The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design (CCCD) has launched ENEWS to keep you current with all our programs, exhibits and events. ENEWS will be sent out monthly with most news linking to more lengthy information found on our website www.craftcreativitydesign.org. Announcements cards will still be mailed for upcoming exhibits and talks. If you are on our mailing list to receive an announcement card for exhibits and would prefer to receive the information through ENEWS, please let us know and it will save us a stamp!

On May 8, The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design will be opening its summer exhibition IT'S ONLY NATURAL: Current work by Artists of the Rudnick Nature Trail. The Perry N. Rudnick Trail showcases work that demonstrates the ability of public art to interpret and/or enhance the natural environment for trails and greenways. This exhibit showcases recent work by 12 of the 14 artists whose sculpture comprises the public art residing on the Perry N. Rudnick Nature Trail and 50-acre grounds of the UNC Asheville Kellogg Center in Hendersonville. David Nash, Harry McDaniel, Sean Pace and J. Roberts and (2003); Roger Halligan and David Tillinghast (2005); as well as Fred and Kato Guggenheim, Dan Millspaugh, Rudy Rudisill, Scott Strader and Cynthia Wynn (2006) are among the featured artists in this exhibition, whose works range from the Minimal to the whimsical.

Elegant Minimalist compositions range from the clean geometry of Fred and Kato Guggenheim's concrete, glass and steel sculpture The Chains that Bind Us to the Daniel Millspaugh's tributes to Modernism, the richly textured, organic cast bronzes Saarinen's Harem and Homage to Man Ray.

Rudy Rudisill and Roger Halligan employ surface as a source of exploration. Characterized by their richly patinated surfaces, stairways and structures, Rudy Rudisill's galvanized steel, architectonic sculptures allude to the universal themes of shelter and passage, of mankind and of time. Roger Halligan's color saturated, mixed-media "cement" drawings Untitled with Blue Vertical and What's Inside serve as spontaneous sketches. He describes them as "a random search of symbols, owing as much to early cave art as [they do] to the Abstract Expressionists."

David Tillinghast will be creating two site specific installations within the CCCD galleries, drawing his materials of choice directly from the environment.

Sculptures by Harry McDaniel, Cynthia Wynn, and Sean Pace exude freshness and whimsicality. McDaniel employs humor to make a poignant commentary on the modern-day, pill-popping culture in Fetishes; explores a clean, Calder-inspired aesthetic in his mobile Nebula II; and transforms a child's toy into visually compelling Op Art Jack-In-the-Box. Wynn weds form, function and fantasy in her furniture. Comprising wrenches ranging from the diminutive to the colossal, her iron and steel Wrench Chair, will delight tool and furniture aficionados alike and conjure the kid in all of us! Perhaps the most intriguing among them is Sean Pace's kinetic Death Slapping Machine, in which a rubber chicken collides repetitively with a smiling skull. Perhaps laughing in the face of death is the best medicine?

In 2002, The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design received a multi-year grant from The Perry N. Rudnick Foundation for the design and construction of the Trail; the commissioning of eight of the fourteen currently existing sculptures. A second grant was awarded to the Center in 2007, supporting the publishing of public art trail maps; two large kiosks outlining the history of the trail and its properties; and signage about the plants found therein.

The CCCD gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 1-5pm. For a map and directions see the CCCD website: www.craftcreativitydesign.org

Karen-eve Pfotzer, has returned to her North Carolina roots after many years as a storyteller in England. Bring a blanket and picnic lunch or sit at one of the picnic tables as Karen-eve tells the stories and legends of Appalachia. Following the botanical walk Karen will lead a second walk of the trail telling stories behind the popular names of plants, such as jack-in-the-pulpit and the hearts abustin' plant.

Larason Lambert, and the Western Carolina Botanical Club inventoried plants in various seasons to create a plant inventory of the Rudnick Nature Trail from at the Community section of the CCCD website. Wear your hiking shoes for a half-mile hike through the hardwoods and wetlands of the South Trail to track down pink lady slippers and jack-in-the-pulpits, and count the variety of ferns along the trail. (1:30 pm)

The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design is pleased to announce the 2007 Windgate Fellowship Awards of $15,000 to ten graduating seniors.

