Cynthia Schira

10/31/16 • 14 min

Cynthia Schira is a weaver and designer living in Westport, New York. She taught art for nearly 30 years, and has been a practicing artist since attending RISD on scholarship as a young woman. She happened into weaving because of a scholarship opportunity, but it fit her. In the course of her career, Cynthia has given special attention to working with computers and the Jacquard loom—an early precursor to the modern computer—to explore the digital qualities and possibilities of the art form. Today, Cynthia has retired from teaching, but not from making; she continues to make new projects, collaborate with other artists, and find new synchronicities between art and the world around her.

Make/Time shares conversations about craft, inspiration, and the creative process. Listen to leading makers and thinkers talk about where they came from, what they're making, and where they're going next. Make/Time is hosted by Stuart Kestenbaum and is a project of craftschools.us.

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Roberto Lugo

Roberto Lugo is a potter living and working in Vermont. He grew up in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia and began his creative life writing graffiti. Today, he is known for his teapots, which are for him a symbol of learning other cultures, as he didn't grow up using teapots in his Puerto Rican household. His pots incorporate his artistic beginnings in graffiti and include references to his own background and to global cultures, and he designs them to spark conversation. Roberto is a professor at Marlboro College, and he talks about the different languages of academia, the pottery room, and the community where he was raised—and the challenges and joys of truly communicating across cultures.

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Theresa Secord

Theresa Secord is a Penobscot basket weaver and founder of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance. She was recently named an American Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts. A lifelong Mainer, she grew up off reservation and eventually became a geologist. Theresa came to basketmaking through studying her native language as an adult; the weaving was a tactile part of the language lessons, and Theresa soon realized was more artist than linguist, and she's never turned back. Her work with the alliance has resulted in a rejuvenation of the the basketmaking tradition; the number of weavers from Wabanaki tribes has grown from a handful to scores, and it has become a viable source of income and renown for native weavers again. Recently, Theresa has stepped down from her organizing work to return to her own artistry, where she focuses on fancy basket work and on using new materials in place of the sacred and endangered Brown Ash.