The Florida Society of Goldsmiths has honored Valentin Yotkov with the 2011 FSG National Metalsmith’s Hall of Fame Award in its Artist/Arts Educator category. Considered one of the world’s leading experts in chasing and repousse, Yotkov runs the Valentin Yotkov Studio, the only school in the country that teaches these ancient metal techniques. Since its creation in 1994, more than 1,600 students, professional jewelers and metalsmiths from around the world have attended his classes.

The New York International Gift Fair has announced the winners of its first annual Carol Sedestrom Ross “Maker-to-Market” scholarship awards. Emerging textile artists and designers String Theory of Montreal, Canada, and Haptic Lab of Brooklyn, N.Y., who displayed their work at Handmade NYIGF, received free exhibition space, travel expenses, pre- and post-show marketing support and a market-readiness consultation from By Hand Consulting. Honoring the memory of Ross, a pivotal figure in the American Craft movement, the scholarship will be presented annually to the most promising newcomers to NYIGF’s Handmade division.

Cleveland-based nonprofit, Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC) is a local service organization for artists and arts and culture nonprofits. For 20 lucky Cuyahoga County artists, CPAC wanted to acknowledge their outstanding work and innovation in the field. The artists shared in a $20,000 Creative Workforce Fellowship. The 2011 Fellows will use these funds for a range of professional activities such as traveling for research, buying equipment or investing in marketing materials.

Rockville Md., has been given new interactive public art, thanks to Florida-based artist Cecilia Lueza and her partner Rick Munne. They developed a series of sound-activated wall sculptures, left, at the city’s Arts and Innovation Center. The panels are made of plastic and epoxy resins that incorporate a fiber optic and LED lighting system. The public is invited to visit the sculpture and talk, sing, clap or otherwise make noise in its vicinity in order to interact with and direct the light show.

]]> http://www.nichemagazine.com/2011/09/people-news-6/feed/ 0 http://www.nichemagazine.com/2010/06/virginia-mckinney/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://www.nichemagazine.com/2010/06/virginia-mckinney/#comments Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:10:53 +0000 Claire Patterson Blome http://www.nichemagazine.com/?p=4301

Virginia McKinney’s clay-and-steel sculptures recall everything from Native American dwellings to Asian passageways. Small notches indicate doors and windows; steel ladders lead to unexplored rooms. “I’m intrigued by the idea of the dwelling, of a sense of place,” she says.

McKinney is a relatively new full-time studio artist. She spent more than 20 years teaching different mediums at various schools, while taking classes to further her skills in metal. She chose to “jump off the cliff,” she says, when she found herself freshly divorced with two children in college: in 2003, McKinney moved to Gatlinburg, Tenn., to become an artist in residence at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. “I quit teaching and said, ‘This is it,’ ” she explains.

But don’t expect her to stay out of school: McKinney is now the campus liaison at Arrowmont, and lives in an apartment on the edge of the school’s grounds. She’s also enrolled at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pa., for her master’s in ceramics. “I am a perpetual student,” she says. “Both sides of the desk can be very exciting.”

McKinney describes her work as “a dance between the steel and clay.” She starts a series in her ceramics studio, hand-building red earthenware clay into a dozen forms and bisque firing by the kiln load. Then she moves into her blacksmithing studio and forges steel forms for each piece, hammering and shaping, fitting the bisque pieces into their respective supports.

Then it’s time to return to the clay studio to glaze—not an uncomplicated process. If you look closely, you’ll notice flecks of different colors in any given glaze; that’s because she layers slips, stains and glazes until she achieves depth in the colors. After the final firing, McKinney matches the clay with the steel, which is sanded, primed and painted. “You’d think steel would be heavy, but it lifts up the clay and gives it life,” she explains. “The work has a visceral feel, a strength to it.”

“My work will always be evolving,” McKinney says. Her graduate work is in unglazed porcelain—“I keep thinking about how I could incorporate it.”

It’s only safe to make one assumption about Christine Kaiser‘s work: don’t make assumptions. Here’s a clue—it’s not clay. She’s been working with wood for more than 20 years, sanding it so smoothly you can’t tell what it’s made of until you pick it up.

Most of Kaiser’s work is made of basswood, a renewable North American hardwood with a straight grain “that carves, sands and takes paint nicely.” She cuts the wood with a band saw, shapes it with a belt sander and adds carved details with a rotary tool. Then she injects life into the work with multiple layers of water-based paints and graphite drawings, achieving a soft finish with layers of matte varnish.

Kaiser hasn’t always created sculpture. She has roots in the fine art world. After earning degrees from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Tufts University in Medford, Mass., in the 1970s, Kaiser pursued large figurative wall sculpture and worked at a Boston gallery repairing papier-maché and metal sculpture. “The work was very exacting,” she says. “I got pretty obsessive about it. This was where I learned many of the skills that are used in my work today.”

Kaiser’s current work consists of two main lines: what she calls “Anxieties”—3-inch-high, brightly painted sculptures with wild hair and personalities to match—and limited-edition small sculpture.

The Anxieties never start as sketches—they appear in batches of 10. An extra day in the studio in 2005 led to the first set. “The Anxieties are neuroses, psychoses,” she explains. Each is given unique features, both emulating and suppressing an assigned emotion.

In 2008, when looking for a bridge between her Anxieties and one-of-a-kind sculpture, Kaiser decided to try limited-edition, small-scale sculpture.

The bottom line? “I want my pieces to have multiple meanings and interpretations,” Kaiser says. “The world is complicated; we are complicated in the world.”

View her work at www.christinekaiser.com.

Crescent Moon at The Cotton Exchange

Joan and Mike Loch, co-owners
Wilmington, N.C.

How do this year’s sales compare to recent years’? Are you seeing a consistent decline or a slow improvement?

We are below last year approximately 22% and approximately 32% behind 2007. Starting in July of this year we have seen a consistent improvement, and we anticipate making up for the sluggish first part of 2009 during the upcoming holiday season.

Are you projecting more positive numbers for 2010? What are you doing now to keep customers shopping?

Yes, absolutely. We continue to do what we do well, and that is build relationships with our customers and offer great customer service.

Have you tried any new promotions in the last two quarters?

We are very small in square footage, so in-store events are not feasible for us. We have become the gallery for local glass artists, now totaling 10, and that has provided us several avenues of promotion.

How has the economy affected your marketing budget? Are you adding, subtracting or keeping an even keel?

We have literally stopped all print ads. But we can afford to do that because we are located in a historic group of buildings that houses 26 shops and four restaurants with a merchants’ association that has a decent budget to promote the entire complex.

What we have increased is our networking. Our name recognition has increased considerably with our Facebook and Twitter presence, and with meeting new people at local networking functions.

What changes did you make to your inventory mix during the economic downturn? What types of items are selling best right now?

Prior to the economic downturn we were 90% art glass and 10% metal sculpture, and we only had four local artists out of our normal 70 artists on display. We have increased our metal artists and our local artists. We found our functional art sales have increased, including items such as fan pulls, wine stoppers, bowls and vases.