Dee Clements

PINCH ME! In lieu of my upcoming solo show @ninajohnsongallery , this thoughtful spotlight in @archdigest written by the lovely @_h_mart_ . And one page over from one of my weaving hero @dorothyliebesstudio . Hits newsstands May 30. Thanks so much Hannah!💘 Photo by Kevin Miyazaki, and thanks @cosullivanbeauty for the hair and makeup.

Wow!🤯 thank you @glenn_adamson and @normanteaguedesignstudios . Repost from @glenn_adamson • Nothing more exciting than seeing a craft practice radically extended, and this is what Dee Clements (@studio_herron ) has done with basketry. A graduate of the Cranbrook 3D design program, she’s making fantastically expressive, painterly vessels alongside other forms, which commune aesthetically with contemporary abstraction in other mediums. Clements will have a show in June at @ninajohnsongallery in Miami, one to watch out for, and has also shown with thefutureperfect. Thanks to her fellow Chicago genius @normanteaguedesignstudios for switching me on to this brilliant maker. @cranbrook3d #deeclements

Thank you so much @_sightunseen_ @jillsinger @monicanina 💘 I’m honored to on the new #Americandesignhotlist ! . Repost from @_sightunseen_ • We’ve been following Dee Clements of @studio_herron ’s career for a long time — from her gorgeous woven textiles to the rug she designed for Land of Nod (RIP) to her baby steps into basketry. But her work truly blossomed when she began working with @thefutureperfect during the pandemic. Her baskets grew in size and scope, mirroring both her personal and professional growth, and they began incorporating not only hand-dyed reeds but also painterly brushstrokes that hearken back to how Clements began her career: as a painter. When we were discussing Clements’s inclusion in this list, we said, “Bet she’s working on lighting next” — turns out we were right, and we can’t wait to see the results. ⁠ ⁠ "I’m seeing in American design right now a sweet spot between art, craft, and design that elevates the quotidian into something dramatic, or magical, or exuberant. Namely, furniture and objects that mix typologies and/or materials to bring out fresh perspectives on the designed and built world. I am also seeing work by more women and people of color and that truly excites me! I want marginalized voices to have a seat at the table and a place in the spotlight." #americandesignhotlist

REMINDER: Dee Clements Online Artist Talk will be on May 20th at 5:30pm Learn more about @studio_herron incredible woven works in this upcoming talk✨🧵 Dee Clements is an artist, educator, and founder of The Weaving Workshop with interests in materials, craft, and ethnography. She holds an MFA in 3D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in Fiber and Materials Studies and Sculpture from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and the Centerfor Craft Teaching Artist Grant.  Her work is in the permanent collections of Cranbrook Art Museum, The Anderson Collection at Stanford University, and Yale University Art Gallery. Her work is represented by Mindy Solomon Gallery, Library Street Collective, and Onna House. She grew up in the Mohawk Valley area of New York State, and has lived and worked in Chicago since 1998. Online Artist Talk with Dee Clements🧺🌿🔮 Wednesday, May 20th 5:30pm-6:30pm RSVP with the in link in our bio🌀 #latactilelab #losangeles #workshops #artisttalk #artistlectureseries

I mean, shout out to all the nurses, doctors, surgeons, scientists and people that can cure and cut out the things that grow in our bodies that make us not alright. Wow! They are truly amazing to me. What a beautiful privilege to have a body—a home for our souls. Mended, 2025/26, woven reed, dye, gouache, ceramic, bronze glaze, 25.5x23x18 inches The ceramic vessel is adorned with botanicals. I made it while teaching ceramics @oxbowschoolofart last summer. Of course it’s a symbol and a metaphor. The top woven half was built much later in 2026 with intentional holes and mends. It took me a while to figure this piece out—it directed the scope of the show it was part of, Second Spring, with @mindysolomongallery .

I’m teaching a two week class @oxbowschoolofart in July called Sculptural Basketry: Exploring Form, color, tactility. Registration is open now! I’m going to be teaching my methods of armature/mold building that I developed in grad school to weave 3D forms as well as how to use dyed materials to create patterns that emphasize or exaggerate. We’ll look at both historical and contemporary basketry work from objects of utility to sculpture and investigate how weaving 3-dimensionally can be experimental. We’ll get into other surfaces treatments too such as the layering potential of paper, paint, and beyond! I will teach you the craft rules of basket weaving in hopes that you’ll break them to arrive at something new and unexpected while shaping your own point of view and creative expression. This is an art class that uses craft to get weird. I can’t wait to be back at beautiful Oxbow and hope you’ll join me there in July. Visit @oxbowschoolofart website for details.

R-E-A-D-Y-!!! We soft open this Saturday with the very first Sculptural Basket Weaving class starting at 10a! Are there still things left to do, yes! (Asign on the building, more lights to install, a few more shelves to build, some special things I want to make for the bathroom) Am I opening anyway? YES! The major stuff is done! Tables -n- chairs ✅ finished bathroom✅, utility sink✅ materials✅ lights and electricity and a/c✅ Planning an open house party for May to celebrate our grand opening! It’s been wonderful meeting all our new neighbors and being so warmly welcomed to Pilsen.

