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!

In 1995, the staff of HandMade in America and dozens of volunteers collected data for a study conducted by Dr. Dave and Dr. Evans, of the Center for Business Research, Appalachian State University. This study revealed that the craft industry in Western North Carolina contributed approximately $122 million annually to the North Carolina economy! As a result, the business world took note, that craft artisans in the aggregate were a significant source of entrepreneurial activity in the mountains.

Twelve years after the first study, it has become increasingly important to document the economic impact of craft on Western North Carolina's economy. Beginning October 1, 2007, Drs. Dave, Evans and Stoddard will implement a concerted effort to collect current data, through the distribution and collection of surveys. Their final report will be submitted in August, 2008. The following organizations and institutions are supporting this study and reaching out to all involved with the craft industry to provide the most thorough survey data for this update: UNC Center for Craft, Creativity and Design, together with HandMade in America, Haywood Community College Professional Crafts Program, UNC Asheville Craft Campus, Southern Highland Craft Guild, Penland School of Crafts, The Blue Ridge National Heritage Area. Numerous local arts agencies in the 25 counties comprising Western North Carolina will be participating as well.

If you are one of the talented craft artisans in this region, you may receive more than one survey in the mail because of the number of organizations supporting this effort. Please fill out only ONE and give any extra to craft artists that may not have received a survey. You can also download the pdf of the survey, fill out and mail to: PO Box 1127, Hendersonville, NC 28793. The survey will also be available for electronic submission later this month.

If you are a consumer, look for the volunteers at area craft fairs and - please take the time to complete a survey. This is a critical component of the study and we need your help.

Gardens for Alterra Institute for Environmental Research, Wageningen, Netherlands serving as the "lungs and kidneys" of the building, cleaning air and gray water, and providing comfortable climate control without air-conditioning

An exhibition of enlarged photographic images, drawings and models of Michael Singer's projects demonstrating creative solutions to urban infrastructure demands worldwide. at the CCCD Galleries through Saturday October 20.

The exhibit be on view at UNC Asheville Highsmith Gallery
October 23-November 13, 2007
M-F 9am-9pm Sat/Sun 9am - 6pm

Thinking Green is not new for artist/designer/planner Michael Singer. He has transformed infrastructure projects that communities need to survive- the power plant, landfill, waste treatment facility - into attractive public spaces. He challenges us to consider "Can we live with what sustains us?" Are there ways to treat waste water that also enhance the environment and landscape? Can a power company be green?

Michael Singer's work in the area of public infrastructure began in the early 1990's when he received to public art commission to work in the design of the massive solid waste treatment recycling and transfer station in Phoenix. The completed project was applauded by the Architectural Record, Landscape Architecture and even Governing magazine and was chosen one of the top eight design events of the year by the New York Times in 1993. His concepts for the facility were revolutionary, reducing the cost of construction and transforming it into not only an educational venue but also a tourist draw.

Singer began as an artist/sculptor with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His work resides in prestigious collections throughout the U.S. and abroad, including New York's Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art. Throughout the 1970's and 1980s Michael Singer's work opened new possibilities for outdoor and indoor sculpture, contributing to the definition of site specific art and the development of public places.

From 2002-2005 he was the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Arts, School of Arts and Letters, Florida Atlantic University where he now serves as the Special Advisor to the Dean. His work over the last fifteen years has been instrumental in transforming public art, architecture, landscape and planning projects into successful models for urban and ecological renewal.

At the beginning of the Fall semester, 2007, three student teams enrolled in the Appalachian State University Design Program were charged with he creation of an exhibit design to highlight the creative process that all Industrial Designers experience. On September 26, they arrived at the CCCD with their instructor Banks Talley for a critique by CCCD Director Dian Magie. According to Magie, the results of these students' "amazing design concepts and talents" will be unveiled in Industrial Design: Concept to Creation. "The space will be transformed in unexpected ways for viewers familiar with CCCD galleries." MARK YOUR CALENDARS for Banks Talley's TALK Saturday, November 10, 4pm! He will discuss his impressive career in Industrial Design, the field, and the career options for students. The lecture will be presented in the Kellogg Center, followed by a reception for Talley and his 15 students in the Craft Center gallery.

