Call for Artists: Lark Books - Mixed Metal Jewelry

Mixed Metal Jewelry Author: Mary Hettmansperger Editor: Marthe Le Van Entry deadline: March 16, 2009 http://www.larkbooks.com/submissions/artist-submissions Author Mary Hettmansperger’s newest book, Mixed Metal Jewelry, will be interspersed with beautiful gallery images, and we hope you’ll submit images of your jewelry for consideration! We’re looking for pieces that mix metals—silver, gold, copper, iron, bronze, aluminum, etc.—in interesting and creative ways. Combinations of all forms of metal, such as sheet, wire, clay, and recycled materials, are welcome, as are all techniques. Your work will serve as an example and as inspiration for readers. Mixed Metal Jewelry is due for release in April 2010. Submission to the book is free. Download entry form here.

CCCOE Member Studio Tour: Featured Artist: HideABook

Japanese Plum Blossom Book Cover Tell us a little about yourself and how it all began. My name is Shanna Vaughn and my shop is HideABook (http://hideabook.etsy.com). I make vinyl book covers with attached ribbon bookmarks to hide and protect paperback books. I love to read romance novels but I find many of the covers to be goofy or embarrassing. I also like to take a book with me pretty much everywhere I go so that I can have something to read while waiting in line at the Post Office, doctor's office, etc. I wanted something pretty to cover up my books and to keep them nice while bumping around in my giant purse. I couldn't find anything stylish out there so I decided to make my own covers. Other friends who are readers loved my idea so I figured that random strangers might too. I've been a shopper on Etsy for a few years and I knew that it would be the perfect place to set up my online store. Where do you work? Show us your space please! I share an office in my apartment with my husband who is an IT professional. I'm working on annexing his space :) My dream (and goal) is to eventually have a nice big work space where I can have some elbow room and plenty of space to lay my delicate papers flat. What is your favorite tool? My favorite tool would have to be my super sharp guillotine I use for paper cutting. What time of the day are you the most productive/inspired? Definitely evening, my brain doesn't start cranking until at least noon. What inspires you? I get inspired by gorgeous handmade papers. The Paper Source store is my favorite place; I could spend hours browsing their amazing Japanese and Indian papers. How do you promote yourself and your shop? I have two book blogs that I use to run promotions and ads for Hide-a-Book and I stay involved with communities of romance readers online. They're my peeps but also my customers. How long have you been on Etsy? Since May of 2008 What else do you enjoy doing other than creating? Whenever I get some free time I love to read. Just give me a comfy chair and I can lose myself for hours in the fantasy world of a book. What would you like to see happen/change with CCCOE? I recently got to meet some other OC/LA area Etsy sellers which was really cool. I would love to regularly get together with people who share the same goals, joys and frustrations that I do. I'd like to get advice from sellers who have been doing this for a while and have wisdom to share. What is your favorite thing about CCCOE? Everyone is really friendly and helpful. I couldn't have asked for a better group to join. What is your favorite food? Mexican food for sure. I could eat it every single day. Favorite book or movie? I think my favorite book would change depending on what day you ask me, but right now I'd have to say Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. One thing you absolutely cannot live without? My iPhone. It allows me to compulsively check my sales when I'm away from my computer and to read ebooks. Lastly what piece that you have created is your favorite and why? I love my Japanese bunnies book cover in gold. The bunnies are just so cute and the contrast of the pink and the vintage gold is so pretty. The ribbon I used for the bookmark matches just perfectly. Thanks to Shanna for taking the time out to share her studio and work with us. Be sure to check out her shop on Etsy. And if you are are a CCCOE member and want to be featured simply copy these questions and send your answers along to Heather or I.

CCCOE January challenge - AMORE! EXPRESS YOUR LOVE!

