Visions In Clay Call for Entries
Entry is open now through June 26, 2023
Exhibition Juror: Joan Takayama-Ogawa, Professor of Ceramics and Product Design, Otis College of Art & Design, Los Angeles, California
Gallery & Online Exhibition: August 28 – September 21, 2023
Gallery Reception: August 31, 5:00-7:00p.m.
Gallery Awards $800 | $600 | $400
San Joaquin Potters Guild Founders Award ~ $300
Regional Artist Award $800
Entry Fees: $30 for 3 entries / $45 up to 6 entries
For the complete Prospectus Guidelines and to enter go to:
gallery.deltacollege.edu – Call for entries
ACGA Board Meeting Minutes – March 13, 2023
Present: Mari Emori, April Zilber, Sally Jackson (recorder), Ren Lee, Emil Yanos, Vicki Gunter, Cheryl Costantini, Chris Johnson, Susie Rubenstein, Iver Hennig, Joe Battiato, Trudy Chiddix, Barbara Prodaniuk (Absent: Sonja Hinrichsen, Lee Middleman, Jan Schachter)
Guest: Julie Taber
The meeting commenced at 5:30 p.m.
Welcome (Mari)
Treasurer’s Report (April)
April introduced ACGA member Julie Taber, who will be taking over the position of Treasurer. Julie is a ceramic artist in Altadena, CA, and she has extensive experience as a bookkeeper for nonprofits. Thank you, Julie, and welcome!
Our total assets as of February 28th are $117,651. This has been boosted lately by booth fees received for the festival in July. Our 2022 tax information has been submitted to our CPA. We discussed the possibility of giving our members the option to pay a little extra when using PayPal to cover its processing fees.
Festival Report (April)
April reported that 98 artists have signed up for the 2023 Palo Alto Clay & Glass Festival in July. We discussed how to staff Clay-for-All in the courtyard, and how to ensure that the courtyard is properly cleaned up afterwards. We discussed having demos outside this year to attract more attention. We also discussed how to recognize new festival artists, how to select Best-in-Show artists, and how best to collect and enter contact information for those who sign up on our mailing list. The auditorium will be available possibly as a cool place for visitors to sit and eat. Messenger Events will try to address problems we had last year with unsecured fire extinguishers and rutted spots on the grounds.
Membership (Emil)
ACGA’s website feature “Artist of the Month” has thus far been populated by a small pool of members who have volunteered for the honor. When this feature was introduced, we expected more members to embrace the opportunity, but response has been sparse, leaving us with fewer choices. Some on the Board believe that only festival-eligible artists should be featured as Artist of the Month, whereas other Board members who actively exhibit, but do not plan to jury into the festival, would like the Artist of the Month to be chosen from a broader pool. We will continue discussions to resolve this issue in a future meeting.
“Meet-Your-Board-Member” in the Newsletter (Mari)
Mari has prepared a monthly calendar assigning each board member to provide a profile for the newsletter. This slot will be titled “Meet Your Board Member”. The profiles will be due on the 8th of each month.
Encouraging More Sign-ups for the Festival (Mari)
We discussed ways to regain some of the artists who were accepted in 2019 and 2020 for one-time-only festival eligibility. Some have since juried in as fully eligible, but others have not reapplied. It was proposed that the Board admit all of those one-time-only artists as fully eligible. Chris, Ren, and April will look into the artists’ original applications and festival participation for assessment.
Communications (Susie)
The Communications Committee is working to make our website more engaging and more financially viable. The Treasurer reminded the Board that it had budgeted $300 per month as a stipend for communications work. The Board approved initiating this monthly stipend for Ren, retroactive to January 2023. Ren will send invoices to April. Ren informed the board that it should allocate money to pay writers to write articles for the newsletter. She also requested that members submit more information for the calendar.
Managing Access (Mari)
Cheryl and Mari will talk about how to transfer Zoom meeting management to one person on the board. Sally will step up for this role. Later discussions should address access to all other ACGA accounts with logins.
Exhibitions (Sally & Vicki)
The Exhibitions Committee recently visited the gallery Curated by the Sea in Santa Cruz, and met with the owner, Melissa Kreisa. We will have a juried exhibition there in 2024, probably in the spring. This will be a clay and glass show open to ACGA members and to clay and glass artists residing in Santa Cruz County. Opening it to local artists is a good way to spread the word about ACGA. Those who visited included Jan Schachter, Sally Jackson, Chris Johnson, and Randi Silverstein (who was also the original contact). Iver Hennig has also been in consultation and has visited the gallery on his own.
Vicki Gunter reported that Arts Benicia is a promising space for an exhibition in Benicia. She is pursuing this opportunity with a letter of inquiry and will know more after March 22. In addition, a new gallery in Benicia called NY2CA may also provide a chance for ACGA artists to show their work.
The meeting adjourned at 7:10 p.m.
Next Meeting: 5:30 p.m., April 10, 2023 via Zoom
All Members are Welcome
Meet Your Board Members: Emil Yanos
I came into ceramics almost by accident. Due to the recession in the early 90’s I was without a job and looking for an activity to fill my days. I found Ruby’s Clay Studio on one of my neighborhood walks. I signed up for a class and was hooked. I took several more classes and began to experiment, working part-time, after work and on the weekends, mostly throwing and making functional work.
