9/21/26 ACGA Board Meeting

  • Present: Cheryl Costantini, Sean Alcala, Barbara Prodaniuk, Iver Hennig, Vicki Gunter, Britt Jensen, Pierre Bounaud, Tamara Danoyan, Julie Taber, Piper Christine, Mari Emori, Jan Schachter, April Zilber, Chris Johnson, Susie Rubenstein, Ren Lee, Emil Yanos
  • Absent: Lee Middleman
  • The meeting began at 5:15 PM and ended at 7 PM.

Welcome (Mari) 

  • Mari welcomed everyone
  • Congratulated Britt on her wedding
  • April spoke about her father’s passing and thanked the Board for the flowers and cards.
    • He was an avid supporter of ACGA artists’ work and helped answer questions about legal nonprofit matters 
  • Katie Morris joined as a guest thanks to Barbara’s invite. She gave a short intro 
    • She has done the ACGA Festival for 4 years and she loves it
    • She thinks it’s a great festival with many serious buyers in attendance
    • She’s interested in the board, but not sure given other responsibilities

Festival Eligibility Jury (Tamara)

  • Tamara and Britt are meeting with the jury tomorrow to do an introduction to the jury process 
  • As soon as the application process closes, we’ll have the jury start filling out individual score sheets and then meet October 15 to review and make decisions
  • Tamara plans to send out acceptance and rejection letters the week right after the meeting
  • Right now we have 10 submissions, all clay, no glass unfortunately 
  • Ren will post (and boost post) on Instagram to get more applicants in this final week
  • April suggests doing another Google Group announcement – especially encouraging people to tell their friends who they think might be ready to apply 

Exhibitions

Santa Cruz (Iver)

  • The show is officially open until January 3 and the opening had a great turnout
  • Iver says the team at the museum has been great to work with
  • Thanks to all the ACGA members who came for the opening 
  • There will be an open mic with some of the artists and people who have been part of ceramics in the area in November
  • Mari thanked Iver for all his hard work
  • Every 1st Friday is free admission to the museum
  • Susie brought up that there’s a binder with all the artists talking about where they got started – nice to have personal history
  • Iver has done some interviews with artists in the show and will post on YouTube shorts 

Sebastopol (Cheryl)

  • Application window is closed (over 200 submissions) and notifications have been sent out
  • Sebastopol Center for the Arts has been in touch with Ren about marketing the show
  • Based on her experience and Iver’s experience, Cheryl thinks there’s a lesson learned to try to find exhibition partners who are organized and have mutual interest – she feels their experiences with these two exhibitions have been a lot easier than some others in the past where partners were less bought-in

NuMu (Vicki)

  • The museum is still mulling on this, so we don’t know anything yet, but Vicki is still in touch 

Festival Report 

General updates (April)

  • April acknowledged the suggestion to do away with valet parking – she brought up that this is supportive for older/more mobility impaired visitors 
    • They discussed this at the last Festival committee meeting and Sean had a suggestion to staff the parking lot ourselves – we wouldn’t valet, but we would monitor the lot so folks who need the proximity can use it – to be discussed further 
  • Annie suggested changing artist check-in/load in time to officially start at 9AM Friday to allow opportunity for rental tables to arrive in time – people would be able to start before, but no tables before 9AM
  • 4 individuals were interested in talking at length about the festival and April will be doing phone “interviews” with them – she’ll bring feedback to the committee
  • The festival committee will not meet this month since there’s no pressing agenda and need for some time to do individual work

Festival treasurer’s report (Piper)

  • Festival finance from this year is almost done: 
    • 1 person needs to provide receipts for reimbursement 
    • 1 artist needs to confirm their sales amount
    • 1 artist needs to pay festival commission
      • Piper will remind them about eligibility in future – April confirmed the contract says they would forfeit participating for 1 year
      • April will also get involved in communications with this person
  • Piper suggests we maybe add late fees for next year
  • Piper will use the ACGA logo in future festival-related communications with participants so that the emails do not come across as scam emails

