April Adventures at Craft Alliance!

After this frigid winter, we are ready to get out of the house and have some creative fun this Spring! Here is a rundown of Craft Alliance's events this month:

April 2nd - In conjunction with our exhibition, Storylines: Contemporary Embroidery, The St. Louis Poetry Center will be hosting "Poets Thread The Line" from 1-3 pm in our Delmar Gallery space!


April 8th- ARTrageous Costume Ball! Join us for a glamorous evening of art and fashion at The Palladium honoring Jeigh Singleton Associate Professor at Washington University Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. The night will feature Fashion Shows from local designers Michael Drummond and Katie Kantley, a Three-Course Seated Dinner, Silent and Live Auctions, and an After Party beginning at 9:30 pm!
Purchase your tickets now and Peek at our Auction Items!

April 9, 10 and 16th- Glass Casting Workshop with Patrick Blythe! Learn the art of lost wax casting of glass on a small scale from a master of large glass castings. You can make a detailed casting of your hand or other small object that you would like to replicate in glass! FREE Artist’s talk Sunday, April 10, at 5pm, “The History and Techniques of Glass Art” in our Delmar Studios. Call our Registrar for more information!

April 26th and 30th- The Delmar Gallery shop is having our annual Mother's Day Trunk Show featuring Enamel Artist Jenn Bell and Local Hat Maker Miriam Wiegand! Meet Artist Miriam Wiegand on April 30th from 12-2pm to get your handmade hat just in time for the Kentucky Derby!

April 29th- Crafting-A-Future Opening 6-8 pm at our Delmar Loop location! This special exhibition features artwork created by students in Crafting-A-Future, a community outreach program providing instruction in metal, clay, glass and fiber arts through training and mentoring on a scholarship basis.

Don't forget to visit our Grand Center location to see the amazing exhibition Breathe by Carrie Scanga! Stop by our Delmar Loop location and sit in our reading library and explore each book in the unique exhibition Let's talk about Love, baby. Breathe and Let's Talk About Love, Baby will be up through April 24th.

March Madness!

We have so many great events coming up this March and we couldn't be more excited!

This is your last chance to catch the exhibition Multiple Personalities at our Delmar Loop location! The exhibition runs through March 6th and features six artists who explore aspects of the psyche and the human figure in various states of being.


Fashion Lab cordially invites you to the first lecture in its Yarn lecture series Featuring New York designer Timo Weiland! The event will be held on Thursday, March 11th from 6-8 pm at Washington University’s Kemp Auditorium in Givens Hall, One Brookings Drive St. Louis, MO 63130


Visit Whole Foods Market in March and support Craft Alliance ‘One Dime At A Time!’ Whole Foods offers 10¢ per bag to customers who use their own bags, The money saved on bags will go directly to Craft Alliance to support our education, exhibition and outreach programs.

Join Craft Alliance artist, Michael Parrett on Friday, March 11 from 12-3pm for a free in-store demo at the Brentwood Whole Foods, 1601 South Brentwood Blvd. Watch Michael bring fire into contact with metals to create stunning pieces of jewelry!


Opening at our Delmar Loop location on March 18th is Storylines: Contemporary Embroidery
Six contemporary artists explore narrative works in thread – stitch by stitch. The artists featured were selected because their works challenge conventional ideas about embroidery and explore the potential of this traditional art form to communicate their ideas.

Concurrently in the Charak Gallery: Let's Talk About Love Baby in conjunction with Washington Universities Printmaking Confrence, "Love Librarian" Jana Harper brings Chido Johnson's Love Library Project to Craft Alliance.

Artist Ray Materson’s miniature, narrative embroidery work will be part of the upcoming exhibition, Storylines: Contemporary Embroidery, opening March 18 in the Delmar Loop Gallery. Ray will give a two day workshop March 18 and 19 at the Delmar Loop studios where participants will turn discarded items into wonderful narrative art pieces in the form of mosaic and collage. Ray has lectured and taught workshops to artists and community groups throughout the country and is the author of a book about his life journey titled Sins and Needles. You can find out more and register for Springtime, Stories and Socks on the website.

To find out more about our upcoming events, visit our website www.craftalliance.org

Our Busy November!

Both locations of Craft Alliance will be bustling with events this November and we can't wait!

The second round of fall classes has started and students are enjoying our brand new wood turning studio in the Kranzberg Arts Center! We will be having an open house where you can tour the studio on Friday, November 19th!
David Charak, Steve Novik and his wife Cathy Barancik have generously provided funding to build a spacious, well-equipped studio designed to accommodate the tools and the work space needed for an optimal learning and working experience.
Special thanks to Keith Baizer for launching the Craft Alliance woodturning program by donating six lathes since 2007. The Charak/Novik Studio will be the only woodturning studio in St. Louis to offer the public the opportunity to learn this classic art!


On A Roll: Artists’ Toys opens Friday, November 12 in the Charak Gallery, Delmar Loop. Local artists were challenged to create a toy with wheels, some artists used traditional approaches and others a more conceptual interpretation of the classic plaything.
This exhibition features the work of Corey Ackelmire, Cathy Barancik, Dan Barnett, Michael Bauermeister, Nathan Dube, Robert Ebendorf, Melody Ellis, Cameron Fuller, Matt Keim, Dan Krueger, Robert Longyear, Roger Rimel, Will Rimel, Rimas VisGirda, Bernhard Voss and Karen Woodward.