I went into hand building after years of throwing because I developed Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from my day job. With a new aesthetic and a new set of skills, my work eventually emerged into what is more intrinsically me, which is mostly rough with a few smooth edges. On my second try, I was finally juried into the ACGA Clay and Glass Festival.
Being part of ACGA raised my awareness to the possibilities of clay and glass. I joined ACGA because I wanted another venue show my art. I found that without ACGA, that venue and the opportunities that come with it wouldn’t be there, so I volunteered to help this organization provide what I was looking for. I started as the Membership Coordinator and continue that role as a board member.
I still work out of Ruby’s Clay Studio, creating textured sculpture that is mainly hand built but sometimes thrown and have fully recovered from CTS. I no longer have a day job, I have an activity to fill my days and some of my nights.
Art & Ecology Online Gallery Show
Art & Ecology
juried by Obi Kaufmann
with poetry by Linda Martinez Robertson
March 20 to April 30, 2023
O’Hanlon Center for the Arts
https://www.ohanloncenter.org/2023/03/art-and-ecology/
Artists were invited to submit works that address the subject of Ecology including the topic of climate change and environmental resilience.
Featuring work by ACGA artists Vicki Gunter and Emil Yanos
Vicki Gunter Sky Blues — Canary & Elephant Series – 2014
clay, glazes, antique bailing wire, steel plate, Magnets
24 x 31 x 5 inches
Sky Blues represents the air all life breathes, and a few of the endangered animals that live in the California skies: the CA Condor, Bay Checkerspot, Smith Blue and Monarch butterfly with bejeweled chrysalis. I was in awe of the Monarch chrysalis as a child. How does it paint that gold on there?
The cautionary yellow Canary alerts us of the Elephants in the room: Loss of habitat, Roundup® = less milkweed = fewer monarchs. A Lead bullet; Condors are dying from lead poisoning due to eating abandoned game, But, celebrate a bit! As of 2019, all ammunition must be 100% lead free in California. It’s still a problem so, If you are a hunter beware of your ammunition please.
Smoke stacks represent air pollution from numerous sources, causing asthma in our children, especially those of color and lower incomes.
Yes, it’s a complicated puzzle.
Will we choose a profit-driven-system of over-consumption or the awe of the Monarch chrysalis?
Emil Yanos
Cling
13h x 13w x 4d inches
Stoneware, glazes, engobes
My work is an examination of texture. Each piece plays with contrasting surfaces: rough verses smooth; matte verses shiny; large-scale verses small-scale, adding visual depth and tactile interest. Textures, drawn from the natural world—such as seed pods, barnacles, and rocky outcroppings. They are an invitation to touch. As you run your hands over, the sensation is a reminder of a place you once enjoyed.
Cling is reminiscent of the tide pools I was intrigued with growing up in Hawaii. These depressions in the rocks captured creatures, and pebbles, and shells as the waves crashed over them. We are now clinging to our land as the sea levels rise we as are caught between land to live and land to grow food.
Open Studio
Jan Schachter will be hosting 5 artists for her open Studio on May 6-7 in her garden at 190 Golden Hills Drive, Portola Valley CA 94028 10am-5 pm
Sally Jackson, Jane Peterman, Lindsay Marx, Peggy Forman, and Nina Else.
We will also have a table of donated work that will be sold to benefit CERF+
New Soda Kiln at Stanford
by Sally Jackson
One bright spot in February’s gray weather was the completion of a soda kiln in the courtyard of Stanford University’s Product Realization Lab (PRL). Spearheaded by Applied Physics professor and ceramic artist Hideo Mabuchi, and funded by the new cross-disciplinary initiative Making@Stanford (https://making.stanford.edu), the kiln will enable more students to work with clay and more Stanford faculty to incorporate ceramics into their classes. These new opportunities will be organized around courses, workshops, and maker/artist residencies. One of the main goals is to connect ceramics, with its traditions and material culture, with contemporary engineering and materials science as well as computer science, art practice, and the performing arts.
Construction was led by kiln-builder Ted Neal, who is also a faculty member in ceramics at Ball State University in Indiana. I was among several helpers who jumped on board to help. The project involved a lot of steel L-angle, many pallets of bricks, mortar, a MIG welding rig, and a couple of serious power saws. After Ted welded a low, table-like metal frame, we stacked hard and soft bricks to create the floor, walls, chimney, and ceiling arch. Ted then reinforced the kiln with a metal frame and added a hinged door. As final steps we insulated the top of the kiln chamber and mounted a metal roof overhead. Having never built a kiln before, I gained huge appreciation for the precision, expertise, and teamwork that such a project involves. And I truly enjoyed working with Ted, Hedeo, and helpers Christopher Watt and Nicholas Robles. Craig Milroy, Co-Director of the PRL, provided invaluable logistical support throughout the project.
Ceramics are popular with Stanford students, but studio space is limited. The Making@Stanford initiative will connect a wider community of makers and mentors throughout campus. Hideo, for example, co-teaches a class called Japanese Functional Objects, which combines woodworking, ceramics, readings, and lectures to introduce students to the tools and traditions associated with the Japanese tea ceremony. He looks forward to firing work in the soda kiln for this course and many others. For more photos of the construction, visit https://making.stanford.edu/pilot/kiln.