Financial Report (Julie)

  • Assets: $183K (including what’s in PayPal) 
    • $43k in Fidelity
    • $5k in PayPal
    • Rest is in bank accounts
  • We lost money in August, but that’s because we had a lot of festival expenses coming through and all the income from the festival was in previous month
  • Net revenue for 2026 = $20k 
  • We are under budget on membership by $12k – that’s because a lot comes in in December 
  • We made $5k more in revenue than we budgeted on the festival 
  • We were $2.5k under budget on expenses for the festival 

Report on Madhvi Subrahmanian’s Artist Talk and the Global Ceramic Heritage Stamps Exhibition (Mari)

  • Madhvi Subrahmanian’s artist talk took place at Atherton Library on September 15, in collaboration with Atherton Library, Atherton Arts Foundation, and ACGA 
    • Madhvi is a member of the Geneva-based International Academy of Ceramics (IAC), a large international ceramics organization
    • Originally ACGA was asked to help with live streaming, but after reviewing the statistics from last year’s artist talk and considering the lecture’s length, we thought this maybe wasn’t the best way to promote the event – in the end we helped them promote through the ACGA newsletter and Google Group
    • Atherton Library is a great venue for small educational events
    • Mari pointed out that hosting artist talks is a great way to introduce visiting international artists and their work to our community while they’re in the Bay Area 
  • The Global Ceramic Heritage Stamps Exhibition was a traveling exhibition of the IAC and was held at the Santa Clara Asian Art Center from September 12 to 20. It was curated by ACGA members Guangzhen “Po” Zhou and Yilin “Rebecca” Sun. 
    • We’ve previously featured Po’s article about his journey around the world collecting stamps in our newsletters, and we helped promote Po’s exhibition this time

Define ACGA’s Role in Events and Set Logo Use Guidelines (Mari)

  • Mari put together guidelines for when/how to use the ACGA logo
  • We will discuss the guidelines at next month’s meeting since not everyone has had a chance to review them

2027 Leadership: Presidential Succession Without a VP and New Board Member Recruitment (Mari)

  • Jan explained that the vice president typically steps up to become president, though this year presents challenges since there is no current vice president and several board members are planning to step down.
  • Mari encouraged someone on the board to step up to the president role and that we should definitely have a VP so future succession is more clear
  • Barbara is going to step down from the board/festival committee this year, but has already invited a number of members to attend board meetings and see if they’re interested in joining the board (Katie Morris who was in attendance was one of these people) 
  • Vicki is wondering if it’s a good idea to invite someone who has never been on a board, there was discussion that this is okay as long as they’re committed and here for the right reasons
  • Katie Morris mentioned James Aarons as a potential board member – Cheryl spoke up and said she has asked him in the past and will try to reach out to him again 
  • Ren mentioned that several people said they were interested during the festival and Britt recorded their names so we can follow up
  • Mari suggested we post in the newsletter/Google Group. After some discussion it was decided that the Google Group was most appropriate 
  • Emil asked about whether board members needed to be members of ACGA – Julie clarified that it is a requirement, but anyone interested in the board could easily become a member, they don’t need to be an artist
  • Chris is wondering if we can find people who are experienced professionals who have been on boards and grown nonprofit orgs 
  • How we speak about the board
    • Ren brought up that it’s important that we specify this is a position focused on service, not prestige 
    • Julie brought up that this is “working” board
    • Cheryl brought up that this is NOT a “fundraising” board
  • Britt will draft a letter that we can send to the Google Group 

Other Topic – Glass Artist Interviews for Newsletter (Ren)

  • Our newsletter has interviewed every single glass artist who responded to our request for an interview, and we’re now struggling to balance our newsletter with glass coverage
  • Chris offered to follow up with some people and can also make a visit to BAGI 

Date of next meeting is October 19, 2026

Minutes prepared by Britt Jensen, ACGA Secretary.