8/17/26 ACGA Board Meeting

• Present: Cheryl Costantini, Sean Alcala, Emil Yanos, Barbara Prodaniuk, Iver Hennig, Vicki Gunter, Britt Jensen, Pierre Bounaud, Tamara Danoyan, Julie Taber, Piper Christine, Ren Lee, Lee Middleman, Mari Emori, Jan Schachter
• Absent: April Zilber, Chris Johnson, Susie Rubenstein

The meeting began at 5:15 PM and ended at 7:10 PM.

Welcome (Mari) 

• Mari welcomed the group and congratulated everyone who participated in the festival 
• Mari reminded everyone that the formal name is “ACGA Clay and Glass Festival,” not “Palo Alto Clay and Glass Festival” – this is important because there’s one with a similar name 
• Our guest Dan Osorio introduced himself – He’s a ceramic artist who used to live in Santa Cruz and now lives in Palm Springs. His work involves porcelain thrown pieces and underglaze illustration. He’s shown at the festival for two years and is interested in getting more involved with the board, potentially with a focus on social media! 

Board Leadership and Succession Planning (Mari)

• Mari reminded everyone to reach out to anyone who might be a good fit for the ACGA board. She noted the best way to learn about how the organization is run is for interested folks to join a board meeting. 
• Mari reminded everyone that this is her last year serving as president. She thinks it would be good to select someone who has been a board member to step up because they understand how it works. 

Financial Report (Julie)

• Currently have $202,330.51 in assets 
  • Clarification on undeposited funds line item (~$17,510.03): there are checks that were received in July, but not deposited until August 
• Julie is moving money over from PayPal and into the bank
• Currently have $39,554.90 in income so far this year (mostly from the Festival)
  • A big chunk of income will also come in December from memberships 
• Julie projects that our income will exceed our expenses this year
  • We’re about half way through what we budgeted on our expenses ($140k for whole year and we’re almost to $80k) – Note: we still have a few expenses that need to come through for the festival 
• Note: Piper has written a $32k check to Messenger Events since July books closed – this is not currently included in the financials, but we’re still under budget 

Festival Report 

General updates (Piper presented April’s notes)

• Critiques and potential changes for next year
  • Consider doing away with valet parking – it’s been progressively less fruitful 
    • This year we lost $1290 on valet service (similar to last year, but 2x as much as 2024)
      • ACGA pays $3890 
      • Cost to people parking = $13 per person (and expected to leave a tip)
      • 200 people utilized this service
    • Lee asked about cost to break even – we would need to charge about $20 to break even if we paid $3890 and had 200 people utilize it
    • Festival committee will discuss this further
  • On Friday some tables aren’t there by the time people are setting up, would it make sense for check in to start at 9am (So check in windows would be 9-11am, 11am-1pm, 1-3pm)
    • Barbara said she likes early time because it gets so hot, she suggests that people who need tables should sign up for later time slot
  • Jan brought up that check-in tent wasn’t staffed for several hours on Friday – not sure if this is a Messenger Event issue or a festival job issue
    • Piper will bring this up with April and Messenger events
  • We need to remind artists that if there’s an emergency, artists can call 911 themselves rather than go find someone in the art center
  • Thinking of raising food truck fee (it’s currently $500) to $550 
    • They’ve been paying by check and one check got lost and some are late → would be nice to have them pay online and this increase would cover our processing fees
  • Demo artists were running over
  • Throwdown sound system could use improvement 
    • Vicki clarified that the mics that Iver worked hard to get wouldn’t work unfortunately → it would be really great to have a cordless mic set up in the future 
  • Job waiver program 
    • 25 artists paid to get out of doing a job and allowed Messenger events to hire extra staff, especially to help during Sunday evening crazy time 
    • Messenger Events complaint – non-festival participant volunteers were taking hours away from Messenger event staff 
• How it went
  • 10,000 estimated attendees (from Laura giving intuitive sense based on what she’s seen at other festivals)
  • Moving artist party to Historic Courtyard seemed to go well and PAAC is happy to let us use that space again next year
• Throwdown 
  • This year we had 2 volunteers from Cobb Mountain who helped Vicki and Iver and it worked really well
    • No one signed up originally, so Laura asked Cobb Mountain – wasn’t an official job for them 
  • Thanks to Iver for making trophies, we should figure out who will make them next year 
  • Great to expand geographic area – we had more contestants from Santa Cruz Mountains 
  • Jennifer Hennig, a new throwdown coordinator, did a great job
  • Vicki had a fun celebrity moment and was recognized at Clay People a few weeks later as the pottery throwdown MC!!
  • Mari is wondering how we can better promote Clay People as throwdown sponsor – festival committee will discuss this further 
• Piper thinks there were about 60 responses to the festival artist survey so far and someone will share feedback soon 
• Mari asked if it would be possible to get feedback from members who attended the Festival but were not participants
• Ren has an idea to offer local supply stores a table space to promote their business at the festival (maybe a 5×10 booth) – Mari clarified that they were already offered this – we should revisit this, festival committee will look into it

