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

The meeting began at 5:15 PM and ended at 6:50 PM.

Welcome (Mari) 

• Mari welcomed everyone
• Show announcements: 
  • Jan and Lee both have Open Studios May 2 – 3
  • Barbara has a solo show at the Pence March 13 – April 26
  • Many ACGA members have pieces at a show in Davis April 3 – 27 : “Menagerie” at The Artery

Financial Report (Julie)

• $170k in the bank, but a lot of this will be used for Festival 
• $42k in fidelity investments
• -$8k income in March because most money came in during Festival registration (December- February)
• Total operating revenue for this year $33k and we budgeted $8k – likely due to the fact that Festival income came in earlier this year
• Julie finished tax returns 
  • Any board member who received a 1099 should be listed in the tax return 
• Julie looked into moving money over to a CapitalOne investment account, but decided it was not worth it – they have a 3 month promotional rate (3.8%) and then it goes way down (~2%)
• Julie thinks maybe we should do a CD ladder to give us a little extra income and we can do this at Bank of America so it doesn’t require the hassle of moving banks
  • We would qualify for the nonprofit account, but it’s really not very different from a regular account 

Presentation of RFP for new website (Julie)

• On our current website the membership system and payment systems do not communicate well; Pam has looked into a lot of different options for us with WordPress, but there isn’t really any good option
• Julie has drafted an RFP that we can put out in our newsletter and on our website to have someone design a new website for us with membership and payment systems that are well integrated; she also noted that it would be great to have Festival and jury registration all in one place
  • Mari, Emil, Ren, April, Piper, and James have all reviewed the RFP
• The board voted and unanimously agrees we should redo the website and circulate the RFP 
• Discussion on member profiles: 
  • Julie wonders if we need to have a member profile login or if we can just have something populate with their website, social media, etc. when they first sign up to be a member
  • There was general agreement on this strategy, but April noted it would be important to clarify to members that not ALL contact info would be shown to public 
  • There was also discussion of how helpful it would be to be able to find members based on region 
• Vicki brought up that the Clay Studio in Philadelphia seems to have everything in one place all connected and that it may be worth contacting them to learn how they did that

Google drive update (Britt)

• Britt presented the new structure for the board’s shared Google Workspace, but needs to do some more work to make sure files that get transferred into these folders are “owned” by the board’s workspace for posterity and to free up Google Drive space on everyone’s personal drive. 
• An email will be sent out next week with more details on accessing the drive and instructions on how to move files over

Festival Report 

General updates (April)

• 136 artists in show and 3 on waitlists
• 10-11 community groups 
• Approved MegaJewell’s first press release 
• April received the contract from Palo Alto Art Center and will review shortly 
• Mari clarified that board members are exempt from doing festival jobs
  • April said she emailed Laura about making sure board members are not included on festival jobs list, but has not heard back
  • Anyone who did sign up can cancel using the same link  
• Mari encouraged everyone to be active on the board 
  • Pierre said he would like to organize an exhibition next year in Southern California 
  • Hayley is interested in exhibitions as well 

Festival treasurer’s report (Piper)

• Finances are going well, nothing new to report 
• Cheryl asked if we’re leaving money on the table with the 10×20 booths, but April clarified that there isn’t enough space right now, so we’ll consider offering them later if people drop out 
• Piper said more people registered for premium spaces who didn’t receive them and Piper will refund or offer waitlist for premium space 

Throwdown update (Mari)

• We had 20 people on waitlist from last year
• We have a new throwdown coordinator – Jennifer Henning
• Jennifer sent out an invitation to first 12 people on waitlist from last year and will continue working down the list if some of those people can’t do it
• We already have a great trophy that Iver made last year as backup 
• Clay People is donating all clay for clay-related activities as well as 2nd- and 3rd-place prizes for throwdown  
• Iver brought up that it would be really nice to have a wireless headset so it’s easier for MC to walk around and measure while still announcing – Chris said he has one we can use 

Gift for Forrest Merrill (April)

