STATE CRAFT CONFERENCE TO BE HELD AT BETHANY COLLEGE

            A presentation by museum director, art critic and author Diane Douglas and demonstrations by nationally-acclaimed artists will highlight the fall conference of the Kansas Artist Craftsmen Association at Bethany College Oct. 27 and 28.

            Caroline Kahler, associate professor of art at Bethany, is the on-site conference coordinator.

            Douglas’s presentation, titled “Choosing Craft,” will be at 9:15 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 28, in Room 11 of the Wallerstedt Social Science Center.

            Ceramist Harris Deller will give a demonstration in the ceramics studio and jewelry maker Sydney Pener will give a demonstration in the metals studio of Mingenback Art Center from 10:30 a.m. to noon and from 2:15 – 4 p.m. on Saturday.

            The workshop instructors will give a slide presentation of their work from 1:30-2 p.m. that afternoon in Room 11 of the Wallerstedt Social Science Center.

            Works by members of the Kansas Artist Craftsmen Association will be exhibited in the Mingenback Art Center Gallery Oct. 12 – 28. A reception for the artists will be from 6-7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 27.  It is free and open to the public and is part of the Kahmeyer Visiting Visual Artists Lecture Series.

            Douglas is founding director of the Center for Liberal Arts at Bellevue Community College in Seattle. She was the director of the Bellevue Arts Museum from 1991 to 2002 and prior to that was the executive director of the David Adler Cultural Center in Chicago. She serves on the advisory boards for the National Council for Education in the Ceramic Arts and the Pilchuck Glass School and is a peer review panelist for the U.S. Fulbright Program. She is a poet and art critic whose writings have appeared in magazines, journals and books.

            She earned a bachelor’s degree in semiotics from Brown University and a Masters of Arts from the University of Delaware where she was a fellow in the Winterthur Program.

            Deller is the director of the School of Art and Design at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He earned his bachelor’s degree from California State University at Northridge and his Masters of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art. His ceramic works are in many public collections, including those of the Everson Museum, the American Craft Museum and the Shigaraki Museum in Japan.

            Pener teaches metalsmithing at Johnson County and Longview community colleges and is a visiting faculty member at Kansas State University. She earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of Kansas and her Masters of Fine Arts in metalsmithing from Syracuse University. She has a studio in Kansas City, Missouri, where she makes one-of-a-kind metalworks.

            Registration for the conference is $75 for members and $85 for non-members in advance. On-site registration is $80 for members and $90 for non-members.

            Advanced registration for students is $10, which covers food for the conference. On-site registration for students is $15.

            For more information about the conference, contact the Bethany College art department at 785 227-3311, Ext. 8244.