) was an American artist and author. She is best known for her 1924 book A Guide Book of Art, Architecture, and Historic Interests in Pennsylvania, which remains in print as of 2020.
Leroy Johnson was a largely self-taught African American artist who used found materials to create mixed-media works. He was known for his paintings, assemblage sculptures and collages that were inspired, influenced and reflective of African American history and his experiences living in the inner city of Philadelphia.
Hortense T. Ferne (1885–1976) was an American artist. Her work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Chrysler Museum of Art, the Mattatuck Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Margaret Ann Gaug (1909–1994) was an American artist known primarily for her etchings but also for her decorations and illustrative art. Gaug was a member of Chicago Society of Etchers and the Prairie Printmakers of California and Illinois. Her work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Carolyn Crump is an American quilting artist whose work focuses on African American culture. Her work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Michigan State University African American Quilt Collection.
Julia Kwon (1987–present) is a Korean-American artist best known for her bojagi-inspired artwork. Her work has been featured at the Smithsonian Institution's Cooper Hewitt Museum and Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Sharon Kerry-Harlan is an African-American artist active in Hollywood, Florida and Wauwatosa, Wisconsin who is known for her textile art. She was born in Miami, Florida in 1951. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Marquette University and studied at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. She went on to work at Marquette University as an Academic Coordinator and to teach textile courses at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee as an adjunct professor. From July to August 2019, Kerry-Harlan had a solo exhibition at the James Watrous Gallery at the Overture Center for the Arts. Throughout August 2019, her work was on display in the AndStill We Rise: Race Culture and Visual Conversations exhibit at the Mariposa Museum & World Cultural Center in Oak Bluff, Massachusetts. In early 2021, Kerry-Harlan participated in the Textile Center and Women of Color Quilters Network’s juried exhibit Racism: In the Face of Hate We Resist. Later that year, Kerry-Harlan's work was displayed in the Museum of Wisconsin Art's Claiming Space Exhibition. In 2022, her work, Portrait of Resilience, from the Flag Series, was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of the Renwick Gallery's 50th Anniversary Campaign in 2022. That same year, Kerry-Harlan's work was displayed in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art's exhibit Ain’t I A Woman? in celebration of the 2022 Wisconsin Triennial. She also had work displayed in the 2022 Uncovering Black History: Quilts from the Collection of Carolyn Mazloomi exhibition at the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Betty Scarpino is an American wood sculptor active in Indianapolis, Indiana. She received the Windgate International Turning Exchange Resident Fellowship two times - once in 1999 and another in 2016 - making her the second person in the residency's history to be chosen twice. In 2020, she was awarded an Honorary Lifetime Member from the American Association of Woodturners (AAW) for her contributions to the advancement of woodturning. Her work is currently in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection and The Center for Art in Wood Museum's collection.
“Ceramic artist Syd Carpenter”, PBS. 11/01/22.