Identity & the Handmade

R & Company and the Female Design Council invite you to join a conversation with Ashwini Bhat, Amber Cowan, and Luam Melake, moderated by Lora Appleton, Founder of the Female Design Council, highlighting the acclaimed practices of three award-winning artists shaping the collectible design landscape today.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS
Lora Appleton, is a recognized furniture, textile designer, womxn's advocate, and leading voice in New York City design. As founder of design gallery, kinder MODERN, and the Female Design Council, Appleton is paving the way for designers and makers with her meticulous design vision, nuanced collections, and curated exhibitions.
Ashwini Bhat explores the deep relationship between the human and non-human, making ceramic objects that can be conceived as equal partners in a dance. Her recent pieces are part of a series called Assembling California and are inspired by the landscape of the West. Bhat describes them as a “field survey,” with the gesturing body remaining vividly present in the whipping ribbons of clay that adorn intertwining muscular masses. Bhat’s work has been exhibited at Cohen Gallery, Providence, RI, the American Jazz Museum, Kansas City, MO, and the Newport Art Museum, Newport, NJ, among others.
Amber Cowan’s work asks universal questions about rebirth, knowledge, and the transformative powers of labor and imagination. Her fantastical grotto-like assemblages are made of re-worked pressed glassware, once produced by some of the best known, but now-defunct, American glass factories. Amber Cowan lives and works in Philadelphia. Her pieces are included in the collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI, and the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA, to name a few.
Luam Melake's practice is focused on handwoven sculptures and functional furniture objects. She references the histories and methodologies of art, design, craft, architecture, and industrial manufacturing and borrows materials from each of these fields to create works that collapse these disciplines. Her work encourages viewers/users to more fully consider their physical relationship to space and the potential for objects to facilitate meaningful, socializing experiences. Melake is based in New York City. Her work lives in the permanent collections of the Fondation Blachère, Apt, France and Palazzo Monti, Brescia, Italy.