SEPTEMBER 2024 Newsletter

In this issue:

  • Arden Fair Booth Recap

  • 2025 Website Directory Listings

  • Fall Arden Artisan Social

  • Invitational Group exhibits in conjunction with Delaware Theatre Company 

  • Small Art Show and Winter Market

  • Artisan Book Club picks

  • Arden Club Arts and Crafts Gild

  • Open Meeting for AAC Members

  • Baby Grand Show 2.0

  • Birthday wish list

Happy anniversary AAC! We are 2! Having officially rallied around our formation at the 2022 Arden Fair. We have an exciting lineup for the next lap around the sun. This newsletter contains a few things coming down the pike, as well as information on our organization, and initiatives where we could use some help. Read all about it and plan your involvement.

Recap Arden Fair: For the 3rd year, the AAC has had a booth. This year, Rachel Kantner ran the booth in which six artists (Shay Seaborne, Jeanne Orr, Cookie Ohlson, Lee Hoover, Rachel Kantner, Micah Altman) participated, selling their art and raising awareness for our group. We would like to thank volunteers Alida Fish, Vicki Scott, Cecilia Vore, Rebecca Fisher. And infrastructure lenders: Mary Lou Robinson and Betty/Denis O’Regan. Thanks to all who stopped by to show their support.

FALL INITIATIVES:

2025 Online Directory Listings.  Please read this carefully and in its entirety as some details have changed. It is the time of year to renew your listing in the Arden Artisan Online directory. The fee is $20 per year and allows you a listing from November 1, 2024-October 31, 2025. This money is what pays for the web presence for the whole organization. Participation in the directory is for artists of all levels and sets the stage for all the work we do. Please consider participating if you haven’t in the past.  If you need an artist landing page, we can design one for you for a flat, once-and-done fee of $50. Artisans need to supply a 500 word bio/artist statement, preferably in first person, and 5 images of work to aacupdates@gmail.com. (The page is designed using a template. If you want derivation from this basic template, you may be charged additional design fees at the per hour rate of $30. While we will do some basic tweaks of pages for free, as time passes, extensive changes will also incur these basic fees.) Artisans have until the end of the calendar year to make payment. At that time, we will cull the roster of non-paying artisans. New this year—if you neglect to supply photos, bio to make your page or do not provide a link to your website, your name will not appear in the roster as a place-setting. If you pay for your spot, it is your responsibility to give us the information in a timely manner. 

All webpages should have a link to contact the artist by email and/or links to social media—Facebook or Instagram. Please check your page. If your page doesn’t include these things, we will update them for free. Email aacupdates@Gmail.com and ask that your contact information be updated. Include the email address you want to use as well as any social media links (limit 2).

If you do not have the means to pay for your page and would like to participate, please let someone on the steering committee know. We don't want money to be the reason you don't participate. We will be collecting money for scholarships for this purpose. Consider upping your yearly payment to $25 to help.

Bring your payment to the September 10th Artisan Social if at all possible. Another way to pay is to bring payment on Monday night to Jeanne Orr at open studio at the Buzz.

Fall Arden Artisan Social. Once again we are having a social featuring artists Linda Celestian, Ron Meick, and Sharon Bousquet. Their presentations will be followed by social time and CAKE! It is our birthday, after all. The social will take place September 10, 2024 starting at 7 PM. Yes, it is the same night as the presidential debate. In light of this, we will be ending early at 8:45 so members can go home and watch at 9. Please bring something for the snack table if you are so inclined (or don’t, if you are busy) and a small donation for the Buzz for use of the space. We will be collecting signatures at this event for the creation of the Arts and Crafts Gild. (See below). We are asking people to have their Arden Club memberships in good standing (make sure you re paid up!) so you can sign the petition. 

Group Invitational Art Exhibits. Sadie Somerville is curating two invitation-only group shows of AAC artists in conjunction with theater productions at the Delaware Theatre Company, 200 Water Street; Wilmington. The shows will hang in the lobby for the run of the play and will also be accessible during box office hours. The first exhibit JOY IS ART will coordinate with the theme of the show Every Brilliant Thing and will feature work by Jill Althouse-Wood, Alida Fish, Annette Hearing, Russ McKinney, and Sadie Somerville. The opening reception will take place Friday, November 1 5:30-7:30 PM. The next group exhibit will be in February in conjunction with the play Tuesdays with Morrie. Stay tuned. 