As the Holidays approach and our Glass Ornaments arrive, remember to Save the Date for our Member Appreciation Weekend!
November 11th - 14th the Craft Alliance Gallery Shop on Delmar will be having its annual Double Discount Member Appreciation Weekend!
New and Current Members will receive 20% off their purchases in the shop. To find out more about becoming a member, check out our website!




Thanksgiving weekend wouldn't be complete without our Student/Faculty Sale! Featuring ceramics, fibers and more made by our skilled faculty and students, you can purchase all kinds of handmade holiday gifts! The sale will be outside of our Delmar location on November 27, 9 am - 5pm and November 28th, Noon - 5pm.

Hope to see you at all of our events!

Grand Center Interview!

Nancy Kranzberg interviewed Rachel Akin, artist in residence & Susan Donahue Yates, Program Director of Craft Alliance in Grand Center as part of the KDHX Arts Interview. They discuss both of Craft Alliance’s locations, our galleries, exhibitions, classes, and the artist in residence program.
Click here to listen to the interview!

Smarter/Faster/Higher

We had an opening on Friday for the much anticipated Smarter/Faster/Higher: Works by Elizabeth Keithline. An amazing exhibition featuring woven wire sculptures of human figures in an array of poses that feel like 3-D gestural drawings.

Using a wire weaving technique, that she has employed since 1990, and in collaboration with her husband Jeff, Keithline has created an installation of full-scale woven wire human beings and wire trees. Some of the figures are frozen in a crawl, some in a walk, and some in a run as they spread out across the gallery. The figures merge upon a ‘pool’ of monitors placed on the floor in the center of the room. The monitors depict an image of a wire figure that constantly divides, repeating over and over the idea of population and progress through replication.

Human beings are biologically programmed to evolve – to become “Smarter/Faster/Higher”. Technology has given us new tools with which to accomplish this end. We can potentially increase our mental capacity, and thus our ability to survive, simply by opening up a laptop. Keithline observes that the technological system we have created, whose principle strength is replication, mirrors the natural world.
Like Narcissus, one of the figures gazes into the pool, absorbed by the sight of his own image. Technology presents an opportunity for self-reflection and the potential for self-absorption. Does it become an obstacle, a springboard, or both?

This exhibition is a must see! It will be up through January 16, 2011 so there is plenty of time to see it more than once!

Portrayal of Another

Opening the same night as Setting The Mood: The Arful Table was Benjie Heu's solo ceramic exhibit: Portrayal of Another. This talented local artist's sculptural work hangs from our walls in the Charak Gallery.

The pieces presented are a narrative of the evolving hero and his many trials and tribulations. The hero's journey is a voyage of self-discovery, an expedition whose true destination is the realm within each of us, where we must find our own unique center with all its strengths and weaknesses. The journey is not just physical, but a spiritual one, as the hero evolves from ignorance and innocence to experience and enlightenment. The most outlandish adventures are accounted with an eye fixed on the bare essentials. Battles against time, against the obstacles that prevent the fulfillment of desire or the repossession of something cherished but lost are themes that provoke me. Revealing truth and humor in the face of horror and the seemingly absurd is my answer. - Benjie Heu

Setting The Mood

Friday night was the opening for Setting The Mood: The Artful Table juried by Bruce Hoffman, Director of Snyderman - Works Gallery in Philadelphia. Of the more than 120 entries, Hoffman accepted 50 pieces to be included in the exhibition. 15 local artists were chosen for the show including John Baltrushunas, Clinton L. Berry, Matt Keim, Kitty Mollman and many more! Unfortunately Bruce could not make it to the opening but many of the artists did! The show is up through July 11th in our Delmar Whitaker Gallery.

When Craft Alliance asked me to jury Setting the Mood: The Artful Table, I immediately said yes. Viewing the submissions was like looking at photos of old friends. The functional world has somewhat escaped me the past few years, and it was a joy to meander through the images of cups, bowls, platters and serving utensils. I hope this exhibition inspires everyone to throw a dinner party, pull out the family heirlooms, or better yet find a craftsman you love and commission something that your grandchildren will remember as fondly as your grandmother’s warm hug. -Bruce Hoffman

Perceiving Sensibility

Carlie Trosclair, a Washington University MFA Student transformed our Grand Center gallery for her thesis project Perceiving Sensibility. The show is a must see! Open through June 6th!

Carlie's mock up and paint sitting in the window.

Installation in progress.

The complete transformation! I love the way the light flows through the fabric!

"If we consider the built environment as an extension of our bodies, what would that image materialize as? By altering the physical and sensorial properties of interior spaces, my work is constructed to create cracks in the psyche of the habitual and the known. Through manipulation and re-creation of given architectural spaces, I create new realities that sensitize our physical experience. Taking on the form of immersive environments, viewers are engaged as they move in conjunction with and in reaction to the created surroundings." -Carlie Trosclair

Video! Taking down Tim Curtis

Tim Curtis explores the use of language and text in art. He recently presented an ever-evolving body of work at the Grand Center location of Craft Alliance. The work utilized text on chalkboards that function as object within a fine art context. The walls of the gallery were blanketed with handmade chalkboards from floor to ceiling. The visual sensation of multiple chalkboards surrounded the viewer with the voices of Tim’s internal dialogue.

On Monday we took the work down to prepare for a new show, the MFA thesis exhibition of Washington University student Carlie Trosclair. View Carlie's work at the opening on Friday, April 23 from 6-8 pm. Her will will be up through June 6, 2010.