The Windgate Fellowship Award program was established to help encourage and advance the development of serious, innovative artists in the United States whose work is in some way related to, or informed by, the process, material, or idea of craft. Fifty-four partner institutions are asked to develop a careful selection process to help identify two graduating who best meet the following criteria:

The panel selected a first and second alternate in the event one or more of the students selected would not longer be able to pursue the proposal submitted.

Each of the fifty-four partner universities were invited to nominate two graduating seniors who they felt best exemplified the above criteria. Eighty-one students completed the online application, uploading 10 images of their work and a proposal on how this award would advance their artistic goals and career. Panel members for the 2007 awards included: Glenn Adamson, Head of Graduate Studies, Research Department ,Victoria & Albert Museum, London (previously curator, Milwaukee Art Musuem); JoAnn Edwards, Director, San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design; Bennett Bean, painter, ceramic artist New Jersey; Robyn Horn, wood sculptor and collector, Arkansas.

This is the second year The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design has administered the Windgate Museum Internship Award program, providing $5,000 to four museums for paid internships. The goal of the program is to provide experience working with craft collections and exhibitions to future curators. CCCD contacts partner university museum study programs of the opportunities, and lists on ENEWS. The applicants apply directly to the museum that selects and pays the intern.

The sixth annual North Carolina Craft Retreat (referred to as a "Craft Think-Tank") was convened at the Kellogg Conference Center, April 12-15. Participants, representing national leaders in the field of craft - museum directors, faculty, deans, authors and editors, spent two days in discussions on seven topics

Center for Craft, Creativity and Design Board Members and Staff participating

In 2002 the field determined the most important way to advance craft in the United States was to document its' history as a way to expand the craft history courses offered in universities. Since 2004, Janet Koplos, Senior Editor Art in America, and co-author Bruce Metcalf, have spent more than three years researching and writing 20th Century American Studio Craft as a history that can also be used as an undergraduate text. The manuscript is now at the publisher, the University of North Carolina Press and expected to be released by next year. A heartfelt thank-you goes out to Janet and Bruce for taking on this monumental task with a love of the field that has only grown in the process.

THREE-HOURS ON PBS YOU CAN'T MISS!

Wednesday, May 30th, 8pm
Join us at the Kellogg Center for popcorn, drinks and a BIG SCREEN TV

CRAFT IN AMERICA: Memory, Landscape, Community
Three Part PBS Series

May 30, 2007, millions of Americans will discover the importance that craftsmanship has played in the founding and future of our country with the premiere of CRAFT IN AMERICA: Memory, Landscape, Community, a three-part high-definition series on PBS. For more details on other parts of the project see www.craftinamerica.org

Part I - Memory the first segment in the CRAFT IN AMERICA series takes a personal tour through craft's history in America beginning with the pioneers of the field. This episode juxtaposes the intimate stories of some of our country's most prominent craft artists against the larger historical context of craft itself.

Part II - Landscape the second episode focuses on the relationship between the artists and their physical environment. Craft artists depend on their natural environment for both materials and inspiration. This hour will look at the processes through which natural materials become finished works of craft, and what deeper messages may be contained therein.

Part III - Community Throughout time, craft work has been a community activity. This hour will focus on the spiritual connection artists have to their communities through craft making. Some express the ideas, beliefs and desires of their community through their craft objects. Some pay homage to the community by continuing craft traditions that are in danger of being lost. Others actually perform their craft as a community project. The personal stories of gifted artists and passionate newcomers alike reveal the deeply held belief that craft is about more than just the making of an object - it is also about a way of life, a reason for being.

Free admission but please RSVP by May 28 to tgibson@craftcreativitydesign.org

The Craft Center gallery will be open at 7pm for those who want to come early. The Craft and Kellogg Centers are located at 1181 Broyles Road, between Hwy 64 west and South Rugby. View map and directions

The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design is an inter-institutional Center of the University of North Carolina.

The mission of the regional UNC Center is to support and advance craft, creativity and design in education and research, and, through community collaborations, to demonstrate ways that craft and design provide creative solutions to community issues. The mission of the nonprofit CCCD is to support the mission of the UNC center through funding, programs, and outreach to artists, craft organizations, schools in the community, region and nation.