Neon artists Meryl Pataky and Kelsey Issel bend glass to its limits in this year’s edition of The Rockwell Museum’s Antigravity installation. A site-specific work of art created for the Museum’s rotunda, Pataky and Issel, founders of the neon workers collective, She Bends, True Gravity references textiles and investigates the idea of “true gravity:” a condition in which the body yields to what the material and the environment already intend.

Working within tensions of hard and soft, control and happenstance, and isolation and interdependence, Pataky and Issel’s sculptural neon invites the viewer to rethink the potential of glass and light.

As part of their week-long residency to install at The Rockwell Museum, Pataky and Issel were invited to the Corning Museum of Glass’s Amphitheater Hot Shop, allowing them to experiment with new techniques that bring their artistic vision to life in glass. See this installation at The Rockwell Museum in Corning, NY through March 2027.

In this short video you will discover the signature process for making an Aquascape Glass sculpture created by artist Sean Free Alcala. Sean is a second generation glass artist who has been working with glass for over twenty years and aims to capture the flow of water within his dynamic glass forms. His technique combines glass fusing principles and kiln-casting techniques, as well as various hot glass elements. This video also shows different cold working tools that can be used to shape, polishing and  finish glass sculptures. The three dimensional sculpture is a unique example of how glass can capture color, form and interior composition.

Visit Sean at booth #9 at the fabulous ACGA Clay & Glass Festival coming back to the Palo Alto Art Center the weekend of July 11-12, 2026, with 130+ of California’s most celebrated artists.

Come for the art, stay for the Throwdown and demos. Valet parking, food trucks, and Clay for All.More information at link in bio.

Featured: Sean Alcala:  https://alcaladesigns.com

@paloaltoartcenter  @theacga #craftinamerica #handwork2026

Explore the artistic process and inspiration of textile artist Holly Guertin in this PA Fibershed Meet the Makers member highlight. Here, Guertin is working on artworks that are included in her debut solo exhibition, Hand in Hand, at Waterworks Visual Arts Center with Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026 by Craft in America.

This video series by PA Fibershed offers an in-depth look at Pennsylvania’s textile value chain, sustainable textiles, and the growing movement to rebuild a local, regenerative fiber economy. Discover how makers like Holly are reimagining textile design through upcycling, natural fibers, and circular fashion practices, while actively contributing to a more resilient and regionally based textile system.

Explore Holly’s work:https://hollyguertin.com/

Learn more about PA Fibershed: https://pafibershed.org/

April Zilber makes musical glass bell plates with fused glass and metal foil. Each bell plate is tuned to two notes. Depending on the ratio of length to width, the notes make the musical interval of a minor third, major third, fourth, fifth, and so on. More information @aprilzilberglass .

Meet the artist in person at the fabulous ACGA Clay & Glass Festival is coming back to the Palo Alto Art Center the weekend of July 11-12, 2026 with 130+ of California’s most celebrated artists.

Come for the art, stay for the Throwdown and demos. Valet parking, food trucks, and Clay for All.  More information @theacga

Every piece has a story, and at the festival, you get to hear it directly from the makers themselves.

Discover work from 130+ juried California artists and find pieces that speak to you, whether you’re a longtime collector or buying your very first handmade work.

#MeetTheArtists #ClayAndGlassFestival #CaliforniaArtists #Handwork2026

In this short video, Hannah and Alana of Nicholson van Altena Glass create a California Poppy Vessel from their Cactus Vessel Series. During the video, Alana explains how the women began their journey in glass and what they hope to achieve with their artwork.

Artist Sara Garden Armstrong reflects on her career in hand papermaking and discusses her artistic process, as part of the exhibition Legacies in Paper.

Legacies in Paper is an exhibit celebrating the lifelong exploration of hand papermaking in the artworks of Nancy Cohen, Sara Garden Armstrong, and Helen Hiebert, significant pioneers in developing paper as an artistic and sculptural medium.

Legacies in Paper was on display at the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking in Atlanta, GA from September 4, 2025 – January 30, 2026.

Artist Nancy Cohen reflects on her career in hand papermaking and discusses her artistic process, as part of the exhibition Legacies in Paper.

Legacies in Paper is an exhibit celebrating the lifelong exploration of hand papermaking in the artworks of Nancy Cohen, Sara Garden Armstrong, and Helen Hiebert, significant pioneers in developing paper as an artistic and sculptural medium.

Legacies in Paper was on display at the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking in Atlanta, GA from September 4, 2025 – January 30, 2026.

Artist Helen Hiebert reflects on her career in hand papermaking and and discusses her artistic process, as part of the exhibition Legacies in Paper.

