Stories indexed with the term ‘arts & crafts’

By the time The Chronicle arrived at Yourist Gallery on Broadway Street last Wednesday, the temperature had cooled from its maximum of 2300F° to around 170F°.  The owner of the gallery, Kay Yourist, had donned giant leather gloves to open the door to her new kiln after its first complete firing the previous night.

The door to the kiln is actually a wall of un-mortared bricks that gets opened and closed by stacking and unstacking the wall brick by brick. The top few rows of bricks, which were sourced through Schad Boiler Setting Company in Detroit, are custom shaped to match the arch of the kiln’s roof, and labeled to prevent the door-closing task from evolving into a puzzle-solving exercise.

Even though we were there to see the opening, we got a chance to see a bit of the closing process, too – Yourist had actually begun the opening process before we arrived. But she indulged us by first re-stacking the bricks into a solid wall, so we’d have a clearer idea of how it worked.

Unstacking the bricks was slow going at first, but once Yourist had un-wedged the top row, the pace picked up. It wasn’t long before the top front layer of pottery pieces became visible. The kiln has three tiers and a front and a back, so the volume of art work we saw was about a sixth of the kiln’s total capacity. [Full Story]

Maybe it was pre-FestiFools roaming, or maybe it was spillover from the NCAA tournament in Detroit – whatever the reason, crowds were bigger than on any previous opening day at Ann Arbor’s Sunday Artisan Market, according to the group’s vice president, Joan Hutchinson. It wasn’t clear whether those people were actually buying, though – vendors we talked to had mixed experiences.

Kate Kehoe, whose notebooks made from old video box covers are the reporter notebooks of choice for The Chronicle, said she was having a pretty good day. Some of the people who’d passed through included a group decked out in Tar Heels regalia, she said. (The University of North Carolina team beat Villanova on Saturday and faces Michigan State University in Monday’s championship game.)

Mike Grady, who makes wood-turned objects, said he’d sold exactly one corkscrew all day. The cold weather, the economy – who knows what makes people spend their money, or not? He hopes next Sunday will be better. [Full Story]

This year, Judy White organized her first holiday craft show, held today and Friday at the Chapel Hill Clubhouse on Ann Arbor’s northeast side. Here’s a quick Chronicle guide to how she pulled it off – we’d also encourage you drop by and check out the final result, where 15 local crafters will be selling wooden bird houses, jewelry, aprons, photographs, scarves, ornaments and other handmade items.

[Full Story]

Kate Kehoe has lots of energy, creative and otherwise. You get a sense of that if you visit her booth at the Sunday Artisan Market, where she sells notebooks made out of vintage album covers and video boxes, LPs formed into bowls, a variety of cards and pins – all made by her, by hand.

It’s the Etsy way.

She’s also funneling a good bit of energy into organizing the Oct. 5 Etsy show, where about 30 vendors – mostly from the Ann Arbor area – will be selling their wares in this second annual event, held in the Ann Arbor Farmers Market area in Kerrytown.

If you’re asking, “What the heck is Etsy?” well, you’re forgiven for not having hipster cred. Read on. [Full Story]