Entrants for this challenge must be CCCOE members. For non-CCCOE members, we would love for you to participate by voting the first week of each month. We will reward you with undying love, discounts and a spot in a treasury! CCCOE members, It's time to begin working on your entry for the January challenge -- "Amore! Express Your Love". Items will need to be tagged 'CCCOE' and 'januarychallenge' (one word) so that we can find them and add them to the buyer account favorites and voting thread. Deadline for entry is midnight (Pacific time) January 31. Voting will take place the first week of February. One entry per shop please. When you have your entry listed, please post its title, YOUR SHOP NAME and a link to the entry in this thread. Please copy those already listed and add yours to the bottom of the list. Most CCCOE Members are offering a 10% or more discount to voters during the week of voting. If you wish to participate in offering a discount please convo VisionQuest on Etsy with your shop name and amount that you would like to offer.

Exhibition: Track 16 Gallery - Santa Monica, CA

Track 16 Gallery Smart Art Press 2525 Michigan Avenue, Bldg C-1 Santa Monica, CA 90404

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Laurie Steelink 310.264.4678

HYPERBOLIC CROCHET CORAL REEF by the INSTITUTE FOR FIGURING AND COMPANIONS

CURATED BY MARGARET AND CHRISTINE WERTHEIM

JANUARY 10–FEBRUARY 28, 2009 Opening reception on Saturday, January 10, from 6–9 PM

5 December 2008, Santa Monica—Track 16 Gallery is pleased to present HYPERBOLIC CROCHET CORAL REEF by the INSTITUTE FOR FIGURING AND COMPANIONS, an exhibition curated by Margaret and Christine Wertheim. The exhibition runs from Saturday, January 10, through Saturday, February 28, 2009, with an opening reception on Saturday, January 10, from 6 to 9 P.M.

One of the acknowledged wonders of the natural world, the Great Barrier Reef stretches along the coast of Queensland Australia, in a riotous profusion of color and form unparalleled on our planet. But global warming and pollutants so threaten this fragile marvel that it may well be gone by the end of the century. In homage to the Great One, Christine and Margaret Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring have instigated a project to crochet a handmade reef, a woolly testimony that now engages thousands of women the world over.

Vast in scale, collective in construction, exquisitely detailed, the Crochet Reef is an unprecedented, hybridic, handicraft invocation of a natural wonder that has become, in itself, a new kind of wonder spawned from tens of thousands of hours of labor. After major exhibitions in Chicago, New York, and most recently a smash success at The Hayward in London, Track 16 is proud to present the first West Coast showing of this giant, ongoing, evolutionary, fancywork experiment.

As a response to the ecological crisis facing marine environments, the Crochet Reef project has been called by Ren Weschler “the Aids Quilt of Global Warming.” What began as a tiny seed in the Wertheim’s home in Highland Park has morphed organically into a worldwide movement – Sister Reefs have now been made in Chicago, New York and London, with other efforts currently under way in Sydney, Arizona and Latvia. For the first time, in this exhibition, Crochet Reefs are brought together from around the globe, massing into an archipelago of stunning craft finesse.

Also on show is a new expanded version of the Toxic Reef, a gigantic, riotous agglomeration crocheted from plastic trash. An industrially malevolent, post-modern sibling to the classical, domestic beauty of the yarn-based Reef, the Toxic Reef, responds to the escalating problem of plastic trash inundating our oceans and threatening marine life everywhere.

Surprisingly, the roots of the Crochet Reef project are to be found in the realm of mathematics for the Reef also celebrates a geometry realized throughout the oceanic realm. Loopy kelps, fringed anemones, crenellated corals and curlicued sponges are all manifestations of a structure known as hyperbolic space. Though mathematicians had long believed this space impossible, nature has been playing with its permutations for hundreds of millions of years. In 1997, Dr Daina Taimina at Cornell, realized how to make models of this geometry using crochet, a discovery that astounded the mathematical world.