Legacies in Paper is an exhibit celebrating the lifelong exploration of hand papermaking in the artworks of Nancy Cohen, Sara Garden Armstrong, and Helen Hiebert, significant pioneers in developing paper as an artistic and sculptural medium.

Legacies in Paper was on display at the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking in Atlanta, GA from September 4, 2025 – January 30, 2026.

Nest is a nonprofit that understands the importance of handcraft and the meaning it can hold for every life it touches. By uplifting and investing in diverse artisans, their stories, and their handcraft, Nest creates ripples of impact that ensure the world is not only more beautiful, but more equitable and sustainable too.

Informed by artisan and maker perspectives, Nest’s programs are thoughtfully designed to prepare creative entrepreneurs with the training, resources, and opportunities they need to grow and sustain their businesses. And, the best part is – all are provided at no cost for makers and artisans ensuring accessibility, equitable, and sustainable access!

Visit buildanest.org to learn more!

M&S Schmalberg Flowers

A glimpse into the handmade process at M&S Schmalberg, the last remaining fabric flower factory in the United States. Starting with a simple piece of fabric, the video follows the transformation through vintage die cutting, embossing, and hand assembly, ending with a finished flower made entirely by hand in New York City.

Marcus Mitchell, former Making Whole apprentice turned concrete lead and mentor, shares a portion of his recovery story and speaks to the magic this program can offer when you both surrender and commit to the process.

“My father was only interested in traditional design and I wasn’t satisfied with that. I would like to make something that hasn’t been made before.”– Evert Sodergren

Born in 1920, a fourth generation furniture maker, Evert Sodergren grew up in a family of Swedish immigrants in Seattle, Washington. From the age of 15, working alongside his father, he learned both the art and economics of building fine furniture. In 1939 he went to work at the Boeing Company where for eight years he built test model aircraft — exacting work done to precise tolerances that was critical to the war effort.

In the 1950’s, Sodergren Furniture, the custom shop he founded with his father, began producing his original designs for modern furniture. From his sojourn in the aircraft industry, he carried a dedication to precision, advanced skills in metal fabrication (he creates almost all of the hardware for his furniture), and innovative ideas using techniques and materials developed for aircraft.

It was unheard of at that time for a custom shop to create work on speculation. The custom market was for kitchen cabinets and historic reproductions produced on commission. Evert’s pioneering efforts to get contemporary woodworking in front of the public grew into the acceptance of woodworking as an art to be displayed in galleries and exhibitions.

From 1952 – 1978 Evert taught furniture design and construction to architecture, interior and industrial design students at the University of Washington. But it is through maintaining the traditional apprenticeship system in his own shop, that Evert Sodergren passes on the skills, high standards, and survival techniques necessary for a life, lived well, in the crafts.

Evert Sodergren maintains his shop, Sodergren Atelier, where he prides himself on the ability to solve any design problem presented to him by a client. He has worked with some of the finest architects and designers in the region. For more information about his work, see his Web site: www.sodergrenfurniture.com

“The purpose of art is to create wonder”.

Over 50 years ago Harold Balazs quit his day-job. Armed with talent, ambition, an art degree, and an acetylene torch, he set out to make a living making art in Spokane, Washington. He has succeeded, but not without struggle. Mastering the economics of an artist’s life led him to master an incredible array of media. Harold Balazs is a sculptor, a painter, an enamelist, a jeweler, a woodcarver, a calligrapher, a public artist and more. He defies categorization.

Balazs’ architectural and public works can be seen all over the Northwest. His contributions to architecturally integrated art, often utilizing new materials and techniques, helped revive the importance of the individual craftsman at a time when civic architecture seemed its most anonymous. His collaborations with important regional architects have made an indelible impression on Northwest architecture. By the mid 1960’s Harold Balazs had become the leading liturgical artist in the Northwest.Harold Balazs artwork

His experience in public art led to three terms as a Washington State Arts Commissioner. He helped draft Washington State’s “percent for art” legislation.

Harold Balazs is internationally known for his large-scale enamels on steel. His ingenious techniques and ability to adapt studio practice to industrial settings has broadened the approach many artists use in enameling, expanding the possibilities for the medium.

Through his wide ranging artwork, his technical innovations, his generosity towards other artists and his omnivorous humanism, Harold Balazs has made himself an asset in the arts. His story is of value to us all.