• Mari proposed we use Ren’s idea from last meeting to thank Forrest Merrill
  • An ACGA clay award at ACGA-hosted exhibitions in his honor of Forrest Merrill 
  • We could also add a glass award in honor of James Meyer who donates $1000 to ACGA ACGA-hosted exhibition 
• Jan asked how we would select a juror for the award – April clarified it would be the same person who chooses 1st, 2nd, and 3rd at each exhibition where the award is given 
• April wants to make sure it’s clear that the award isn’t being given by him, but in honor of him – will need to come up with a good name 
• Potential names
  • ACGA’s Forrest Merrill Award for Clay
  • ACGA’s James Meyer Award for Glass 
  • Note: Ren feels strongly that we not use the apostrophes 
• Alternative ideas: 
  • Cheryl points out that we should check with Forrest about using his name and wonders if a gift certificate to a nice meal would be better 
  • Lee proposes we invite him to the party on Saturday at the festival and someone speaks about his contribution 
  • Mari proposed a gift certificate to purchase work at the festival 
  • Susie proposes planting a tree somewhere in his honor 
• Conclusion: Cheryl will reach out to Mark Goudy who knows Forrest well and will discuss what would be appropriate to honor him

Festival Jury (Tamara/Britt)

• Tamara and Britt have set up monthly meetings to begin planning the jury process for this fall and Scott Jennings will be joining the next meeting so they can pick his brain
• Tamara and Britt met with Randie about doing a Zoom mentoring session before the application is due, but Randie can’t take this on so they will organize a jury mentoring session themselves for sometime in August and may invite others to join and offer their guidance

Exhibitions Report

NuMu in Los Gatos (Vicki)

• No updates, but Emil and Vicki are working on it

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

• 10 more days to apply to the show
• Iver will be helping Stan Welsh with the jury process in May 
• Mari brought up that the description was confusing – accepting up to 3 work samples, but what does that mean
  • Can submit up to 3 pieces and 1-3 images per piece 
• Susie is concerned about the fact that it says only Northern California artists even though we’ve discussed the geographic boundaries and that is not the case. She’s also concerned about shipping situation for those not in the Bay Area
  • Iver is willing to arrange a drop-off at ACGA festival for artists who are not in the Bay Area – he thinks there’s storage in the museum basement 
• Iver reiterated that CaFE has some limitations and Vicki mentioned that EntryThingy has really improved 
• Ren will post about the call for entry this week and next 
  • Jan suggests that Ren add a sentence about work transportation for artists not in the Bay Area (i.e. that they may be able to drop work off at the Festival) 

FINELY CRAFTED in Sebastopol (Cheryl)

• Cheryl had dinner with a number of potters recently and discussed all chipping in to make awards more substantial – $3-5k
  • Note: ACGA doesn’t need to chip in more right now, but Cheryl may come back at some point and ask if we’re willing to contribute more
• The Sebastopol Center for the Arts wants this to be a big deal show
• Cheryl is looking for suggestions on glass jurors – email her if you have ideas
• Show is clay, glass, wood, and metal – they’re choosing the jurors, but are trying to partner with existing orgs like ACGA to each do a specific award 
  • Previously agreed upon ACGA award among $100
• They will showcase 80-90 pieces 
• Timeline/details:
  • Call open June 1 – Sept 1
  • Jury sept 2-8
  • Jury results Sept 11
  • Show opens Oct 16
  • In-person drop off Oct 18-20 (but also fine with work being mailed) 
  • Opening Oct 24
  • Take down Nov 30
  • Entry fees $35, $5 for 2 additional entries
• Ren requests information for May newsletter including explanation of how this is a national show, not just ACGA

Handwork2026 Requests

• If you want Handwork to announce an event on their social media, announcements are due by 15th of month prior to actual event
  • Can submit through portal or through Barbara 
• Handwork would like more videos for their website (1-3 min vertical format mp4 files)

Board of Directors Page (Mari)

