“Finely Crafted,” which opens today at Sebastopol Center for the Arts, is a sly, funny and surprising exhibition, with a curious edge of darkness that’s perfect for the season.
Curated by Jamie Studley, Gabrielle Disario and Robert Brent, the exhibition is part of a nationwide celebration of craft, called “Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026,” which seeks to showcase “the importance of the handmade both throughout our history and in contemporary life.”
“There are hundreds of events around the country,” Studley said. “It’s another renewal of ‘Let’s appreciate craft’ and inviting people, each in their own community—national organizations and very local ones—to all do something to contribute toward this momentum in the 2026 Year of Craft.”
Because SebArts already has a well-known fiber arts show, Disario said this exhibition focuses on pieces made of wood, ceramic, glass and metal.
“We wanted to create the window for other artists,” said Disario, a graphic designer who has an MFA from Stanford.
The exhibition’s call for entries asked for “Works that are original, uniquely expressive, created with skilled hands, inspired by the material itself, all the while celebrating traditional origins.” For the most part, that’s exactly what they got—though many of the pieces in this exhibit play with the idea of the traditional rather than embodying it.
SebArts received 330 submissions, and 70 pieces were chosen for the show by jurors JoAnn Edwards, co-founder and retired executive director of Museum Craft and Design in San Francisco, and Scott A. Shields, chief curator and associate director of the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento.
Disario said her interest in craft grew as the art world at large moved toward the ephemeral over the last 30 years. “There was a moment for me when we were having performance art and a lot of what I thought was not visual art—and so I started to look toward craft from the ACC [American Craft Council] shows that used to be in San Francisco every spring.”
For those who think of craft as something separate from art with a capital A, this show might surprise you. There is nothing “functional” about most of the pieces in the show—though there are some straight-up beautiful ceramic cups and some exquisite furniture. But much of the work is indistinguishable from what we’ve come to think of as art.
Studley, a former college president and Education Department official, who was on the board of the American Craft Council for nine years, called functional art “a subset” of craft. “Craft is to me the how you made it, the materiality and the creation, and art is the intention, and they can overlap,” she said.
“I think our title, ‘Finely Crafted,’ is a way of borrowing ‘finely’ from fine art and ‘craft’ from craft, and saying, ‘Let’s look at how they come together.’
“And it also implies incredible skill,” Disario added.
Studley doesn’t see much point in debating the distinction. “I‘d rather look at the work itself than debate these edges and titles,” she said.
You will probably feel the same. Here’s just a small taste of what’s there:
‘Finely Crafted’ runs from now to Nov. 29, and the opening reception is today Oct. 24, from 2 to 4 pm.
Great job Gabrielle!