“More than anyone, Russell set an example of what it was to live a life that revolved around art.” Dale Chihuly

As an art educator for over 30 years, Russell Day influenced the lives of many. Believing the aesthetic experience extends to every aspect of life, he inspired his students to engage all their senses, experience their total environment, and to strive for excellence. Russell Day’s teaching had such incredible impact because his subject was much larger than the classroom. It was not about how to make art but how to be an artist.Russell Day jewelry piece

From 1948 to 1976 he led an innovative art department at Everett Community College that became a model program in the field of post-secondary art education. The rigorous system that he built produced many fine artists including celebrated painter Chuck Close. In his personal art, Day was the first Northwest artist to work experimentally with glass and light modulation. With no literature available, or access to facilities and supplies, he experimented extensively, fusing every kind of glass he could find into monumental concrete walls, glass doors, fountains, lighting and intricate jewelry for the table and body. In this realm he was an early mentor for Dale Chihuly.

This documentary profile is third in the Living Treasures video series, sponsored and produced by Northwest Designer Craftsmen. Living Treasures documents the work, philosophy and achievements of the Northwest’s most influential senior craft professionals.

“I’m willing to put almost anything into a piece of jewelry if I think it works!”

As artist, teacher, author, lecturer and collector, Ramona Solberg is a pioneer in the contemporary jewelry movement and a Living Treasure. Her passionate interest in other cultures and a lifetime spent finding objects of interest in all corners of the map has led her to a distinct and personal style that transcends her modernist background. Rarely using precious materials in her jewelry, Solberg conveys new meaning and value onto a collage of cultural flotsam culled from her travels. Raised in Seattle, with degrees from the University of Washington and study abroad in Norway and Mexico, Ramona Solberg places a high value on her career as a teacher. An important aspect of her legacy will be the many artists of significance who count her as inspiration, influence and mentor.

Beginning as an art teacherRamona Solberg necklace in Seattle Public Schools, she later served on the faculties of Central Washington University and the University of Washington. Retired from the University of Washington in 1983, she still teaches and lectures in workshops around the nation.

Ramona Solberg’s work can be found in the collection of the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Museum of Contemporary Craft, and many other museums and private collections. She is a Fellow and Trustee Emeritus of the American Craft Council, and past recipient of the Washington State Governor’s Art Award.

This documentary profile is second in the Living Treasures video series, sponsored and produced by the Northwest Designer Craftsmen. Living Treasures documents the work, philosophy and achievements of some of the Northwest’s most venerable and influential artisans and crafts advocates.

he Living Treasures Project Committee keeps a vetted list of candidate artists and art advocates, each of which has met the selection standards it set down at the start of the project. In short, anyone selected for a project must be a leader, mentor of other artists, motivator, and innovator. It should be no surprise that Lloyd Herman has always been near the top of that list. As founding director of the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in 1972, Lloyd’s dream was to have craft, art and design join its rightful place among the Smithsonian’s family of museums in the heart of the nation’s capitol for all to learn and enjoy the world over. He’s done that, and much more.

In the thirty-one years since retiring from the Smithsonian Institution, he has continued to curate exhibitions on craft and design topics for such clients as the United States Information Agency, the Smithsonian Institution and various museums and traveling exhibition services. He has lectured on American crafts throughout the United States, and in Australia, Canada, England, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, Pakistan and Japan, and has juried numerous art competitions in the United States and abroad.

He is an Honorary Lifetime Member of Northwest Designer Craftsmen, a member of the American Alliance of Museums, an honorary member of the American Society of Interior Designers, an honorary Fellow of the American Craft Council, trustee/secretary of the Highline Historical Society, and has been decorated by the monarchs of Denmark and Belgium for exhibitions that he organized on the crafts of their countries.

Tip Toland is a courageous ceramic artist and sculptor, both in the scale of her work and her choice of subjects. Her work is in many major collections across the country, including the Renwick Smithsnonion Gallery and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This documentary tells the story of her life, through the good and hard, which formed the artist she is today…

Enjoy this documentary on the life of Seattle jewelry artist, teacher, and world traveler, Ron Ho. He enjoyed local and national prominence as a contemporary jewelry artist and teacher. His work is in the permanent collections of several museums, including the prestigious Houston Museum of Fine Arts Helen Williams Drutt Jewelry Collection, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Tacoma Art Museum Studio Art Jewelry Collection. An oral history of his life is also held at the Smithsonian Institution.

“My father said this and I repeat it,
‘If you don’t support your artists you
won’t have them’.”

Anne Gould Hauberg was a dedicated patron and advocate for the arts and individual artists for over sixty-five years. She was a lifelong resident of Seattle where she held a central position in the establishment of organizations that offer support for artists in both the Pacific Northwest and national arts communities, art classes for therapy, and artistic development for children at risk. She was the founder, in partnership with John Hauberg and Dale Chihuly, of Pilchuck Glass School, launched the Pacific Northwest Arts Council of the Seattle Art Museum, and founded Friends of the Crafts as well as Pacific Art Center.