• Mari asked James to update Board of Directors page and he suggests highlighting new board members and maybe showing how long board members have served 
• Everyone agrees we should keep it simple with photo and name, but change the way the link works so that it goes directly to personal website, not ACGA profile 
  • Emil points out that the button will have to change so it isn’t an “About Me” button, but name itself is a hyperlink to instagram or website depending on what the artist wants 
• Ren called out this is not a high-traffic page and it’s work to keep it updated, so we should keep it simple 
• Susie thinks we shouldn’t make a big change to this page if we’re going to redesign the website soon 

Mari will be out for her residency during the next two board meetings. Britt and Julie will work together to compile the agenda and Julie will conduct the meetings for May and June. 

Date of next meeting is May 18th, 2026

Minutes prepared by Britt Jensen, ACGA Secretary.

3/16/26 ACGA Board Meeting

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

The meeting began at 5:15 PM and ended at 6:50 PM.

Welcome (Mari) 

• Mari welcomed everyone

Proposal to Host Zoom for New Festival Jury Applicants (April)

• Randie Silverstein was not able to attend, but April explained that Randie is interested in putting together a Zoom session for people interested in applying to the jury to become festival eligible. Randie has served on several juries in the past (including ACGA jury) and felt some people were underprepared and could have used a session to help prepare for the jury process (similar to what we did to prepare people new to the festival last year). 
• Tamara and Britt will reach out to Randie to discuss planning and bring a proposal to the next board meeting 

Exhibitions Report

FIBER & FIRE in Sausalito (Deb)

• Show closed on March 12 and was very smooth with all pieces being picked up by noon the next day
• Broken pieces: ACGA will pay $100 to an artist whose piece was broken during installation, Sausalito Center For The Arts will cover the other broken piece with their insurance, as the incident occurred during the opening reception  
• What didn’t work well: 
  • There were some issues with other events/installations coinciding with drop-off and  installation of the show, despite clear communication of these dates
  • Vicki proposes we put something in contract in future with clear drop off/install time and make it clear that there won’t be other installation/events during that time
  • Mari suggests not providing a “not for sale” option for future gallery shows and noted that one artist changed from “for sale” to “not for sale” after being accepted, something we should try to prevent in the future. She also suggested making sure artists do not raise sale prices after acceptance.
• What did work well: 
  • Jan said central location with foot traffic helped a lot with sales 
  • Mari thinks that adding another medium (Fiber) made it more exciting
  • Vicki noted that it coincided with Valentine’s day which may have made for even higher than usual traffic 
• Jan gave a big thank you to Deb for putting on one of the most stressful, but also successful exhibitions we’ve had
• April asked about when artists will get paid – Deb said it should be in 3 weeks 
• Sales From Fiber & Fire
  • 54 Artists, 63 Artworks (ACGA)
  • Total sales (both ACGA & FiDi): $22,836 / 55 artworks
  • ACGA total sales: $15,128 / 32 artworks
  • ACGA F&F sales: $13,668 / 13 artworks
  • ACGA Corner Shop Sales: $1,460 / 19 artworks
  • Not counted: $760 in Corner Shop sales by an artist who was both an ACGA and FiDi member
• Exhibit Expenses: $1,500
  • *$1000 SCA (Exhibit Fee)
  • $300 American Craft Council (Juror Honorarium)
  • $100 Graphics
  • $100 Compensation for a broken piece
• Exhibit Income: $2,275
  • $2,275 Entry Fees (65 x $35)
• *SCA Exhibit Fee was $5,000. FiDi covered $4,000 / ACGA $1000

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

• Application went live yesterday (March 15) – using CaFE 

• We will run another ad next month in ACGA newsletter 
• Selected pieces are not for sale since it’s a museum show, but there’s potentially an opportunity to sell small pieces in the museum store (Iver is working to get more information on this possibility)
• Ren suggests promoting the open Call for Entry with the application link on social media and posting to the Google Group (with clay only in title) 

FINELY CRAFTED in Sebastopol (Cheryl)

