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.