In recognition of her vision Anne Gould Hauberg has been granted many awards including the American Craft Museum Visionary Award, American Craft Council Aileen Osburn Webb Award, and the King County Arts Commission Service Award. She served two terms on Seattle Arts Commission and served on the Board of Directors of Museum of Glass: International Center for Contemporary Art, Tacoma Art Museum, and Pletscheef Institute.

“Learn more than anyone else knows about a single subject and the world will beat a path to your door.”

As a young woman, in the 1930’s, Virginia Harvey developed an interest in weaving. Over the next sixty-five years that interest led her to become one of the most influential individuals of her generation to write, teach, publish, and research the textile arts. Two of her books, “Macramé, The Art of Creative Knotting” and “Techniques of Basketry” have influenced generations of artists and craftsmen. Both introduced new ideas and techniques that are now a standard part macramé cupof the artistic vernacular.

Virginia was the first curator of the Costume and Textile Study Center at the University of Washington where she designed a storage system for textiles that was so innovative it was adopted by countless institutions around the world and is still in use today. Her ingenious system for cataloging textiles, initiated in the 1950s, has become invaluable to museums and textile researchers and continues on an international level.

A lifetime of mentoring, teaching, and research led to Virginia’s induction as an Honorary Fellow of the American Craft Council. Her sharp intellect and graciousness put her at the center in a web of personal and professional contacts, sharing information about plaiting, knotting, wrapping, and weaving with craftsmen – both professional and amateur, museum professionals, art historians, industrial designers, and space scientists. This video will give you a glimpse of the vast impact an individual can make when armed with curiosity, dedication and a generous spirit.

“the biggest inspiration has been that I’ve been able to combine the ideas of art with the ideas of science into something that makes visual sense to me”.

Robert Sperry was an artist profoundly interested in new understanding and new ways of seeing the world. In the Northwest, his bright creative imagination lit the way for other artists to follow, as teacher, mentor and friend. Robert Sperry was an extraordinary risk-taker in the arts. He was intensely interested in visual ideas and their evolution, and he was fascinated with the interaction of materials. Although best known as a ceramic artist, Robert Sperry was also a printmaker, a painter, and a film maker, producing documentary, narrative, and experimental pieces.

This video documentary gives us a brief impression of his remarkable journey – his life, his work, his thoughts, his times and his humanity – as related to us through his voice and the Robert Sperry ceramic plate voices of his community of colleagues – a community that he was so instrumental in building.

In 1954 with a freshly minted BFA from The Art Institute of Chicago, Bob went to the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana to work with Peter Voulkos and Rudy Autio. The Archie Bray Foundation was ground zero at an extremely exciting and innovative time for the field of ceramics. From Montana Bob moved on to the University of Washington where he earned his MFA and immediately joined the art faculty. As Chair of the Ceramics Program, he promoted experimentation grounded in technical excellence and fostered an atmosphere of keen debate and exchange. He deeply cared about his students, fostering many budding artists on to important careers. He retired as professor emeritus in 1982, but continued teaching part-time. In his last years he focused on creating computer-generated art. A man of passion and humor, Robert Sperry died in 1998.

Originally presented on Zoom Sunday, April 26 2026

We will take a look at the key work that has shaped Kristina’s career as an artist to date. This talk is open to the public and part of Handwork 2026. Kristina is a minimalist ceramic artist based in Tacoma and Los Alamos, CA, making sculptural and functional work, incorporating concepts and ideas from social commentary and has been in the NWDC since 2023.

Amid the rack and clatter of floor looms turning spooled fibers into yards of colorful cloth, spirited voices rise over the din at the Hartford Artisans Weaving Center.

Artisans with visual impairment, including those who have totally lost their sight, and people over the age of 55 practice this daunting skill of hand weaving in a community of like-minded individuals who love the craft.

An intimate look at a creative partnership decades in the making, this Exhibition Insights episode explores the life, work, and legacy of George and David Lewis. Reflecting on their journey from the 1980s to today, the episode highlights how their shared passions—for art, gardens, architectural history, and water features—grew into a deeply rooted creative practice.

Through personal reflections and a look at their iconic designs and sculptures, we step into their artistic process and enduring partnership. Tied to their retrospective “Deeply Rooted,” this episode honors not only their body of work, but their lasting impact on the Bainbridge Island community and beyond.