• Finely Crafted is a national exhibition that will take place at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts this fall 
• Dates
  • Application period: June 1 – September 1 
  • Jury dates:  Sept 2-8 
  • Announcement to chosen artists: Sept 11 
  • Show dates: Oct 24 – Nov 29
• $35 entry fee and $5 per additional piece (10% discount for members of either organization)
• Sebastopol Center for the Arts receives 40%, artist receives 60% of sales
• Prizes
  • $300 1st place
  • $200 2nd place
  • $100 3rd place
  • Two $50 coordinator awards – Cheryl will get clarification on what this means 
  • Want ACGA to choose one clay award winner and one glass award winner
    • They’ve asked Cheryl to be the clay juror and we will need to choose a glass juror
    • We agreed these two prizes should be $100 each 
    • Ren suggests not calling it best in show if it’s not going to be a larger prize than 1st place, proposes maybe we can call it “ACGA award” 
• Publicity
  • Ren asks how soon we’ll get publishable info and Cheryl isn’t sure, but can find out 

NuMu in Los Gatos (Vicki)

• Emil is going to be working on proposal for NuMu in Los Gatos based on connection from Janet Wolf

Festival Report

General Festival Update (April)

• Publicity updates: 
  • April had initial meeting with Ruben Ramirez, our media consultant, and received initial publicity timeline
  • Emil is working on new design for festival banner 
  • April will give Emil access to images folder soon and will also share with James Aarons because he wants to refresh top banner on ACGA home page
• Discussion on images being not properly named or poorly photographed: 
  • We encourage everyone to name in specific way, but people often fail to do that which creates a lot of extra work to identify images (Note: unfortunately no way to force naming conventions in JotForm) 
  • Lee suggests we just say we won’t use your images if they’re not properly named, but Ren is concerned we don’t have enough photos already 
    • Ren notes that we have a number of photos that people have submitted in previous years (and have already been used in publicity) or photos that are not well photographed 
  • Ren will consider writing something for the newsletter about good images and April will try to improve next year’s registration with more clear photo instructions 
• Registration
  • We have 138 artists signed up (including Cobb Mountain Booth)
  • We haven’t gotten any new applicants since February 23 and are close to full, but want to make sure we have enough since a few people always drop out
  • April may do another registration nudge in the Google Group – Lee suggests making the spaces sound limited to put some pressure on
• Commercial booths: 
  • Sally did outreach to organizations and Annie is following up with them about commercial booths
  • Bagi will not do it this year because they can only be there Saturday
  • MonkeyStuff.com reached out (they sell tools and accessories for ceramic artists) and will have a booth this year 
• Festival job waiver pilot: 
  • So far we have 24 people requesting the waiver, this is enough demand so Annie can hire a few people, but not too many for us to handle 
• Payment submission issues: 
  • As we’ve discussed previously, we hit our payment submission limit (100 payments) faster than expected and we’ve had to keep a separate form 
  • A few people have slipped through the cracks and have paid, but haven’t submitted their registration form – April will continue trying to reach out to them

Festival Treasurer’s Report (Piper)

• From booth fees, tables, and job waiver fees we’ve brought in around $47,000  
• Piper will check in about one missing payment and one individual who may have wanted to upgrade. 
• For the artists who wanted 20’ booths but settled for 15’, it should be up to Annie to determine if they may ultimately be able to get 20’ booths
• Sean, April, and Piper have been working on putting together articles where top sellers share their business insights 

Financial Report

• Julie wasn’t present, but will present next month 

ACGA Archive (April)

• April would like to do something in appreciation of Forrest Merrill since he stored our archive boxes in his secure storage for over 2 years 
• Ideas
  • Ren suggests naming something after him to honor his legacy – potentially one of the awards at the Sebastopol and continue giving it in future shows as an award
  • Sean has an idea to call the sculpture garden the “Forrest Merril Sculpture Garden” at the ACGA show 
  • Susie has an idea to propose a scholarship in his name 

Membership Announcement (Emil)

