Rising stars: 10 makers to watch in 2022
12 January 2022
As we hurtle into the new year with a (hopefully) renewed sense of energy, the Crafts magazine team presents 10 exciting makers to keep on your radar for 2022.
Anthony Amoako Attah's glass sculptures mimic the texture and movement of draped tapestries
Anthony Amoako-Attah
Sunderland-based artist Anthony Amoako-Attah, who was profiled in the latest issue of Crafts, is rapidly making a name for himself with a series of sculptures that dazzle as well as confound. Hung on the wall like tapestries or draped over surfaces, they glisten as glass but have the colours, texture and apparent movement of cloth. His work will be on show at London’s Collect art fair (25-27 February), with Scottish gallery North Lands Creative and US-based Bullseye Projects.
Sand Buchanan creates bespoke furniture and sculptures from his London workshop
Sand Buchanan
Sand Buchanan is a former Crafts Council Hothouse participant who turned his back on the oil and gas industry to take up woodwork. His bespoke furniture and sculptures, which he makes in his London workshop, draw on his childhood in Hong Kong – a time that gave him an appreciation of timber’s age-old beauty and the natural imperfections that exist in traditional Chinese and Japanese furniture.
Signwriter Amy Goodwin in her Falmouth Studio. Portrait by Mark Lord Manchester-based Oliver Cook is inspired by the way natural light interacts with marble
Oliver Cook
While chiselling a solid piece of stone into a vessel or sculpture, Manchester-based maker Oliver Cook strives to unveil its intricate veins and translucency, inspired by natural light and how it interacts with the material. ‘When creating a piece I’ll frequently have a specific time of day in mind,’ he says. ‘Often an object is placed so that it catches and gently diffuses light through the stone.’
Amy Goodwin
Amy Goodwin grew up immersed in the sights and sounds of steam fairs. That experience, coupled with her love of heritage and craft, drew her to a career in signwriting. Alongside creating one-off artworks in her Falmouth studio, she juggles a busy schedule of on-site commissions while also lecturing about typography and narrative illustration on several BA courses.
Goldsmiths alumna Camilla Hanney bases her work around the female body Scottish maker Iseabal Hendry transforms offcuts into leather bags, as part of her mission to create a zero-waste business
Camilla Hanney
After moving to London in 2017 to study fine art at Goldsmiths, Camilla Hanney found her way to clay. Her central interest now is in the female body – the meanings attributed to it and the constraints that bind it. The sculptures she creates are an effort to shatter these associations, by symbolically subverting the feminine, dainty, fragile qualities of porcelain.
Iseabal Hendry
Owing to her father’s career in the leather industry, Iseabal Hendry grew up with an appreciation for the material, but it wasn’t until her second year at Glasgow School of Art that she considered working with it. Now, as a fully-fledged leatherworker, she transforms offcuts as part of her mission to create a zero-waste business.
With his brand, Joao Maraschin aims to invert fashion’s fixation on youth Mairi Millar makes amulet-inspired jewellery pieces, in her residency at London’s Sarabande Foundation
Joao Maraschin
Brazilian-born, London-based Joao Maraschin is on a mission to change the faces of fashion. His brand aims to work with under-served group demographics while also inverting fashion’s fixation on youth, creating collections handmade by older women, designed to be worn by all.
Mairi Millar
Royal College of Art graduate Mairi Millar was drawn to jewellery after encountering the work of artists Jasmine Thomas-Girvan and Barbara Jardine, both of whom work with jewellery art and sculpture. More than simply jewellery, she sees her pieces as amulets, connecting people to the past. She is now taking her work further, in a residency at London’s Sarabande Foundation.
Frances Pinnock creates vessels using techniques and skills gained from her training in traditional shoemaking Sne Tak's Soft Vessels see woven textiles used to create structured vases
Frances Pinnock
Working only with undervalued sections of sustainably tanned hides, Frances Pinnock cuts and stitches the leather to create sculptural pieces, using skills gained from her training in traditional shoemaking. She uses leather from Britain’s only remaining oak bark tannery, J & FJ Baker in Devon, which has a venerable history: tanneries have been on the site since Roman times.
Sne Tak
The work of London-based multidisciplinary designer Sne Tak is inherently experimental. Her recent projects range from a colourful series of knitted modular pieces, Soft Vessels, to a collaborative trainer project with startup Future of Walking, which saw her design the shoe’s knitted upper. We’ll be keeping an eye on what path she treads next.
