handcrafted philosophy

i'm inspired to create the work for making august as a way of implementing the principles that matter to me. some of these are:

  • tending to my body and mind by seeing the craft process all the way through, from idea to finished artifact.

  • connecting to the natural world by dedicating myself to studying its forms and materials.

  • providing the world with beautiful objects that don't conform to industrialized modes of production or the expectations of efficiency and uniformity that come with.

  • using the profits generated from this labor of love to care for my community.

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who i am

taylor renée whigham (a.k.a. august.), is a Black American artist and craftsperson hailing from West Palm Beach, Florida. They began their studies at Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY) with an influential three years of studying first architecture, then industrial design. During these studies, they received a year-long scholarship from UrbanGlass (Brooklyn, NY) that provided vocational training and introduced them to glassblowing as a career. After a semester on exchange, they decided to transfer schools and complete their studies in the Large Glass Department of Gerrit Rietveld Academie (Amsterdam, NL). They are now based primarily in Amsterdam, NL, where they nurture their material and conceptual research from a private studio. Learn more on their website.

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what i do

i've spent countless hours honing my design thinking and handiwork across craft disciplines, and now i get to enjoy exploring how materials play together. my work primarily features ceramic, glass, textile, and print elements. i spend my time in any number of ways: throwing on the potters wheel, blowing glass in the hotshop, flameworking glass at the torch, soldering stained glass, sewing quilts, knitting tapestries, documenting the world with my camera, cyanotyping, and doing whatever tinkering is needed to bring all of those disparate elements together.

i also spend time developing my conceptual artistic practice. i definitely use my craft skills there, but in addition to a much broader range of artistic research methods. my practice centers around decolonization and its place in theory and the material world. my research into this topic looks many ways. some are what you might expect, like reading books and writing essays, but it also takes the form of things like gardening, spiritual practice, walks, cooking, and conflict resolution.