• As part of our partnership with American Craft Council we’re offering their members 15% off our membership and they’re reciprocating 
  • Emil sent an announcement  on Google Group about this and he will also share something with Ren to post in newsletter about this
• Mari reminds the board to use ACGA logo in top left corner for official announcements in Google Group 

Google Workspace (Britt)

• Britt explained idea of having a shared Google Drive workspace for all our board files and proposed a folder structure
• We will start simple with one workspace account managed by secretary for centralized Google Drive (acgaboard@acga.net) with the future opportunity to create other @acga.net email addresses as needed
• Proposed structure: 
  • Shared Folder (“View Access” shared with all board members, “Edit Access” determined by committee lead for folder)
    • Agenda & Meeting Minutes (Britt)
    • Bylaws (Mari)
    • Finance Reports (Julie)
    • Festival (April)
    • Exhibitions (Vicki)
    • Membership (Emil)
    • Festival Jury (Tamara)
    • Communications (Ren)
  • Private Folder (No global “View access,” shared with specific individuals on need-to-know basis)
    • PRIVATE ACGA Finance
      • Festival Finance (Piper)
      • General Finance (Julie)
    • PRIVATE Festival Jury Scoring (Tamara)
    • PRIVATE Exhibition <Name> Jury Scoring (Exhibition Coordinator) 
    • PRIVATE Membership (Emil)
• Piper made a motion to spend $14/mo on one Google Workspace account and it passed unanimously 

ACGA Sponsorship of “Talking Out Your Glass” podcast (Mari)

• Mari encourages everyone to take a look at Chris’s email about ACGA sponsoring the “Talking Out Your Glass” podcast episode featuring Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend, a glass artist closely connected to California.
• What sponsoring means
  • We are giving them $185 to sponsor this episode (no commitment to a specific number of episodes we’re sponsoring) 
  • They will use our logo and introduce us as sponsors
• Ren is wondering if we can just sponsor episodes featuring CA glass artists – this needs to be discussed further
  • Sean said this is a great podcast and there are about 4 sponsors per episode, but he isn’t sure it would be possible to just sponsor CA glass artists
  • Sean and Ren will meet to discuss 
• Other clay podcast-related ideas: 
  • Vicki is wondering we can connect with Red Clay Rambler 
  • Ren has an idea to invite Ben Carter to come out to the festival and do a podcast about it 

Date of next meeting is April 20th, 2026

Minutes prepared by Britt Jensen, ACGA Secretary.

3/16/26 ACGA Board Meeting

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

The meeting began at 5:15 PM and ended at 6:50 PM.

Welcome (Mari) 

• Mari welcomed everyone

Proposal to Host Zoom for New Festival Jury Applicants (April)

• Randie Silverstein was not able to attend, but April explained that Randie is interested in putting together a Zoom session for people interested in applying to the jury to become festival eligible. Randie has served on several juries in the past (including ACGA jury) and felt some people were underprepared and could have used a session to help prepare for the jury process (similar to what we did to prepare people new to the festival last year). 
• Tamara and Britt will reach out to Randie to discuss planning and bring a proposal to the next board meeting 

Exhibitions Report

FIBER & FIRE in Sausalito (Deb)

