With all due respect to all those fun metro area crafts festivals that are mash ups of paintings and pottery and funnel cakes and clogging, they may not be the best showcase for, well, crafts.
If you're into fine crafts of a quality you might otherwise find in a museum shop or even in the museum's collection, no event quite compares to the American Craft Council Show, whose 22nd edition runs in Atlanta Thursday through March 13.
While some ultra-popular Atlanta festivals may draw more than 100,000 over a warm-weather weekend, many of those folks are more into people watching or snow-cone scarfing (not that there's anything wrong with that!) than they are to serious arts and crafts perusing.
Crafts are the undisputed king at the ACC Show, held at Cobb Galleria Centre. More than 225 artists, from Atlanta and all over the country, will show basketry, ceramics, fashion, decorative fiber works, furniture, glass, jewelry, leather, metal, mixed media, wood and more in rows and rows of booths that capture the eye with colors, textures and patterns.
"What the ACC shows do is pick the best of the best work [nationally]," said Suwanee ceramic artist Mark Knott, whose pieces are sure to be among the most densely patterned in the Cobb fair. "Not saying the outdoor shows don't do that. But we're trying to target people that want to have quality American crafts in their lives on a daily basis -- whether they're looking at a piece of pottery, wearing jewelry or a [handmade] jacket."
Knott has called the Atlanta area home for 11 years, but the varying aqua hues that dot his stoneware and porcelain vessels recall the deep Pacific Ocean boat trips of the native Californian's youth.
Now 49, Knott worked on fishing boats out of Santa Barbara as a young adult, memories that are never far from mind when he's creating in his studio.
"It's a strange phenomena that happens when you get way, way out in the ocean past the sight of land," said Knott, who is represented by Buckhead's Signature Shop & Gallery among a half-dozen galleries around the country. "In any direction you look at any time day, there's this ongoing, infinite repeating pattern on the water that really depends on the mood of ocean.
"It could be millions and millions little repeated patterns if it's rough. If it's really smooth the patterns actually get larger. But it's always there."
The jars and other containers that Knott decorates with tight turquoise and black polka dots and looser splotches (with slips and glazes adding texture and even more patterning) were inspired by forms far removed from the Pacific, however. He pursued undergraduate studies in ceramics at the Kansas City Art Institute, where he was influenced by the rounded verticals of grain silos and water towers.
To him, these iconic structures are simply giant versions of the pieces he produces, all containers meant to store something of value.
"Those strong forms have stayed in my work since undergraduate school," Knott said of pieces that will range $90 to $600 at the Cobb show. "It's interesting how nicely heavily patterned works fit on a very strong form. The combination of the two, I almost thought, wouldn't work -- to have a very masculine form and yet the decoration stays fairly feminine."
While Knott's pottery clearly reflects his very precise ideas, he fires it in a soda kiln, which seizes some of his control. Because the kiln, stoked to 2,250 degrees, is a cross-draft type, the soda hits and "weathers" one side of the pieces while leaving the other side "dry."
"It's almost like two sides of an island -- a windy side and a calm side," Knott said, making another sun-drenched analogy. "When soda hits a drop on one side, it will blend it into a blurred pattern, while the back side is going to be much crisper."
Being a dot devotee, Knott said he can't help but notice patterning in the work of other ACC artists, whether it appears in jewelry or woodwork, embroidery or glass.
"I don't look at [the patterning of others] the way I look at my work," Knott said. "My work is so controlled, yet I fire in a kiln that releases some of that control. It's kind of a polarity in a way. Whereas other artists might have a looser general patterning that goes through their work."
Still, it's safe to say that, as with Knott's pottery, every pattern tells a story.
Event preview
American Craft Council Show
10 a.m.-8 p.m. March 11, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. March 12, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. March 13. $13 one-day ticket; $20 three-day pass. Special admission Friday after 5 p.m.: $5. Children under 12, free. Preview party: 6-9 p.m. Thursday, $75 (includes food, drink, three-day pass; benefits the ACC). Cobb Galleria Centre, 2 Cobb Galleria Parkway. 1-800-836-3470, http://public.craftcouncil.org/public.
The 22nd annual American Craft Council Show in Atlanta will offer a variety of special programming:
- Craft4Kids: With instructors from Young Audiences of Woodruff Arts Center, Spruill Center for the Arts and the Indie Craft Experience demonstrating, kids of all ages can create pop-up cards, plush animals, miniature books, money boxes, recycled paper and more. Offered throughout the day March 11-13 at the demonstration area near booth 1309.
- Crafty cakes: Celebrating the ACC's 70th birthday, Atlanta pastry chefs and cake designers (including Decatur's Cakes & Ale, Atlanta's Star Provisions/Bacchanalia and Woodstock's La NaNa's Art Bakery) have created cakes inspired by works of specific ACC artists.
- Lunch & Learn: American Craft magazine editor Monica Moses discusses "Craft and the Cure for Stressful Modern Life," 12:30 p.m. March 11.
- Specialty vendors: For ease of shopping, booths carrying goods under $100, lawn and garden furniture and decorative accessories and "Green Craft" (works incorporating recycled or found materials or crafted with eco-friendly techniques) will be designated with signs.
- Altcraft: The show will include a special section for 10 invited emerging indie craft movement artists, who create works that veer from traditional crafts in their edgy attitude/subject matter or alternative materials.
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