In July 2007, we began a monthly focus the 2006 Windgate Fellows, featuring one Fellow each month. Windgate Fellowships are $15,000. In 2006 fifty-four universities across the United States, with strong craft programs, each nominated two students. Students then completed an online application with images and a proposal. A jury of artists, curators, and craft scholars selected the ten winning students. Following the award, Fellows enter images and text in an online journal that describe the successes and challenges they encounter as they apply the Fellowship to their proposal. You can see the images, and read the proposals and journals of all ten 2006 and 2007 Windgate Fellows at www.craftcreativitydesign.org/research/windgate.php

26" high x 16" wide vessel, Turkey Creek pipe clay with white slip and alkaline glaze Copus new work from first firing in new kiln; "The Community Temple" a Three-chambered woodfired kiln

In my experience the transformation from being a student of art to a working artist is one of the hardest transitions that a young artist will make. School, while challenging in many ways, is amazingly supportive and ultimately designed to promote the highest level of creativity in a student. While in school, an artist generally has access to a huge array of expensive equipment and a community of supportive teachers and peers to assist them in their pursuits. Unfortunately, this is not always the case after graduation and I have seen many talented artists bow to the realities of bill paying once they are severed from the infrastructure of the university. The Windgate Fellowship that I received in 2006 has provided the financial support necessary for me to make this difficult transition.

Using the funds from the Fellowship as my financial base, I have purchased two acres of land, remodeled a 1975 Airstream trailer to live in, built a 1300 square foot shed, built a 27 foot long 3-chamber wood-burning kiln, and fired it twice...all since February. While the Windgate Fellowship has hardly paid for all of this, it did give me the breathing room necessary to make it happen, and perhaps most importantly it provided the impetus for me to do it now instead of waiting. It has been my dream for a long time to own a piece of land and to establish my own pottery and I have no doubt that I would have eventually succeeded in doing so, but it definitely would not have happened this fast without the support of the Fellowship.

The Windgate Fellowship has helped me to realize my goals and set me on the path to becoming a successful working artist in Western North Carolina. It has allowed me to continue my work in this area, a place that I believe is at the center of a very important movement in the resurgence of craft arts. Most importantly, the Fellowship offered me the opportunity to not only help myself but to extend that assistance to other young artist in the same position. My kiln, which is aptly named 'The Community Temple', serves as the main kiln for members of the Clayspace Co-op, a cooperative studio of young artist in the river district of Asheville, and provides all of us with a consistent place to fire our work as we strive to achieve a higher level of professionalism. In addition to the members of Clayspace, some UNCA students came out to help with the construction and firing of the kiln, and it is my hope that this experience can serves as an positive example to them and any students of ceramics trying hard to make that transition. I believe that all of us together can make significant contributions to the field of ceramics and 'The Community Temple' is a good place to start doing it.

For more images of work by members of Clayspace go to www.clayspace.org and for a chronicle of Josh's last year see www.looseleafnotes.com under Asheville potter son.

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. The 55+ partner institutions across the country develop a careful selection process to identify two graduating seniors who best meet the following criteria:

Their work must demonstrate a balance of content and design and a mastery of materials
Their work must in some way be informed by craft process, materials, traditions and/or sensibilities
Successful applicants will demonstrate innovation and curiosity, be committed to growth of their own work, and show evidence of how their work might stimulate creative thinking or dialogue among other artists.

SOFA CHICAGO 2007, the 14th annual international exposition of Sculpture Objects & Functional Art, returns to Navy Pier's Festival Hall, Nov. 2-4 to present masterworks bridging design and fine art from nearly 100 international galleries and dealers and 18 countries. 19 exhibitors are presenting for the first time, joining galleries from the USA, France, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, Italy, New Zealand, Israel, England, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Korea, Argentina, Ireland, Switzerland and Turkey.

This acclaimed art fair also features a Lecture Series of renowned artists, critics and museum curators in 31 presentations. Among the seven special exhibits this year is Offering Reconciliation, an emotionally moving exhibition and auction of 135 works of art by prominent Palestinian and Israeli painters, sculptors and photographers. Direct from its exhibition at the World Bank and United Nations, Offering Reconciliation offers a provocative look at the theme of reconciliation, In addition, Contemporary Furniture at Crab Tree Farm showcases cutting-edge furniture made on the premises of Crab Tree Farm, a working farm on the shores of Lake Michigan, owned by Chicago art collector and philanthropist John H. Bryan. Works by renowned UK designer John Makepeace, who will attend SOFA CHICAGO, Mike Jarvi and Critz Campbell, both of whom studied under Makepeace, will be featured. John H. Bryan is a past chairman of the Board of Trustees of The Art Institute of Chicago and the Chairman of Millennium Park, Inc.

