center-for-craft — Jeremiah Barber

7.1.2025

What a profound honor to share that I’ve been named a 2025 fellow with the Center for Craft in Asheville, North Carolina. The Teaching Artist Cohort is a program meant to support artist-educators whose work involves an element of craft and who are not in tenure-track academic positions. This fellowship provides monetary support, access to a national network of makers and thinkers from the Center’s years of programming, and a six-month experience of dialogue with the cohort and presentations from visiting scholars. I’m so excited to be able to participate and see how this shapes my artwork and pedagogy moving forward. Huge gratitude to the selection panel Makda Amdetsyon, Demetri Broxton, and Jennifer Ling Datchuk!

It’s an incredibly difficult time to be an educator in the United States. Academia is quite literally under attack by the current administration, and the ongoing challenges of socialization and mental health coming out of the covid years are most potently felt by the young generation. The retributional legislation nationwide against supporting diversity in the classroom, while not experienced directly in California, is still felt and heard. It will be years or decades before we recover from the regressionary measures against education, the arts, and freedom of speech.

I write this because this fellowship is a lifeline during a broader academic crisis. I feel incredibly lucky and buoyed to be able to spend a season regrouping and sharing resources with 29 other creators and hustlers, people who have thrived through their creativity, flexibility, and improvisation. You can learn more about the Center for Craft, the amazing work they are doing, and all the other 2025 fellows at their website.

And a shout out to my other Bay Area crew!

Pilar Agüero-Esparza
Arleene Correa Valencia
Jillian Crochet
Meryl Pataky