She’s GLOWING from within! @the_weaving_workshop re-opens THIS SATURDAY April 25 in the brand new space in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. I can’t believe this is real! I founded the school in late 2024 and for a year and a half, nearly every weekend I taught every single class out of my personal studio/home. I am so excited to move my personal belongings back into my bathroom and to not have to keep my studio clean. But more importantly, I’m excited the school finally has its own space where more classes taught by other artists can take place, and participants can use the new space as their own. The life and soul of The Weaving Workshop are the people who come together to make things here. The expertise of Sandy Gerding, @mojobunda has been profoundly life changing for me and the school this past year and a half. This year in 2026, Sandy and I created The Slath Founders Circle, with fiscal sponsorship by Fractured Atlas. The word Slath is a basket weaving term, meaning the central foundation or base of a basket. Nothing can grow without a solid foundation. As I begin the process toward the school becoming a 501(c)3 non-profit, The Slath Founders Circle is an invitation I’ve been extending to folks with an intention to build a visionary advisory circle and early support. I am truly excited to see the school grow beyond myself into a place where artistic endeavors linked to historical + traditional art forms can tap the zeitgeist and create something new and needed, while also encouraging the value and belief that art making fosters mutual understanding, personal development, social cohesion, societal health, community building, human connection, neighborly bonds and builds a sense of shared identity. At first I just wanted to teach and no one would hire me. I didn’t know how deeply I cared about this until I started it. And now here we are: No turning back now! 🚀🌙

Coming up in May🌱✨ Virtual artist talk with Chicago based artist and the founder of The Weaving Workshop Dee Clements. Don’t miss this incredible conversation🌾 Dee Clements is an artist, educator, and founder of The Weaving Workshop with interests in materials, craft, and ethnography. She holds an MFA in 3D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in Fiber and Materials Studies and Sculpture from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and the Centerfor Craft Teaching Artist Grant.  Her work is in the permanent collections of Cranbrook Art Museum, The Anderson Collection at Stanford University, and Yale University Art Gallery. Her work is represented by Mindy Solomon Gallery, Library Street Collective, and Onna House. She grew up in the Mohawk Valley area of New York State, and has lived and worked in Chicago since 1998. Online Artist Talk with Dee Clements🧺🌿🔮 @studio_herron @the_weaving_workshop Wednesday, May 20th 5:30pm-6:30pm RSVP with the in link in our bio🌀 #latactilelab #losangeles #workshops #artisttalk #artistlectureseries

Celeste Dupuy-Spencer lived nextdoor to me in 1998 in the dorms at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. We lived on the 9th floor—the smoking floor—and we shared a wall. I was 18, she was 19. I haven’t thought about her in 25 years and yet I’m destroyed to hear of her passing. So many people left school after the first year, including myself. (Though I came back a year later). I remember Celeste as very smart and gentle and cool a👏f! She became a prolific painter and much celebrated in recent years—which I didn’t even know until her death announcement. She died recently at the age of 47, one year older than me, and just shy of her solo opening at Jeffrey Deitch. This news comes just a few months after Jasmine Little’s death, a newish ceramicist friend of mine a few years younger than me… …And I feel so angry and sad. Both of these incredibly talented, passionate and prolific artists passed through my life briefly, like a flash really, and yet I’m here and they are not. Their work and lives—both so special and important—it just doesn’t seem real. This world is truly unfair. When good gets taken away, and evil tech giants depleting our beautiful planet, endless genocidal wars, and rulers who spew and practice hatred, fraud, greed and pure evil prevail. Class disparities, hate over things as natural, pure and personal as identity and choice win and a beautiful human life/lives falls through to the next realm beyond, if there is one. Again I am reminded that LOVE and care and kindness is all that matters. That lives are precious, bodies and hearts and minds are precious, our beautiful planet is so very precious and yet we all seem to get sucked into the vortex of our own lives and dramas and poof: forget. Myself included. I don’t know what else to say except that I am angry and shocked and sad. So I’m up when I should be sleeping, lighting a candle for Celeste, and for Jasmine and for those who need collective love coming their way.🕯️ Damn.💔

The dream is almost real!!! 🌱 @the_weaving_workshop ‘s NEW space will open next 🌟Saturday April 25 🌟 welcoming the first class; beginning Sculptural Basketry. 💐 Somehow, I’ve managed to get this space ready in the span of 3 weeks, while putting on a big solo art fair show, travelling to teach, and surviving an upper respiratory infection. 💪 🌸 I truly cannot wait to move things in next week, open the doors and start welcoming people and the soul into this little school. 🌷 This little dream of creating a school for hands-on learning, community and creativity centered around basketry, fiber craft and material studies is ALIVE. ☘️

Hi! @the_weaving_workshop ‘s NEW space is opening next week. I’m in here building furniture and getting things ready to welcome the first Sculptural Basketry Class. In the meantime, classes are open for registration and I cannot wait to welcome folks to this sunny spot in Pilsen.