This exhibition connects Shakers to contemporary craft practices and explores how the Shakers influence American craft today. In Swept: This Work I Will Do (taken from a Shaker hymn), artist/broom squire Cate Richards creates a series of sculptural objects using established broom making techniques in a discursive manner to explore issues of craft, social inequity, environment, and other topics. Some of Richard’s sculptures are made of normal broom making materials (broomcorn and wood) while others will use fiber, plastic, and metal. These anachronistic sculptures, which will be juxtaposed in the exhibition against Shaker brooms, offer revealing insight on the history and potential historical gaps of American broom making, highlight contemporary broom making practices, and explore the idea of the broom as a spiritual object.
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