Apply now for the AltCraft section at the American Craft Show in San Francisco at the Fort Mason Center, August 15-17.

Ten makers will be juried into this bustling section, which celebrates the renewed handmade movement. Artists who have never exhibited at an American Craft Show may apply.

Located on the San Francisco waterfront between Fisherman’s Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge, this show serves a well-established audience of Bay Area craft devotees. The show also features wine tastings and live demonstrations. As part of the Council’s commitment to indie crafters, the cost of participation is just $300, which includes a 10-ft table in a shared loft space. Plus, there’s no application fee!

The deadline is Friday, May 23. Please submit:

• (3) low-resolution images of your work
• A brief description of your work (materials, dimensions, techniques)
• Your contact information (mailing and email addresses)

Send submissions and inquiries to Erika at ebrown@craftcouncil.org.
The subject line should be: San Fran AltCraft Application

Finalists will be announced in June.

Click the image above to visit the website and learn all about this upcoming event!

In the hands of guerrilla street artists, yarn graffiti snakes around telephone posts, through barbed wire fences, and over abandoned cars. Originally created by a crew in Texas, knit graffiti has become an international movement embraced by crafters of all ages and nationalities. Yarn Bombing: The Art of Knit Graffiti is a book about the history of yarn graffiti in urban spaces and future plans for world yarn domination, and will teach knitters how they can join the revolution.

Are you a knitter or crochetier? Do you design (or want to design) unusual pieces of street art out of yarn?

If so, you should design a pattern for Yarn Bombing: The Art of Knit Graffiti, to be published by Arsenal Pulp Press in fall 2009.

A DIY guide to the art of yarn graffiti and a history of hand-crafted textile street art, Yarn-Bombing will feature patterns such as street-smart disguises, useful wearable tools like gloves and tool belts, street art such as knit car cozies, bike covers and headlight toques, and outdoor installations such as crochet shawls for leafy trees. The sky’s the limit as long as it’s knit or crocheted! Projects should be fun, colorful and a little bit wacky.

Designers are asked to submit a sketch and detailed description of their project, along with a brief bio, by the submission deadline of May 15, 2008.

There is no entry fee, and you are encouraged to submit multiple designs. Please include your complete contact information (email and mailing addresses) with your submission. Hard-copy submissions will not be returned unless an SASE or International Mailing Coupon is provided.

Digital sketches (under 2MB) can be emailed to mandy@yarnbombing.com, or hard copy sketches can be mailed to:

Leanne Prain
203-884 Bute Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6E 1Y5

You will be notified via email if your design has been selected for publication. Selected designs will need to be knit or crocheted by their designers over the months of June-August, and mailed to the publisher for photography and editing by August 30, 2008. Patterns and any accompanying diagrams must be mailed to mandy@yarnbombing.com by the same date. Designers who are chosen to participate will receive the yarn necessary to complete their project, an honorarium, a free copy of the book, and credit for taking part in the book.

For more information, please visit Arsenal Pulp Press (arsenalpulp.com) or the Yarn Bombing Blog (yarnbombing.com).

If you have any questions or concerns regarding submissions, please contact Leanne (leanne@yarnbombing.com) or Mandy (mandy@yarnbombing.com)

The Authors

A graduate of the Alberta College of Art and Design, Mandy Moore now lives in Vancouver, BC with her small family of husband and cat. She is the technical editrix of popular online knitting magazine Knitty.com, and of various other knitting and crochet books and publications. She is a hardcore making-things evangelist, and will probably try to convince you that you should try (knitting, crocheting, sewing, painting) too! You can find her online at yarnageddon.com.

Upon learning to knit, Leanne Prain co-founded a stitch and bitch called Knitting and Beer in order to expand her skills while knitting at the pub. While the group has disbanded, she continues to be amazed at what can be created with two needles and a bit of yarn. A professional graphic designer, Leanne holds degrees in creative writing, art history and publishing. She lives and knits in Vancouver, BC.

I am just passing on a request for you to take this quick, anonymous survey in the name of Craft Con 2008 ! By completing 7 multiple choice questions, you can help give the organizers a clearer picture of how the indie craft community at large acquires it’s supplies. Results will be posted on craftcon.org shortly after the close of the event!

