Today, the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation celebrates the 2025 recipients of the Maxwell/Hanrahan Awards in Craft honoring artisans, craftspeople, toolmakers, tradespeople and artists who bring unique problem-solving perspectives to the expansive field of craft. The five awardees will each receive $100,000 in unrestricted funding.

Launched in 2022 and administered by United States Artists (USA), the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation established the Awards in Craft to celebrate artists and craftspeople for their unique and visionary approach to material-based practice, stewardship of cultural traditions, and craft's potential to connect people, places and ideas. This unrestricted award seeks to recognize the complex, present, and ever-expanding role of artists and craftspeople by providing resources for them to continue their practice and advance their impact within our cultural fabric.

Through a range of innovative approaches, this year’s awardees reveal the expansive potential of craft to shape how we see and engage with the world. Grounded in the cultural and historical significance of their materials, their collective practices honor the lineages of their disciplines while creating new paths for future generations. Working across mixed media including clay, glass, stone and wood, their work is rooted in diverse artistic traditions and informed by ecological, personal and social narratives—together reflecting the rich, multifaceted realities of contemporary craft.

The Maxwell/Hanrahan Awards in Craft 2025 Recipients are:

• Jolie Ngo is a ceramicist exploring the intersection of craft and technology. Working from her studio in Santa Barbara, Calif., Ngo expands the boundaries of ceramic art through a multifaceted and playfully subversive approach, stripping away the seriousness often associated with clay traditions and forging a new conceptual and experimental path.

• Kevin Aspaas is a Navajo textile and fiber artist. Known for his work with the Navajo wedge weave technique, Aspaas practices a process he calls sheep to loom, which entails gathering and spinning wool from the small flock of Navajo-Churro sheep he raises in Shiprock, NM.

• Neal Thomas is a basket maker whose practice began while working in the timber industry in the late 1950s, when he met an elder woodworker who shared with him the art and skill of making split white-oak baskets. At the age of 85, Thomas is well-known across North Carolina for his dexterity and talent in fashioning baskets.

• Robert K. Mills is a Tlingit artist of the Tsaagweidi clan from Kake, Alaska. Working in metal, paint and wood, Mills' art is deeply rooted in the traditions of his ancestors while pioneering new expressions for future generations. Shaped by the land and waters of Lingit Aani, his work speaks to the complexities of colliding worldviews, exploring the resilience and depth of Tlingit life.

• Teri Greeves, of the Kiowa Tribe, is a Santa Fe, NM beadworker whose practice started when she was around eight years old. For Greeves, every stitch taken is an act of resistance and a prayer for ancestors and future generations. Through her beaded depictions, Greeves portrays Kiowa realities, oral histories and her own life experience.

The Maxwell/Hanrahan Awards in Craft are significant honors providing unrestricted support for craft practitioners to expand their creative visions, pursue new directions of experimentation and deepen their contributions to the discipline.

A rotating panel of craft practitioners, curators, educators and others guiding the field identify nominees each year for the Maxwell/Hanrahan Awards in Craft. Panelists for the 2025 cohort were curator and writer Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy; sculptor Raul De Lara; Threewalls Interim Artistic Director Sharbreon S. Plummer, Ph.D. and Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Curator of Native American Art Tahnee Ahtone.

Previous recipients of the Maxwell/Hanrahan Awards in Craft include multimedia artist Adebunmi Gbadebo (2023); poly-disciplinary artist Antonius-Tín Bui (2022); furniture maker, artist and educatorAspen Golann (2023); ceramic sculptor Cristina Córdova (2024); beadwork and fashion artist Jamie Okuma (2022); stone mason artist and community activist Terrol Dew Johnson (2022); and sculptor Thea Alvin (2024).