• Arts, Crafts and Theater Safety (ACTS) has a new Web site at www.artscraftstheatersafety.org. This new site links directly to ACTS’ old site maintained for many years by Dan Case. Responsibility for both sites has been given to a Web design class at the Cattaraugus/Allegany Board of Cooperative Educational Services in New York. The older site continues to cover ACTS publications, while the new site provides information about ACTS consulting services.

• Oregon College of Art & Craft handed out 24 bachelor of fine arts degrees and five certificates in crafts to the largest graduating class in the College’s 97-year history. The commencement speaker was artist and educator Josh DeWeese, recipient of a Montana Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship Award, and a three-time award winner at the annual Strictly Functional Pottery National in Ephrata, Pa.
Established in 1907, Oregon College of Art & Craft is dedicated to the continuity of contemporary craft as an artistic expression. For information, visit www.ocac.edu.

• The University of Illinois School of Public Health is researching fume exposure from welding by artist-welders. It takes about 30 minutes to complete a questionnaire they have developed for this study. Welders who want to help in compiling this data, please contact Laurel Berman at (312) 996-2094 or lberma2@uic.edu.

• Michele Tuegel, stepped down in May from her post as the first executive director of the Florida Craftsmen. A visual artist and papermaker, Tuegel plans to devote more time “to my family and to making art, part-time, in my studio.”

Tuegel assumed the role of executive director in 1988 after serving as a volunteer board member for seven years. During her tenure, Florida Craftsmen grew to more than 1,100 artists and supporters with an administrative staff of seven, 50 volunteers, a statewide board of directors and an annual budget of $600,000.

In 1997, Tuegel initiated the annual fall CraftArt festival on the campus of the University of Tampa that moves indoors in 2004 to the Coliseum in St. Petersburg, Fla. Tuegel also successfully organized a capital campaign in 2002 to purchase the organization’s 17,000 square-foot building to house exhibition and gallery space, administrative offices and ArtSpace studios.

• George Little Management named Brenda Harrison to the position of group manager for Western Canadian Gift Shows. She will be responsible for all facets of show production for the Alberta Gift Show, held each February and August, and the Vancouver Gift Show, held each March and September, as well as new show development in Western Canada. Harrison previously was sales manager for the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. She is a member of the Professional Convention Mangers Association. The Western Canadian Gift Shows are managed by GLM on behalf of dmg world media.

Handcrafted baby accessories, blown glass tableware, and handwoven scarves, will highlight new product collections scheduled to launch in Handmade® at George Little Management’s upcoming New York International Gift Fair®. Some 60 new artisans have been selected to participate in the juried division, which features a total of 525 exhibitors of ethnic, traditional and contemporary handcrafted merchandise, Aug. 14-19, at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and Passenger Ship Terminal Piers. For more information or to register to attend, visit www.glmshows.com.

• According to The Art Newspaper.Com and other sources, a new world record was set at the December 2003 sale of 20th century work at Sotheby’s in London. One of only five Alexandre Noll carved mahogany armchairs ever made sold for $680,000, a record high for a work of 20th century design. Noll, a French woodcarver and furniture maker, died in 1970. Prior to the auction, the chair was estimated to be worth $100,000-$150,000.

Another craftwork bringing more than double its expected price at the auction was a 1950s six-branch floor lamp by French designer Jean Royere that sold for $310,000. The same American dealer purchased the chair, two lamps by Royere, and other items for a total of $1 million-plus and stated that all the purchases were for an unnamed American collector.

• Mary Stori of Brodhead, Wis., was named 2004 Quilter of the Year by The Professional Quilter magazine for her commitment to fine workmanship and contributions to the field of quiltmaking. A quilting teacher for the past 10 years, Brodhead showed quilted garments at the 1992, 1994, 1997 and 1998 Fairfield Fashion Shows as well as The Mary Stori Collection for Kona Bay Fabrics. Also a lecturer, author and judge, her work has appeared in and won awards in numerous national shows. For more information, visit www.professionalquilter.com.

• Stéphane Janssen, one of the world’s leading collectors of decorative and functional ceramics, presented nearly $4 million in contemporary work to the Arizona State University Art Museum. The Arizona resident and Belgian native, a longtime supporter of the ASU Art Museum, donated 686 ceramic works to the museum’s Ceramics Research Center. He is offering another 200 works, including select pieces of his historic and contemporary Native American collection, to the ASU museum to raise money for additional acquisitions.

The bulk of Janssen’s Native American collection will be donated to the National Museum of the American Indian, which opens this year on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

Janssen’s ceramics collection was acquired over a decade with his late partner, ceramist R. Michael Johns, and includes work ranging from massive figurative sculptures to whimsical bowls and teapots by Johns and other American and international ceramists as well as a variety of emerging artists.

Janssen estimates his total art collection to number about 4,000 pieces, many rotated in and out of his homes in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Belgium. Other collections have been loaned out for exhibition. “If a child visiting the museum looks at one of the pieces of art and thinks, ‘I need to be an artist or a collector or a patron of the arts,’ then my life will have been worth something,” Janssen said.

The ASU Art Museum has been named “the single most impressive venue for contemporary art in Arizona” by Art in America. For more information, visit http://asuartmuseum.asu.edu.

• The Indiana Arts Commission (IAC) launched a new digital publication designed to cover news and events related to the Commission and to provide expanded coverage of arts and cultural activities throughout the state of Indiana. The quarterly, Arts:92, joins two other electronic publications currently produced by the IAC and distributed by e-mail. ArtsEye has been providing monthly arts industry information for more than two years. Launched in March of this year, ArtsINform is a monthly newsletter for IAC commissioners, regional arts partners, staff, and other arts organizations and administrators. To view the inaugural edition of Arts:92 online, visit www.in.gov/arts.

• The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design (CCCD) in Hendersonville, N.C., is using a $500,000 grant from a private, anonymous foundation for a four-year project to research and write the first history of 20th century studio craft. Organized by decades, the textbook will examine the path of pottery, textiles, glass objects, jewelry, artist furniture and small-scale forms in metal and wood from the workshops of the Arts and Crafts era to university classrooms, art galleries and museums. While designed as a college text, the book will also interest craft professionals as well as collectors and other members of the public. It is projected for release in 2008.

The CCCD grew out of a study commissioned by HandMade in America, a nonprofit organization serving the makers of the handmade object in Western North Carolina. The North Carolina legislature allocated funding for construction of the facility in Henderson County, N.C. For information about the planned textbook or the CCCD, visit www.craftcreativitydesign.org.