Click here to take the Craft Supply Survey for Craft Con 2008

In case you didn’t catch our earlier blog about this, Craft Con is a business development conference for the craft community. People who make things of all types, of all backgrounds, will come together to talk about the business side of crafting, how they market themselves, and the philosophies behind it all. The conference will be held April 4-6 in San Francisco, California.

Harmony Hammond is an artist, art writer, and independent curator who lives and works in Galisteo, New Mexico. A pioneer of the feminist art movement, she lectures, writes and publishes on feminist art, lesbian art, and the cultural representation of “difference”.

Hammond attended the University of Minnesota from 1963-67 (B.A., 1967). In 1969, she moved to Manhattan where she was a co-founder of A.I.R., the first women’s cooperative art gallery in New York, (1972), and co-editor of Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art & Politics, (1976). In 1984, she moved to New Mexico. As a tenured full Professor, Hammond taught painting, combined media and graduate critiques at the University of Arizona (Tucson), from 1988-2005. Currently she teaches classes and workshops from time to time as a Visiting Artist at: Skowhegan, Anderson Ranch, the Santa Fe Art Institute and the Vermont Studio Center.

She has had over 30 solo exhibitions and her work has been shown internationally in venues such as Site Santa Fe; New Museum, NYC; Smack Mellon Studios, Brooklyn; National Academy Museum, NYC; Bronx Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe; P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, Queens; Tucson Museum of Art; The Downtown Whitney Museum, NYC; Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, NC; White Columns, NYC; Brooklyn Museum; Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Vancouver Art Gallery; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Internacional Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City; The American Center, Paris; Neue Galerie, Graz, Germany; Museum of Contemporary Arts, Havana; Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City; and the Haags Gementemuseum, the Hague.
Her work is represented by Dwight Hackett projects, in Santa Fe.

Her work has been reproduced, discussed, and reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Art Forum, Art News, Art Papers, Art on Paper, The Art Journal, Arts Magazine, the New Art Examiner and many other publications.

Hammond’s work is in the permanent collections of many museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC; the Museum of Modern Art, NYC; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, the Brooklyn Museum; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Phoenix Art Museum; the New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, Santa FE, NM; and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CN.

Her book Wrappings: Essays on Feminism, Art & the Martial Arts, (TSL Press, 1984), a classic on 70s feminist art, is out-of-print. Her ground-breaking book Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History (Rizzoli, 2000) received a Lambda Literary Award.

Artists and crafters, feel free to create a piece of artwork or an item you have crafted that matches the theme and upload a picture of it!

Here are the challenge rules:

1.) Take 100 pictures, each picture having one of the themes listed on the group website. Each picture should have ONE and only ONE theme to it.

2.) There is no time limit on the challenge, so have fun

Once you have a picture ready for the challenge, simply submit it to the group. When you’ve completed all 100, start a discussion and show off your challenge set!

We look forward to seeing everyone’s interpretations of the themes!

Here’s an inspirational picture to get you started:

Theme: #34, Patriotism

We’d like to invite you to attend Craft Con 2008, a business
development conference for the craft community. This remarkable
gathering of leaders and organizers in the evolving craft and design
movement will be held in San Francisco April 4-6. Last year’s Craft
Congress was the first event of its kind, bringing together an amazing
group of craft promoters from all over the country and as far away as
England to network, share ideas, and discuss the future of the
resurging movement.

Craft Con 2008 heralds huge growth for the project, bringing together
event promoters, internet entrepreneurs, authors, store owners, craft
teachers, and businesspeople to network, talk about the future of
craft, and strengthen the community’s voice. With the explosive
popularity of countless craft-related business ventures, the crafting
world is poised to keep getting bigger and better - the question is,
where do we want to go from here? This is our chance to help shape the
future of the handmade movement and its place in society - we hope
you’ll join us!

Craft Con 2008 | April 4-6 2008, San Francisco CA

http://craftcon.org

St. Louis, MO—On June, 6, 13, 20 and 27, you’ll find the largest collection of plushies and stuffies in some of St. Louis’ hottest shops from artists and crafters all around the world. Organizers seek ardent fans of plush to submit essays and hand made plush goods for inclusion in a show and comprehensive book, Crammed Organisms, to be published this spring. Artwork and essays should align with the theme: Fairy, Folk and Fable. The published book will be for sale during the show. What is plush? Plush is the modern word for stuffed animals (no, we’re not talking about taxidermy…), also known as stuffies, plushies and now Crammed Organisms.

