This is the first volume to document and contextualize Sonya Clark’s large-scale, collaborative artworks. These projects demonstrate Clark’s career-long commitment to addressing the urgent issue of racial inequality in American society and her philosophy of creatively engaging the viewer in reflection on the nation’s history of slavery and our roles in dismantling systemic racism today. As an extension of her abiding commitment to issues of history, race, and reconciliation in her work, Clark is also distinctive as an artist for her use of textiles and other everyday materials, which she aligns with the intertwined histories of art and craft. For marginalized people (African Americans and women, in particular) handwork has been essential to survival and consequently has functioned, and continues to function, as an important means of creating a group identity. Hence, for Clark, craft is essential to the question of equality.

A master furniture maker, designer, sculptor, and educator, Wendell Castle is in his sixth decade of a fruitful and creative career that began in 1958 and that parallels the emergence and growth of the American studio craft movement. The solo exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design that this book accompanies runs from October 20 2015 to February 28 2016.