Festival treasurer’s report (Piper)

• Still some expenses coming in – we are over and under in a few places
  • Security was under budget 
  • Office supplies/misc is over budget, but that’s because we stocked up on water bottles, tote bags, and pens (so this is 2-3 years of expenses)
• Clarification on some budget items
  • Festival producer = contract fixed fee to Messenger Events
  • ME staff = people they hire for day-of
  • Maintenance = janitorial services
  • Sanitation = porta potties + renting extra trash cans 
• We are currently slightly under budget, but will likely have a few expenses roll in 
• Reconciliation is about 95% complete.  With current artist sales totals, ACGA’s income from commissions will be $71,961.35.  This is almost $4K more than 2025
• There was approximately $540k in artist sales

Festival Jury (Tamara/Britt)

• August 18 info session
  • We have an online session tomorrow (Aug 18) night to provide more details on how to have a successful jury application 
  • Promoting: 
    • Tamara will post to Google Group
    • Britt will post to social media – will also send link so that we can all promote on our own social media 
• Updating festival jury webpage
  • 3 options for how we talk about jewelry, mosaic, and stained glass artists 
    • Option 1 – require all artists to create their primary clay or glass components
    • Option 2 – require only jewelry artists to create their primary clay or glass components
    • Option 3 – allow commercially manufactured components for all three categories
  • Discussion on whether to include fused glass in this list 
    • Ren suggests reaching out to jewelry artists so they can be part of the discussion 
    • Sean said there was an instance of an artist using decals (which can be considered commercial patterns), he’s not sure about the rules related to clay artists 
    • Ren is wondering why this would be added about fused glass artists, it’s still transformed by heat – Cheryl thinks it’s because it could involve less creativity, but not necessarily 
    • There’s general consensus that fused glass artists are covered under general guidelines 
    • Ren points out it has only been a few years since stained glass artists have been admitted and isn’t sure where the mosaic info on the website came from 
    • Vicki thinks we can leave a lot of this up to the jury’s discretion 
    • Lee is having trouble with option 2 because this has been discussed before – he’s worried about artists leaning more on technology and less on creativity 
      • Mari clarified that we still require an artist process statement which is good to prevent mass manufacturing or heavy technology utilization without creativity
      • Cherly points out that this is a slippery slope that could be extended to buying commercial glazes  – she wants to bring this back to the core about bringing people together who are authentic and passionate about what they’re making 
      • Vicki brings up whether we should say something about no work being accepted that was created using AI
    • Piper likes the line that work with minimal artistic transformation is not eligible
    • Tamara points out that etching on glass can be amazing, but there’s no heat involved
    • Lee proposes we stick with what we have given the proximity to the jury date, we reviewed what we have on the website currently 
    • We voted to take the two paragraphs out of the website titled “note to jewelry and mosaic artists” as well as “note to clay artists” 
      • Vicki proposed the motion this and Cheryl seconded
      • Passed unanimously 

Exhibitions Report

SILICA SiO2: Northern California Ceramics in Santa Cruz (Iver)

• Silica exhibition opening September 4 – the Friday night opening is free
• All pieces delivered to Iver have made it to the museum 
• Every first Friday is free until it closes in January 

FINELY CRAFTED in Sebastopol (Cheryl)

• Applications rolling in 
• Confusion about ACGA contributing money 
  • First we said $300, then we said more, then Sebastopol Center for the Arts said they didn’t want more
  • Where we’ve landed: $500 total ($250 for clay and $250 for glass) – ACGA will be credited, but the awards are being decided by people outside ACGA 
  • Ren moved we approve $500 for this exhibition and Piper seconded
    • Unanimously approved

Fresno Show “Standing on Their Shoulders” (Ren)

• Ren is participating in this October show
• She encourages anyone to apply if they have work that speaks to the contribution of their elders or struggle for equality
• Ren will be reposting about it and encourages everyone to share

Handwork (Barbara) 

• We got some coverage on festival from Handwork – not as much as she had hoped for, but it was well done
• Silica SiO2 show is up on the page, but Finely Crafted show is not yet up
• Handwork exhibit at Fresno Museum of Art is up right now showing from Forest Merrill collection 

Date of next meeting is September 21, 2026

Minutes prepared by Britt Jensen, ACGA Secretary.