[Courtesy of Armory Center for the Arts]
The exhibition, Material Prophecies: Craft as Divination, treats making as a way of knowing. Admission is free, and the show runs through Saturday, August 1. It was curated by Taylor Bythewood-Porter, who became the Armory’s director of exhibitions in August 2025, with exhibition management by Danielle A. Hill.
The Armory sits at 145 North Raymond Avenue in Old Pasadena, but the show reaches beyond the gallery. In June, the museum partnered with the Altadena Library on a free teen workshop drawing on the exhibition’s themes of wildfire and renewal. Working with earth, fiber, metal, cyanotype, terracotta, and film, the eight artists give form to what is felt, inherited, and unseen. According to the Armory’s curatorial statement, those materials become “both medium and oracle, connecting with Spirit, place, and ancestral knowledge.”
The exhibition is explicitly rooted in the San Gabriel Valley. The Armory’s statement frames the landscape’s cycles of wildfire, floods, winds, and regrowth as central to its understanding of time as “nonlinear and ever returning.”
The eight artists are Jackie Amézquita, April Bey, Calethia DeConto, Emmanuel Louisnord Desir, Joel Gaitan, vanessa german, Sky Hopinka, and Lani Trock. At the gallery entrance hangs Bey’s I Know All About What You Want to Know All About (2024), a four-panel work of jacquard, sherpa, crushed velour, metallic thread, beads, and adorned clothespins that stretches 20 feet wide.
Bythewood-Porter, who previously served as an assistant curator at the California African American Museum, has described her approach in her own words. “I think of artists as translators, channeling something intangible into form,” she told the American Craft Council, which featured the show in May. Of her broader practice, she has written: “My curatorial lens traces ritual, memory, and the intimacy of everyday life.”
The exhibition has drawn attention beyond the region. Hyperallergic included it among its “15 Art Shows to See in Los Angeles This Spring,” and the American Craft Council published a feature examining whether craft can serve as a tool for imagining possible futures.
According to the Armory, lead support for its programs comes from the Perenchio Foundation, with the exhibition’s public programs supported in part by the California Community Foundation.
The show is on view through Saturday, August 1, at the Caldwell Gallery, 145 North Raymond Avenue, Pasadena. The galleries are open Thursdays through Saturdays, 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. Admission is free. A free First Saturdays exhibition tour is scheduled for July 11, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m.; RSVPs are required. Information: (626) 792-5101 or armoryarts.org.
The materials, the artists suggest, remember across distance and lineage.
Material Prophecies: Craft as Divination — Armory Center for the Arts, Caldwell Gallery, 145 N. Raymond Ave. Group exhibition of eight artists (including April Bey and Sky Hopinka) exploring craft, memory, and ritual tied to the San Gabriel Valley landscape. On view through Aug 1, 2026 (Thurs–Sat, 1–5pm). Free. https://www.armoryarts.org/exhibitions/2026/material-prophecies
