2022 Maine Craft Artist Award Pin By Erica Moody
Tea Strainer Brooch- Brass, wood, silver rivets.
MAINE CRAFT ARTIST AWARD: 2022 PRESENTATION CEREMONY + RECEPTION
Supporters of Ayumi Horie are invited to attend the award presentation and reception Friday, November 18, 2022, starting at 5:30 PM during a ceremony at Mechanics Hall. The ceremony will include the award presentation and the special tradition of the presentation of the Award Pin, custom-made for the honoree, this year by Erica Moody.
To attend the Presentation Ceremony and Reception, registration and proof of vaccination are required.
Thank you to Mechanics Hall for co-hosting this event!
The Maine Crafts Association proudly announces Ayumi Horie as its 2022 recipient of the MCA Maine Craft Artist Award.
The award recognizes Horie’s dual accomplishments in both her personal practice as a full time studio potter and her dedicated leadership in work creating positive impact and action toward a more diverse, equitable, inclusive field of craft.
The MCA acknowledges Horie’s leadership and dedication to implement social change in craft centered projects. Her work has impacted Maine craft and craft at the national and international level.
Starting in 2009 the MCA began to annually honor individual Maine craft artists in recognition of their exceptional bodies of work or contributions to the field. The award bestows prestige and acknowledgment, conferring upon the artist’s work a distinguishing mark of excellence.
The Award Juror is guided by these benchmarks: excellence in craftsmanship, inspired design, a singular voice or style, and a career of service to the field. The 2022 award was selected from many deserving peer nominations by former MCA Executive Director, Sadie Bliss, who served with MCA for thirteen years.
“Ayumi’s work is world renowned, her business acumen is highly creative and enviable, and her use of craft to make a positive impact spans her career. Craftspeople and organizations have benefited from her kindness and efforts including the Maine Crafts Association and the state of Maine.” -Sadie Bliss
Ayumi Horie is known for her functional pottery with drawings of animals and typography. Colorful, playful, and explorative, Horie’s work is admired and sought after for its bold imagery with subtle characteristics. She has displayed a high proficiency in materials through exploration and ingenuity, becoming well known for her “dry throwing” technique and storytelling skills that have carried her beyond her foundation in clay into a broader variety of media and community action initiatives.
While building her studio practice, Horie founded, encouraged, and collaborated on many socially minded projects that have asked those in craft to engage in conversation or to create work that calls to action. These projects include Portland Brick, The Democratic Cup, and Pots in Action, a curated Instagram feed that challenged the canon of ceramics. It gave its audience high-quality educational content changing the understanding of what clay could or should be, globally. It ran for five years connecting the voices of over 70 guest hosts, bringing to light the diversity and practice of ceramics used around the world, often overlooked by many leaders in craft.
Recently Horie connected with the Center for Craft to seed and create the Craft Archive Fellowship. The fellowship will support scholarship and archival research around underrepresented and non-dominant craft narratives.
Horie has lectured and taught workshops all across the United States and beyond. She has served on the Board of Directors at the Archie Bray Foundation and American Craft Council and is currently the President of the Board of Trustees of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.