Accepted artists will need to submit a minimum four plush items for the show for display in the four venues (described below). Show-goers may purchase the exhibited plush items and pick them up at the completion of the four-week show.

WHAT: Crammed Organisms—the Largest Plush Show in the World

Call for Artists & Writers

WHEN: Fridays, June 6, 13, 20 and 27, from 7 to 11 p.m.

Artist application due: March 29

WHERE:

June 6- Star Clipper Comics

6392 Delmar Avenue, University City Loop, St. Louis

June 13- Cranky Yellow Boutique

2122 Cherokee Street, St. Louis

June 20- Subterranean Books & Gallery

6275 Delmar Avenue, University City Loop, St. Louis

June 27- Apop Records

2831 Cherokee Street, St. Louis

FEES, ETC: Free to apply, $35 fee for accepted artists. No fee for book copy submissions. Visit www.crammedorganisms.com for rules and details. Artists need not be present at the show. Organizers will donate 10% of the show’s proceeds to American Forests (www.americanforests.org). They work to protect, restore and enhance the natural capital of trees and forests because healthy forests filter water, remove air pollution, sequester carbon, and provide homes for wildlife.

Show organizer David Wolk of Cranky Yellow Publications expects submissions from around the world, “I say bring it! This show is going to rock the cosmic world and showcase talented, creative thinkers, hopefully encouraging the public to buy hand made items and patronize individually-owned shops.”

For more information, visit www.crammedorganisms.com

Hitch your Wagon by Judy Chicago.
Sprayed Acrylic, Applique & Quilting.
54 in x 54 in

Judy Chicago is an artist, author, feminist, educator, and intellectual whose career now spans four decades. Her work and life are models for an enlarged definition of art, an expanded role for the artist, and a woman’s right to freedom of expression. She was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1939.

Her influence both within and beyond the art community is attested to by her inclusion in hundreds of publications throughout the world. Her art has been frequently exhibited in the United States and internationally.

During the period from 1965-1973, Chicago explored color through much reduced geometric shapes by producing sculpture, drawings, and paintings that comprised her Minimal period. These works were formulative to her landmark “spectral color” theory that has informed all of her subsequent work.

In the early seventies, after a decade of professional art practice, Chicago pioneered Feminist Art and art education through unique programs for women at California State University, Fresno, and the California Institute of the Arts where she helped establish the Feminist Art Program which resulted in Womanhouse, the first installation demonstrating an openly female point of view in art. Chicago’s ideas helped to initiate a worldwide Feminist Art Movement.

In 1974, Chicago turned her attention to the subject of women’s history to create her most well-known work, The Dinner Party, executed between 1974 and 1979 with the participation of hundreds of volunteers. This monumental multimedia project, a symbolic history of women in Western Civilization, has been seen by more than one million viewers during its 16 exhibitions held at venues spanning six countries.

The Dinner Party has been the subject of countless articles and art history texts. In 2007, The Dinner Party was permanently housed at the Brooklyn Museum as part of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, thereby achieving Chicago’s long-held goal of helping to counter the erasure of women’s achievements.

From 1980 to 1985, Chicago worked on the Birth Project, in which she designed a monumental series of birth and creation images for needlework which were executed under her supervision by skilled needle workers around the country.

Later, in a series of drawings, paintings, weavings, cast paper, and bronze reliefs, Chicago brought a critical feminist gaze to the gender construct of masculinity, in a project entitled Powerplay. The artist’s long concern with issues of power and powerlessness, and a growing interest in her Jewish heritage led her to her next body of art, the Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light, which premiered in October, 1993. Selections from the Holocaust Project continue to be exhibited.

In the late 1950s, many Latinos who lived in Los Angeles were forced out of their homes to make way for the East L.A. freeway interchange. The Gutierrez family was uprooted twice during the highway construction. Such uprooting was akin to the experience of those families in Chaves Ravine to make way for the construction of Dodger Stadium.