• Show closed on March 12 and was very smooth with all pieces being picked up by noon the next day
• Broken pieces: ACGA will pay $100 to an artist whose piece was broken during installation, Sausalito Center For The Arts will cover the other broken piece with their insurance, as the incident occurred during the opening reception  
• What didn’t work well: 
  • There were some issues with other events/installations coinciding with drop-off and  installation of the show, despite clear communication of these dates
  • Vicki proposes we put something in contract in future with clear drop off/install time and make it clear that there won’t be other installation/events during that time
  • Mari suggests not providing a “not for sale” option for future gallery shows and noted that one artist changed from “for sale” to “not for sale” after being accepted, something we should try to prevent in the future. She also suggested making sure artists do not raise sale prices after acceptance.
• What did work well: 
  • Jan said central location with foot traffic helped a lot with sales 
  • Mari thinks that adding another medium (Fiber) made it more exciting
  • Vicki noted that it coincided with Valentine’s day which may have made for even higher than usual traffic 
• Jan gave a big thank you to Deb for putting on one of the most stressful, but also successful exhibitions we’ve had
• April asked about when artists will get paid – Deb said it should be in 3 weeks 
• Sales From Fiber & Fire
  • 54 Artists, 63 Artworks (ACGA)
  • Total sales (both ACGA & FiDi): $22,836 / 55 artworks
  • ACGA total sales: $15,128 / 32 artworks
  • ACGA F&F sales: $13,668 / 13 artworks
  • ACGA Corner Shop Sales: $1,460 / 19 artworks
  • Not counted: $760 in Corner Shop sales by an artist who was both an ACGA and FiDi member
• Exhibit Expenses: $1,500
  • *$1000 SCA (Exhibit Fee)
  • $300 American Craft Council (Juror Honorarium)
  • $100 Graphics
  • $100 Compensation for a broken piece
• Exhibit Income: $2,275
  • $2,275 Entry Fees (65 x $35)
• *SCA Exhibit Fee was $5,000. FiDi covered $4,000 / ACGA $1000

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

• Application went live yesterday (March 15) – using CaFE 

• We will run another ad next month in ACGA newsletter 
• Selected pieces are not for sale since it’s a museum show, but there’s potentially an opportunity to sell small pieces in the museum store (Iver is working to get more information on this possibility)
• Ren suggests promoting the open Call for Entry with the application link on social media and posting to the Google Group (with clay only in title) 

FINELY CRAFTED in Sebastopol (Cheryl)

• Finely Crafted is a national exhibition that will take place at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts this fall 
• Dates
  • Application period: June 1 – September 1 
  • Jury dates:  Sept 2-8 
  • Announcement to chosen artists: Sept 11 
  • Show dates: Oct 24 – Nov 29
• $35 entry fee and $5 per additional piece (10% discount for members of either organization)
• Sebastopol Center for the Arts receives 40%, artist receives 60% of sales
• Prizes
  • $300 1st place
  • $200 2nd place
  • $100 3rd place
  • Two $50 coordinator awards – Cheryl will get clarification on what this means 
  • Want ACGA to choose one clay award winner and one glass award winner
    • They’ve asked Cheryl to be the clay juror and we will need to choose a glass juror
    • We agreed these two prizes should be $100 each 
    • Ren suggests not calling it best in show if it’s not going to be a larger prize than 1st place, proposes maybe we can call it “ACGA award” 
• Publicity
  • Ren asks how soon we’ll get publishable info and Cheryl isn’t sure, but can find out 

NuMu in Los Gatos (Vicki)

• Emil is going to be working on proposal for NuMu in Los Gatos based on connection from Janet Wolf

Festival Report

General Festival Update (April)

• Publicity updates: 
  • April had initial meeting with Ruben Ramirez, our media consultant, and received initial publicity timeline
  • Emil is working on new design for festival banner 
  • April will give Emil access to images folder soon and will also share with James Aarons because he wants to refresh top banner on ACGA home page
• Discussion on images being not properly named or poorly photographed: 
  • We encourage everyone to name in specific way, but people often fail to do that which creates a lot of extra work to identify images (Note: unfortunately no way to force naming conventions in JotForm) 
  • Lee suggests we just say we won’t use your images if they’re not properly named, but Ren is concerned we don’t have enough photos already 
    • Ren notes that we have a number of photos that people have submitted in previous years (and have already been used in publicity) or photos that are not well photographed 
  • Ren will consider writing something for the newsletter about good images and April will try to improve next year’s registration with more clear photo instructions 
• Registration
  • We have 138 artists signed up (including Cobb Mountain Booth)
  • We haven’t gotten any new applicants since February 23 and are close to full, but want to make sure we have enough since a few people always drop out
  • April may do another registration nudge in the Google Group – Lee suggests making the spaces sound limited to put some pressure on
• Commercial booths: 
  • Sally did outreach to organizations and Annie is following up with them about commercial booths
  • Bagi will not do it this year because they can only be there Saturday
  • MonkeyStuff.com reached out (they sell tools and accessories for ceramic artists) and will have a booth this year 
• Festival job waiver pilot: 
  • So far we have 24 people requesting the waiver, this is enough demand so Annie can hire a few people, but not too many for us to handle 
• Payment submission issues: 
  • As we’ve discussed previously, we hit our payment submission limit (100 payments) faster than expected and we’ve had to keep a separate form 
  • A few people have slipped through the cracks and have paid, but haven’t submitted their registration form – April will continue trying to reach out to them