If other members are interested in launching a group show (it can be as few as two members) and want to have it under the AAC umbrella, we have a guide for curating group exhibits. 

Small Art Show and Holiday Market. We will hold this popular event once again. The date of the opening is Friday, December 6 from 5-9 PM. The AAC (point person: Jill Althouse-Wood) will curate the gallery show and the Buzz (Bernadette Donohue) will handle market tables.  Artwork will need to be 18” or smaller in all directions and be for sale. We are using the same parameters as last year. Look to the October newsletter for more details.

Book Club:  On the heels of the success of the Summer Book Club featuring The Steal Like an Artist trilogy, we are working on scheduling two more such events. The first book will be Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Baylis and Ted Orlando. It is widely available in libraries or second-hand. Point person is Jill Althouse-Wood. She is hoping to schedule the discussion for November at the Buzz. Stay tuned.

“Art & Fear explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. The book's co-authors, David Bayles and Ted Orland, are themselves both working artists, grappling daily with the problems of making art in the real world. Their insights and observations, drawn from personal experience, provide an incisive view into the world of art as it is expeienced by artmakers themselves.

This is not your typical self-help book. This is a book written by artists, for artists -— it's about what it feels like when artists sit down at their easel or keyboard, in their studio or performance space, trying to do the work they need to do. First published in 1994, Art & Fear quickly became an underground classic. Word-of-mouth response alone—now enhanced by internet posting—has placed it among the best-selling books on artmaking and creativity nationally.”

Jill will also look to schedule a second book club for after the holidays. The pick for that will be Eric Maisel’s classic, Coaching the Artist Within: Advice for Actors, Visual Artists, and Musicians from America’s Foremost Creativity Coach. We hope to invite creatives of all disciplines to join us.

Initiatives:

Arts and Crafts Gild: We are going to finally get the Arts and Crafts Gild of the Arden Club off the ground. The Steering Committee has designated that it will be a separate group from AAC. Megan King has agreed to chair this group. After its launch, we will have different agendas and structures with some overlap in leadership and possible joint ventures in some of our events. The AAC will remain a stand-alone group to promote, educate and support Arden Artisans through all stages of work, while the Arts and Crafts Gild will host broader art-related educational and creative programming and act as visual component for the Arden Club which acts as a cultural umbrella for the surrounding area.

Looking ahead to 2025:

AAC Members Open Meeting: We will have an open group meeting to create a vision board for 2025 and beyond. Look for this to take place in January at the Buzz.  Two questions to think about—What do you want from the AAC? How are you willing to contribute to the group?

Baby Grand Show 2.0 With the success of the Baby Grand group show (THANK YOU Megan King, Jeanne Orr, Shay Seaborne) we have signed a contract to have another group show there in October 2025. The management at the Grand were eager to have us back. That October time frame will give us more exposure than the summer months did this year. We are looking for someone to take the lead and curate that show—with support. We are also looking ahead to other galleries for possible shows that will be inclusive of our talented 3D artists.

Public Art Project Update: Bethany Rees is continuing to pursue project scope and funding for public art projects in the Ardens. Stay tuned. 

Birthday Wish List:

  • Help with Marketing. A person to organize the marketing efforts and assign specific tasks.The way this may work is that a show curator might need a postcard designed. The curator would approach the marketing guru who would find someone in our stable of artists to handle the task.

  • Then we need that stable of people to post social media, add events to website, design postcards, design posters, design Insta posts. You don't need to be a professional graphic designer. Let us know what skills you do have.

  • Help sponsor youth initiatives. Think of ways to partner and show up for our youth—and run with it. You don’t need to lead the events, but we do need someone to coordinate and get the ball rolling.

  • Someone to curate the October show at the Baby Grand

  • As always, members are encouraged to come to us with programming ideas. Not all ideas originate with the steering committee. We are looking for ideas for field trips, workshops, group shows for 2025 and beyond. Bring them to the January meeting. 

Hope to see all of you on September 10th!

Jill Althouse-Wood
on behalf of AAC Steering Committee (Jill Althouse-Wood, Rachel Kantner, Megan King, Stevie Nolan, Cookie Ohlson, Shay Seaborne, Linda Toman)

"...if artmaking did not tell you (the maker) so enormously much about yourself, then making art that matters to you would be impossible."             
David Bayles and Ted Orlando in Art & Fear:  Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking