Madison, WI STATEMENTI am an artist first, and craft-informed. My work calls attention to the intersection of objects of labor with objects of spirituality. It is no surprise that it was tools of the home, the earth, that became associated with witchery and rebellion. They were weapons of the unheard, those systematically denied autonomy and wealth by a ruling patriarchal class. Today, these handmade tools are fetish objects animated by romantic notions and false memories of history. They assume new forms as bourgeois decorative elements, emblems of a perceived authenticity. After all, if you put the word craft before/after a word it somehow becomes magical. I question held binaries of many kinds - including art/craft, the precious/quotidian, and pomp/shame. I am interested in learning traditional craft techniques and origins so that I may aid in their preservation and teach honest histories - I enjoy finding ways to subvert tradition to comment on the history of craft in this country BIOGRAPHYCate O’Connell-Richards (they) is an artist and educator, broomsquire and jeweler, currently living in Madison, Wisconsin. O’Connell-Richards has exhibited internationally and shown work at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (North Adams, MA), The Museum of Glass (Tacoma, WA), The Trout Museum of Art (Appleton, WI), Abel Contemporary (Stoughton, WI), Hesse Flatow (New York), Lillstreet Arts Center (Chicago), and the Gallery im Körnerpark (Berlin, DE). Their last solo exhibition “SWEPT” was held at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, MA in 2022. They have been awarded several travel grants for craft research, including funding for fieldwork in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and at the Foxfire Museum and Appalachian Heritage Center in Georgia. In 2024, they received a Craft Research Fund Project Grant from the Center for Craft to study the history of American broom making. Their writing has been published by Surface Design Journal (2024), and Mergoat Magazine (2023). They have been invited to teach workshops at the Kansas City Textile Arts Center, Ox-Bow School of Art, Lawrence Arts Center, and Appalachian Center for Craft. Currently, they are a Lecturer for the UW-Madison Art Department.