Building on Dr Taimina’s techniques, the Wertheim sisters have been evolving a taxonomy of reef-life forms. Just as the diversity of living species result from variations of a genetic code, so too a huge range of hyperbolic crochet ‘species’ may be brought into being through modifications in the underlying crochet code. Anyone who takes up this work can begin to develop his or her own woolly species and the project has become a kind of ongoing collective evolutionary experiment, involving women (and a few men) from all walks of life. Participants include Evelyn Hardin, a madly creative Dallas housewife; Sarah Simons, a Culver City book-maker and museum curator; Helen Bernasconi, a computer scientist and sheep farmer in rural Australia; Vonda N. MacIntrye, a science fiction writer in Seattle; Shari Porter an African American mother in San Bernardino; Rebecca Peapples, a master beader in Michigan; and Kathleen Greco, an industrial designer in Pennsylvania.

HYPERBOLIC CROCHET CORAL REEF will be shown concurrently with Harriet Zeitlin: ALL HANDS ON DECK. For more information please visit www.track16.com.

More information about the project may be seen at the IFF website: www.theiff.org

--------------------------------------------------------

Margaret Wertheim and Christine Wertheim, co-curators and wranglers-in-chief to the Crochet Reef, are co-founders of the Institute For Figuring.

Margaret is a science writer and author of books on the cultural history of physics, including “The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet” and (forthcoming) “Lithium Legs and Apocalyptic Photons” about the life and work of outsider physicist James Carter. From 2000-2005, Margaret wrote the Quark Soup science column for the LA Weekly, and her work has been published in magazines and newspapers around the world. Christine is a faculty member in the Department of Critical Studies at California Institute of the Arts, where she teaches experimental writing and feminism. Her books include “+I’me’S-pace” a poetic anthology that explores the intersection of language and logic, “Noulipo” a compendium of new constraint-based writing, and Feminaissance (forthcoming). Both twins learned handicrafts from their mother Barbara when they were growing up in Brisbane, Australia.

INSTITUTE FOR FIGURING The Institute For Figuring is a Los Angeles-based organization devoted to the aesthetic and poetic dimensions of science, mathematics and the technical arts. (www.theiff.org) The IFF hosts lectures, publishes books and curates exhibitions on subjects such as mathematical paper folding, logic crystallography and the anatomy of insects. Recent exhibitions include, Inventing Kindergarten at Art Center College of Design, The Business Card Menger Sponge at Machine Project, and The Logic Alphabet of Shea Zellweger, currently on show at the Museum of Jurassic Technology. The IFF’s work has been acknowledged in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, The Nation, The Times of London, The Guardian, Make Craft, and many other publications.

This exhibition is supported by grants from the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Norton Family Foundation, The Daniel and Joanna Rose Foundation, and Bella Meyer.

2009 Annual Glass Art Society Conference

For more information: http://www.glassart.org

Exhibition: "RE-FASHION: Plastic Bag"

Exhibit at The Tucson Bead Show

Exhibit at the Hottest Bead Show in Tucson The Tucson Bead Show at the Doubletree February 7 – 9, 2009

The Tucson Bead Show is produced as an adjunct of the legendary To Bead True Blue. It brings together two-hundred fifty of the finest artists, artisans, and wholesale trade suppliers for an intense three-day show. Exhibitors are chosen for traditional skills in art jewelry and bead design, wearable art, polymer clay, enamel art, metalwork, fiber arts, lamp work, lapidary, designer components, glass arts, gold and silversmithing, textile weaving, handmade clothing, clay arts, handwovens, art couture, precious gems, collectibles, interior décor, plus beading and jewelry trade supplies.

Attendees come from across the U.S. and thirty-eight countries, to meet contacts, place orders, and attend workshops. This opportunity will bring you both domestic and worldwide clients. The availability of space for the show is very limited. The Tucson Bead Show is a production of Garan-Beadagio.

www.thetucsonbeadshow.com

The Tucson Doubletree Reid Park, 445 South Alvernon Way, Tucson, AZ 85711

The new version of Aurlaea® is now up and running.

Please visit www.Aurlaea.com

For Information on Exhibiting Contact Us: (530) 274-2222 | tucsonbeadshow@msn.com

Copyright © 2009 Garan-Beadagio®, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Apply to Exhibit