Allan Appel Photo
They’re back, the individualized cloth mouse elfs by Jersild.
For ten years Sheilah Rostow had been studying the book arts at Creative Arts Workshop, the area’s premier community arts school.
Yet she had never exhibited her work in the school’s annual crafts fair extravaganza. That was for pros.
No longer.
In the 47th year of CAW’s “Celebration of American Crafts” participants are showing and selling everything from the beloved individualized mice that generations have come back for to goat’s milk soap to thrice-kiln burned fused glass sushi dishes, to, new this year, fine arts like prints and photographs.
Rostow shows her photo album.
What’s most exciting to students like Rostow is that this year, for the first time, about 30 percent of the 150 participants showing and selling their wares are students and faculty of the school, current and past.
“It was an open call for CAW students to consider being part of the celebration,” said Rostow, as she took a break from being a volunteer salesperson Tuesday morning.
The jewelry, clothing, ceramics, and fine arts — all the items selected just as in a jury-ed show — have attracted 3,000 visitors already, with at least 1,000 purchasers, reported CAW Executive Director Dan Fitzmaurice.
CAW Photo
Past CAW Faculty Haley Grunloh’s “pysanky” eggshells.
As a result, hours are being expanded in the week in the run-up to Christmas: Thursday and Friday it will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Christmas Eve from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
When the open call came for students to participate — one of Fitzmaurice’s goals for this incarnation of the fair and in editions going forward — Rostow and her fellow book arts student Maria Eiler rose to the challenge. They decided to put into practice all they had learned from studying for a decade with CAW’s book arts guru, Paulette Rosen.
Being devotees of Lucille Ball’s famous TV show from the 1950s the two called their enterprise “Lucy and Ethel Book Arts.”
“We had to make a submission to the jury,” recalled Rostow. Since that procedure required some digital photography and computer manipulations, Eiler’s daughter took what Rostow described as “beautiful photographs” of sample small books and albums featuring simple but classy designs and lush paper. That was back in June when the submission was entered.
Fitzmaurice and Lehman with her “squiggle” side table.
When Rostow found out their prototypes had been accepted, she said she called Eiler and said, “I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that we got in. The bad news,” she recalled with irony, “is we have to make the stuff.”
They got to work making from one to two dozen handmade books. When a friend saw one item that they had created as a photo album, she suggested the item could also be altered slightly and turned into a sketch book for artists, and so it was.
Lehman’s copper “garden pillow.”
They have been selling well, said Fitzmaurice as he toured a reporter around what else was new this year. In addition to student and faculty participation in high numbers, about 40 percent are new exhibitors altogether, with the items being organized this year for the first time into departments like wearable textiles, jewelry, and even a men’s department.
The result is that long-time attendees, of whom there are many, can find the one-of-a-kind handmade products they have expected for decades at the fair, but there is also “freshness,” added long-time metal sculpture teacher Ann Lehman.
Practicing what she preaches, Lehman was on hand to show not only her copper “pillows” for the garden, which have been a stalwart item, but also new creations including small welded steel side tables, with a kind of crazy “signature stich” along one of the legs.
CAW Photo
From McClure’s “Urban Details” series
The firsts also include the inclusion of fine arts, including the quietly bracing photographs of former CAW faculty member Lucy Q. McClure. I found the work she is showing — exploration of what she terms silences in urban spaces, like this stairway to everywhere and nowhere — immensely gripping.
Fitzmaurice said sales at the fair are going very briskly and exactly as planned. The fair is expected to raise about $80,000 for CAW, and lots for the participants.
“We want all of our students [if they so choose] to think about turning their passion into products,” he said.
The Celebration of American Crafts runs today through Christmas Eve at Creative Arts Workshop, 80 Audubon St. Click here for more information.