Tanya Crane

Tanya Crane is a Professor of the Practice in Metals at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts in Boston and a professional jeweler and metalsmith. She has taught workshops on enameling at prestigious craft institutions and in academic settings for the past 20 years while maintaining a rigorous studio practice in Providence, Rhode Island. Crane’s work is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the National Ornamental Metal Museum and the Stewart Program for Modern Design in Montreal, Canada. Crane has an MFA in Metals and Jewelry from UW Madison and a BFA in Metal from SUNY New Paltz. 

Kim Cridler

Trained as a metalsmith, Kim was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, earned an MFA in Metals from the State University of New York at New Paltz, and studied at Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting. Kim has applied her use of steel, structure and ornament in large-scale public art projects and commissions, as well as maintaining a studio practice. She recently installed work for the MTA Arts-For-Transit program in Mamaroneck NY and at the newly opened Londoner Hotel in Macau China. Her work was featured in a retrospective at the Metal Museum in 2022.

Her professional experiences include teaching, curatorial work and arts administration. An assistant curator at Mesa Contemporary Arts in Mesa, AZ, Kim went on to act as program coordinator for the John Michael Kohler Art Center’s Arts/Industry Artist-In-Residence program. She most recently served as a tenured faculty in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison after having taught at University of Michigan, San Diego State University, Arizona State University, and the Penland School of Crafts, and has participated in national and regional public art panels, state arts fellowship panels, and national residency review panels. She has served on the Editorial Advisory Board for Metalsmith magazine, and has contributed essays and exhibition reviews for national publications.

Kirk Lang

Kirk Lang is a Seattle based Studio Artist. He holds a MFA from the University of Washington in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts and a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in Jewelry & Metals. His work can be seen in such publications as MJSA Journal, 500 Metal Vessels, 500 Necklaces, 1000 Rings and Metalsmith Magazine. He was selected for a solo exhibition at the Metals Museum in 2014 and for inclusion in the 2016 Biennial at the Bellevue Arts Museum. He has received several awards including an Artist Trust Fellowship, Artist Trust GAP Grant and an Individual Project Grant from 4Culture. Most recently, he received a Saul Bell Design Award for his jewelry in both 2019 and 2020. Recurring themes in his work include time, space and mythology, in the form of wearable and interactive sculptural objects.

Harry & Nicole Hansen

Forged of a partnership between two artists who have metal smithing in their blood, “Sterling and Steel” sculptural housewares are both contemporary and timeless, bringing the beauty and uniqueness of handwork to 21st Century life. There is nothing new in using heat and hammers to transform hard metal into a material soft and pliable as silk, before carefully allowing it to cool and assume its final shape. But in the right hands, the results are stunning, inviting, tangible, lasting.
In an era when most flatware and other goods are produced by machine, objects made with the creativity and skill of human hands are rare, precious. Machine-made objects are mere “things,” too easily disposed of, resources thoughtlessly wasted. Hand-made objects have a connection to the heart. They invite a relationship that, like the metal we forge, grows stronger over a lifetime and beyond.