Festival Treasurer’s Report (Piper)

• From booth fees, tables, and job waiver fees we’ve brought in around $47,000  
• Piper will check in about one missing payment and one individual who may have wanted to upgrade. 
• For the artists who wanted 20’ booths but settled for 15’, it should be up to Annie to determine if they may ultimately be able to get 20’ booths
• Sean, April, and Piper have been working on putting together articles where top sellers share their business insights 

Financial Report

• Julie wasn’t present, but will present next month 

ACGA Archive (April)

• April would like to do something in appreciation of Forrest Merrill since he stored our archive boxes in his secure storage for over 2 years 
• Ideas
  • Ren suggests naming something after him to honor his legacy – potentially one of the awards at the Sebastopol and continue giving it in future shows as an award
  • Sean has an idea to call the sculpture garden the “Forrest Merril Sculpture Garden” at the ACGA show 
  • Susie has an idea to propose a scholarship in his name 

Membership Announcement (Emil)

• As part of our partnership with American Craft Council we’re offering their members 15% off our membership and they’re reciprocating 
  • Emil sent an announcement  on Google Group about this and he will also share something with Ren to post in newsletter about this
• Mari reminds the board to use ACGA logo in top left corner for official announcements in Google Group 

Google Workspace (Britt)

• Britt explained idea of having a shared Google Drive workspace for all our board files and proposed a folder structure
• We will start simple with one workspace account managed by secretary for centralized Google Drive (acgaboard@acga.net) with the future opportunity to create other @acga.net email addresses as needed
• Proposed structure: 
  • Shared Folder (“View Access” shared with all board members, “Edit Access” determined by committee lead for folder)
    • Agenda & Meeting Minutes (Britt)
    • Bylaws (Mari)
    • Finance Reports (Julie)
    • Festival (April)
    • Exhibitions (Vicki)
    • Membership (Emil)
    • Festival Jury (Tamara)
    • Communications (Ren)
  • Private Folder (No global “View access,” shared with specific individuals on need-to-know basis)
    • PRIVATE ACGA Finance
      • Festival Finance (Piper)
      • General Finance (Julie)
    • PRIVATE Festival Jury Scoring (Tamara)
    • PRIVATE Exhibition <Name> Jury Scoring (Exhibition Coordinator) 
    • PRIVATE Membership (Emil)
• Piper made a motion to spend $14/mo on one Google Workspace account and it passed unanimously 

ACGA Sponsorship of “Talking Out Your Glass” podcast (Mari)

• Mari encourages everyone to take a look at Chris’s email about ACGA sponsoring the “Talking Out Your Glass” podcast episode featuring Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend, a glass artist closely connected to California.
• What sponsoring means
  • We are giving them $185 to sponsor this episode (no commitment to a specific number of episodes we’re sponsoring) 
  • They will use our logo and introduce us as sponsors
• Ren is wondering if we can just sponsor episodes featuring CA glass artists – this needs to be discussed further
  • Sean said this is a great podcast and there are about 4 sponsors per episode, but he isn’t sure it would be possible to just sponsor CA glass artists
  • Sean and Ren will meet to discuss 
• Other clay podcast-related ideas: 
  • Vicki is wondering we can connect with Red Clay Rambler 
  • Ren has an idea to invite Ben Carter to come out to the festival and do a podcast about it 

Date of next meeting is March 20th, 2026

Minutes prepared by Britt Jensen, ACGA Secretary.