This is the fourth year that the CCCD will have a booth in the Resource Area. Please come visit and see previews of the video documentary Soul's Journey: Inside the Creative Process.

American Craft is not a new magazine - a publication of the American Craft Council it has been around for decades. But look for the October 2007 issue, the design relaunch spearheaded by new editor Andrew Wagner. Wagner was founding and senior editor of DWELL magazine before moving to American Craft. Be sure to read the article, "Worrying About the Modern World," pp. 121-128, by Paul Greenhalgh, Director and President of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and its College of Art and Design. Greenhalgh is well known for his writing on the field of craft. The essay points to the consequences of American craft's absence in 20th Century art history. "History functions on any living practice - such as the crafts - much the same way that memory operates in any human being. It tells that practice what exactly it is, provides it with language, roots it, differentiates it from other discourses and is essential to its core identity. With a faulty or absent memory, human beings will operate in confused and dysfunctional ways. Similarly, all disciplines need a complex, multilayered sense of their own history to function properly. Let's be candid. The fact that the crafts lack such a history has impoverished them unspeakably: they are, sadly, the culturally tragic equivalent of Alzheimer's disease." (pp 124-125, American Craft, October, 2007)

At the first "Think-Tank" convened by CCCD in 2002, the invited craft faculty, museum director and curators, scholars and critics, ranked a history of American craft in the twentieth Century as the most important initiative to advance craft. The journey toward making this a reality can be tracked on www.craftcreativitydesign.org/research/history.php. 20th Century American Studio Craft by Janet Koplos and Bruce Metcalf is with the publisher, the University of North Carolina Press. Long awaited, the book, researched and written under the auspices of CCCD, will include 500+ images and also serve as an undergraduate text. The University of North Carolina Press is making craft history and criticism a focus of the Press.

KnitKnit: Profiles and Projects from Knitting's New Wave by Sabrina Gschwandtner is now out, published by Stewart, Tabori and Chang, and available at www.knitknit.net, $29.95. During this fall Sabrina will have a book tour and series of lectures, including a North Carolina book signing in Chapel Hill at Internationalist Books on Franklin Street, 2-6pm November 4, 2007. She is a New York City based artist who received her BA in art/semiotics from Brown University and MFA from Bard College. In 2002, Sabrina founded KnitKnit, a limited edition arts journal dedicated to the intersection of fine arts and handcraft. She has curated and organized numerous exhibitions, including Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting at the Museum of Arts & Design, New York. The book profiles 27 artists who push the practice of knitting to its limits - including sculpture and installation work.

A Theory of Craft; Function and Aesthetic Expression by Howard Risatti. A University of North Carolina Press, http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-7745.html This publication in now out! Look for the beautiful basket image by textile artist Gy�ngy Laky on the cover. Glen R. Brown, Professor, Kansas State University, describes the publication as being "notable for its logically progressive and rigorously philosophical development of a general theory of craft. In arguing his case," says Brown, "Risatti draws upon an extensive knowledge of aesthetics. A Theory of Craft sets an excellent precedent for future research in the field." Howard Risatti is professor emeritus of art history at Virginia Commonwealth University.

New in 2008! The Journal of Modern Craft, edited by Glenn Adamson, Victoria & Albert Museum, UK; Edward S. Cooke, Jr. Yale University, USA; Tanya Harrod, Royal College of Art, UK, is the first peer-reviewed academic journal to provide an interdisciplinary and international forum in its subject area. It address all forms of making that self-consciously set themselves apart from mass production - whether in the making of designed objects, artworks, buildings or other artefacts. Published three times a year in March, July and November - the first issue will be released in March 2008. To place an order/subscription visit www.bergpublishers.com and download order forms or email custerserv@turpin-distribution.com.

Thinking through Craft, by Glenn Adamson, available October 2007 also through www.bergpublishers.com "Adamson asks provocative questions about the marginalization of craft within the discourse of modernism," Pennina Barnett, Goldsmiths College, University of London. 224pp, 50 bw and 16 color images. $29.95 paperback.

November 23-25, 2007 Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
NSCAD University is hosting NeoCraft an international, interdisciplinary conference on the crafts, celebrating 2007 as the Canadian Craft Federation's Year of Craft in Canada. A three-day conference with over sixty juried papers, over a dozen simultaneous craft exhibitions around the city of Halifax, panels on Aboriginal craft and graduate studies in craft history, theory and practice. A book NeoCraft by Sandra Alfoldy, will be launched with the conference. See www.neocraft.ca or contact conference@neocraft.ca.

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.