Gutierrez was a mother and homemaker who worked to make the community safer by being involved in a network of parents who started neighborhood watch and sports boosters programs throughout Boyle Heights. Then, in 1984, when she learned that a proposed prison was to be built near her home, she decided that she had had enough. She began knocking on her neighbors’ doors, asking them to join her in taking action to protect her community. It was the beginning of her direct and dynamic political activism which resulted in forming Madres de Este Los Angeles (MELASI).

MELASI got its name because the at-home mothers were the only ones available to be the voice of East L.A. residents at the hearings, which were held during the day when others were at work. MELASI appealed directly to mothers as part of their outreach strategy. They asked, Are you ready to defend and protect your family? Their motto was, “Not economically rich, but culturally wealthy. Not politically powerful, but socially conscious. Not mainstream educated, but armed with the knowledge, commitment, and determination that only a mother can possess.

Before MELASI was formed, corporations found it easy to get rid of their wastes in the Latino community by using smoke-and-mirrors tactics. Having MELASI in the courtroom made all the difference. First, they defeated the prison proposal and saw a bill passed that declared no state prisons could be built in Los Angeles County. However, no sooner was that mission accomplished than MELASI discovered that East L.A. was being targeted for a municipal waste incinerator and an oil pipeline that was routed 20 extra miles through East L.A. so as to miss the affluent beach communities. MELASI became effective in defeating a proposed toxic dump and oil pipeline in the vicinity of thousands of residents. MELASI also helped with the problems of crime, unemployment, failing schools, dangerous working conditions, and pesticide-filled foods.

The organization became proactive and established a scholarship fund that gave in excess of $300,000 to local students. They established a water conservation program that employed twenty-two community members with benefits and established a community garden among their many projects.

Under Gutierrez’s passionate leadership, MELASI also became a model for other mothers to form community environmental justice action groups throughout the country. Her work has been featured in the former Soviet Union, Australia, and Europe as well as in numerous books. Her archives are part of the Urban Archive Collection at the California State University, Northridge.

March 2008 is National Women’s History Month

Each year, March is designated as National Women’s History Month to ensure that the history of American women will be recognized and celebrated in schools, workplaces, and communities throughout the country. The stories of women’s historic achievements present an expanded view of the complexity and contradiction of living a full and purposeful life.

The knowledge of women’s history provides a more expansive vision of what a woman can do. This perspective can encourage girls and women to think larger and bolder and can give boys and men a fuller understanding of the female experience.
Women’s Art: Women’s Vision Theme

To honor the originality, beauty, imagination, and multiple dimensions of women’s lives, the National Women’s History Project has chosen Women’s Art: Women’s Vision as the 2008 theme for National Women’s History Month.

The history of women and art is quintessential women’s history. It is the story of amazing women’s accomplishments acclaimed at the time but written out of history. Join us in ensuring that their accomplishments are never forgotten.

This year’s theme provides a special opportunity to discover and celebrate women’s visual arts in a variety of forms and mediums that help expand our perceptions of ourselves and each other.

This month, CraftRevolution.com will feature each of the women celebrated through this program in a special Blog Post, allowing our readers to learn about each of them and to pull inspiration from their achievements.

To ensure that a diversity of art and artists are represented, the 2008 Honorees were selected based on their art, their vision, their art form, their cultural background, the region in which they live and the quality and passion of the nomination submitted. Stay tuned for more information on the honorees.

Judy Chicago - 1939
Painter/Printmaker/Tapestry/Needlework

Harmony Hammond -1944
Painter

Edna Hibel – 1917
Colorist, Painter, Stone Lithographer, Serigrapher, Etcher, Sculptress, and Filmmaker

Lihua Lei – 1966
Multimedia Installation

Violet Oakley –1874-1961
Muralist, Stained Glass Artist

Rose Cecil O’Neill – 1874-1944
Painter, Illustrator, Sculptress

Faith Ringgold – 1930
Painter/Quilter

Miriam Schapiro – 1923
Print/ Painter

Lorna Simpson – 1960
Artist

Jaune Quick-To-See Smith –1940
Painter/Printmaker

Nancy Spero – 1926
Painter

June Claire Wayne – 1918
Painter/Lithographer