The recipients of the Center for Craft’s 2025 Craft Archive Fellowship are Teju Adisa-Farrar, Robert Choe-Henderson, Amalia Uribe Guardiola, Crystal Vance Guerra, Trelani Michelle, and Bilphena Decontee Yahwon. For their six projects, they will each receive a $5,000 honorarium to explore and analyze archives of their choosing, engaging in both conventional and innovative approaches to archival research.
Focusing on underrepresented and non-dominant craft histories of the United States, the fellows will publish their scholarship in the fall of 2026 in articles on Hyperallergic. They will also participate in a virtual program with the Center for Craft.
We’re proud to introduce the newest cohort of Craft Archive Fellows and their projects:
Teju Adisa-Farrar (Oakland, CA)
Histories of Natural Dyeing and Botanical Pigment Making from a Black American
In tracing botanical pigment traditions from Africa to contemporary reclamation, this project documents natural dyeing practices by Black people in the United States. Teju Adisa-Farrar will highlight how Black artists and crafters preserved and adapted ancestral methods from the 18th to the 20th centuries as part of their cultural heritage.
Robert Choe-Henderson (Warne, NC)
Decolonizing the Tongue: Hanji in Kozo Patches
By centering on hanji and challenging Japanese-dominated narratives around papermaking, this research examines the decolonization of Korean papermaking. Robert Choe-Henderson, recipient of the Sara Clugage Award for the Craft Archive Fellowship, will advocate for linguistic and botanical precision to recover underrepresented craft histories and confront colonial legacies in the discourse of American papermaking.
Amalia Uribe Guardiola (New York, NY)
Costureros as Living Archives: Craft and Care in Latina Immigrant Communities
Amalia Uribe Guardiola, recipient of the Ayumi Horie Award for the Craft Archive Fellowship, will explore New York City costureros — textile circles led by immigrant Latina women — as archives where oral and material traditions converge. The project traces how textile knowledge moves through the Americas as expressions of home, care, and protest emerge and transform through migration.
Crystal Vance Guerra (Chicago, IL)
Altar Making: A Critical Craft in Migrant Communities
Crystal Vance Guerra will investigate Mexican altar making as a diasporic craft tradition and living archive, documenting how migrants utilize this sacred practice to assert their presence, preserve memory, and resist erasure through oral histories, community archives, and visual storytelling.
Trelani Michelle (Savannah, GA)
Forged in Memory: Tracing Black Ironwork Lineage
This research traces West African symbols, particularly sankofa, in historic Black ironwork throughout the Southern United States. Through oral histories, archival research, and field visits, Trelani Michelle will uncover how Black artisans encoded cultural memory into metal, preserving ancestral knowledge through craft.
Bilphena Decontee Yahwon (Baltimore, MD)
Fanning Rice: Tracing Windward Coast Basketry in the Lowcountry
Diving into the shared origins of Liberian basket weaving and Gullah sweetgrass basketry through the Windward Coast slave trade, Bilphena Decontee Yahwon, recipient of the Gallaher Family Award for the Craft Archive Fellowship, will explore how fannuh baskets — used for rice winnowing in South Carolina’s Lowcountry — served as both agricultural tools and vessels of cultural memory.
The Center for Craft in Asheville, North Carolina, is a national nonprofit dedicated to advancing the field of craft by fostering new ideas, funding craft scholarships, and backing the next generation of makers, curators, and critics.
The Craft Archive Fellowship is supported, in part, by Ayumi Horie, Sara Clugage, and the Gallaher Family in partnership with Hyperallergic.
