5/18/26 ACGA Board Meeting

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

The meeting began at 5:15 PM and ended at 6:45 PM.

Welcome (Julie) 

  • Julie welcomed everyone

Phishing Emails (Mari)

  • The phishing issue is frequent and frustrating, Mari urged everyone to be vigilant with suspicious emails – do not respond and report as spam 
  • Mari also reminded the board to add the ACGA logo at top or bottom of official ACGA board emails being sent in our roles as board members
    • Note: do not use the ACGA logo when just sending emails as a member (announcing shows, etc.) 
  • Chris pointed out you can also often click on the name in the email and see if the email is their real email 

Financial Report (Julie)

  • ~$167k in the bank
  • ~$22k in PayPal that Julie is moving it over to bank account as it comes in 
  • Year to date membership income ~$10k
    • Budgeted $24k membership income for whole year (most membership payments come in in December)
  • We are slightly lower than budgeted for booth income – some payments may still be coming in
  • Revenue for festival is still under, but that’s because festival hasn’t happened
  • Storage facility going up to $411/mo (we already downsized when we moved from Berkeley to Santa Clara)
  • April was paid additional stipend for the 2025 Festival, but it wasn’t originally budgeted, Julie is wondering if she should redo the budget, no conclusion on how to best handle this

Update on RFP for Website/Membership System (Julie)

  • RFP has been circulated and Julie has received some responses, but they’re a bit more expensive than we were hoping
  • Julie asked Pam today if she’s planning on submitting, haven’t heard back 
  • Julie plans to extend the date
  • Mari is wondering if Mega Jewell could redo the website – April will reach out to them directly 
  • Emil proposes we prioritize our wants and have those responding price accordingly so that we can cut off low priorities if the price is too high – Julie will plan to redo with priorities 
  • Susie is wondering if these proposals includes maintaining website, Julie clarified that this maintenance would be additional, but maintenance estimates are included requested in RFP 
    • Mari reiterated that the same person who built website should maintain 
  • Vicki is wondering how we’re getting the message out there – Julie clarified that we sent it in Google Group, in the newsletter, and on social media 
  • April brought up question of finding designer behind a studio whose website we liked – Julie clarified that she already reached out and the company they used is no longer in business 
  • April brought up that she believed a lot of our issues were due to cheap/free plugins in the past and wondered if we can just pay for better plugins now –  Julie doesn’t think this is the issue, we have paid for some in the past and they did not work out
  • April is concerned about taking ALL payments through our website – do we want to have every application form through our website – Julie clarified not all applications have to be created on the website, but could still link to the payment system on the website 
  • Mari had asked Haley to get info on Potter’s Studio in Berkeley and how they gathered payment – Haley said they just use a squarespace site and said there are often issues with it, but clarified that the issues were not actually with SquareSpace, but their class registration system which is a company outside of SquareSpace – Haley will still pass along the contact info of the person who does the Potter’s Studio website to Julie so we can ask them about the issues they face with Squarespace. 

Festival Report 

General updates (April)

  • Slow trickle of booth cancelations, but show is still full because we had one person on waitlist 
  • Emil has been busy designing our ads
  • April talked to Emil and Ren about creating some banners and images to share with artists to help promote, this is still in the works
  • Jan is wondering if there will be a sharing table, but April doesn’t think it’s worth it given our previous experience, but offers to gauge interest by sending something in the  Google Group
  • Mari is wondering how festival job filling is going – April isn’t sure, but will check 
  • Barbara is wondering about SWAG – Cheryl is working on it and will bring SWAG options to next committee meeting for approval 
  • April asks about clarification for when to use Handwork logo – should we be using it casually as an individual – answer is you can tag personal event promotion posts with @handwork2026 and add #craftinamerica
  • Mari updated everyone on throwdown – Mari had over 20 people on waitlist from last year and asked them about interest in participating this year, but some people are no longer available or have not responded, so we posted in the May newsletter to invite more contestants and just have a few spots to fill, shouldn’t be a problem to find the 12 contestants

Festival treasurer’s report (Piper)

  • Piper has done some of the major purchases recently (like ads)
  • Piper will soon send city of Palo Alto initial payment of $14k (and then may or may not have to add $2k more depending on how profitable the festival is)
  • Still holding out on some refunds for premium booths to see if we should immediately refund or put people on waitlist 

Festival Jury (Tamara/Britt)

  • Britt & Tamara had a good meeting with Scott to understand his prep/feedback process
  • This month we will decide on a date for the pre-jury zoom session 
  • Tamara has started reaching out to people she thinks would be a good fit for the jury

Exhibitions Report

NuMu in Los Gatos (Vicki)

  • Heard back from Janet at NuMu and got some info, but still pretty vague about what they’re looking for

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

  • Iver meeting again with the museum on Wednesday 
  • Jury happened last week, took about 3 days
  • Had 180 artists apply and over 500 works of art (had to select 40 slots)
  • Vicki asked why so few slots – Iver clarified there were 20 invited artists
  • Acceptance letters have gone out 

FINELY CRAFTED in Sebastopol (Cheryl)

  • The organizing group is meeting tomorrow to finalize amount of money awarded
  • ACGA previously agreed to give $100 prize for each category (clay and glass) and Cheryl is wondering if we’re interested in adding to this to try to elevate the event 
    • Vicki wondered about the main about award amounts – they are currently $300, $200, $100 (1st, 2nd, 3rd) – and thinks our ACGA award shouldn’t surpass the museums awards 
  • Cheryl confirmed there’s no ACGA revenue coming from the show, this is just a contribution
  • Susie proposed $250 award for clay and $250 for glass and 
    • April clarified that we will approve up to $250 for each and Cheryl can take this to tomorrow’s meeting and she will see if the organizing group is interested in taking this amount of money 
    • Ren would like to make sure that the money goes towards ACGA award and not just into the general pot 
  • Ren asked if we get to pick the winners – Cheryl clarified that we (ACGA) will pick the winners 
  • Cheryl made a motion to offer to give up to $250 for an ACGA clay award and $250 for an ACGA glass award, Barbara seconded the motion and it passed with unanimous agreement 

Glass Ambassador Update (Chris)

  • Chris has been working on John Lewis to give us more money
  • Chris was asked to give a talk at the American Physical Society World Conference in Denver – gave a talk on glass partnership project he did with physicist a few months back, he was able to promote the arts and ACGA to a room of nuclear physicists
  • Chris has now been asked to write a paper for their journal
  • Physicists work in very narrow areas, so the idea of coming up with an abstract concept and physicality of whole thing was fascinating to the audience 
  • Mari asked if the woman from the glass podcast got paid – Chris and Julie confirmed they were paid 

Check in On Google Drive (Britt)

  • Julie brought up that Zoom is getting quite full and we’re going to run out of space, she is wondering if we should download and move those to Google Drive 
  • Chris proposes keeping occasional recordings for posterity and Mari would like to permanently keep this year’s all member meeting recording 
  • Britt will download and keep 1-2 per year in Google Drive 

Festival Listing on Handwork 2026 Website (Barbara)

  • The ACGA festival is up on the Handwork website
  • If you have a show you want to promote, you must send the info to Handwork by the 15th of the month prior to the show

Forest Merrill Gift

  • Cheryl spoke with a friend of Forest who doesn’t think we should use his name for an award, this friend proposes we give him a gift certificate to Zut in Berkeley 
  • Vicki makes a motion to give Forest a $200 gift certificate and Cheryl seconds – the motion passes unanimously 
  • Julie will work with April to get this sent out 

Date of next meeting is June 15th, 2026

Minutes prepared by Britt Jensen, ACGA Secretary.