Mummysam! That’s who.

What’s to love about Mummysam? Just about everything. From her choices in color to her eye for bringing patterns and sewn details together, Samantha’s work brims with charm and personality. Her characters have a quiet, 1930s or 40s storybook quality to them. They tread an interesting grey area between toy, collectible doll, keepsake and sculpture

I came across the work of Samantha Cotterill a few years ago and it made my day. It spun my top. It stuck in my brain in such a way that I would occasionally drop by her corner of the internet to see what she was cooking up. Internet craft crush? Interweb craft stalking? Eh…maybe a little bit of both.

But that was then, now is now and we are all luckier for it. A box arrived at Craftland from Mummysam this past Tuesday and I couldn’t help but do a dance. I do small, on the spot dances for things I love or that surprise me: good food, the perfect snack (totally different than ‘good food’), a killer hand in cribbage, a dress that fits right and now added to the list…getting to work with artists that I have admired for some time.

You can find Mummysam over at her blog. In the spring you can find her fabric designs over at
Robert Kaufman.

Please join us for a super special exhibition: Faythe Levine guest-curator: WORK BY MERRILEE CHALLISS & MARGARET OOMEN

We are pleased to announce that guest-curator (and film-maker!) Faythe Levine as well as artist Merrilee Challiss will be present for the reception on January 14th from 5-8pm! Sip some wine, eat some snacks, and take some time to look in awe at this amazing display of work.

Merrilee brings her gouache and ink images of a darkly humorous view of natural history all the way from Birmingham, Alabama. Hailing from Aurora, Ontario, Margaret makes work that combines her fascination with science as a medical doctor with her love of nature to create crochet covered stones featuring fractal patterns and Fibonacci sequences. This show is not tobe missed.

This exhibit runs from January 7th - February 6th.

We are pleased as punch! Showing at our Craftland Megaplex Cinema on January 15th is Faythe Levine’s documentary HANDMADE NATION! Two screenings: 6pm and 8pm! Q+A with Faythe to follow the film. Tickets are $8 and include popcorn and one beverage! There are only 40 seats available for each screening so buy your tickets online now or stop into Craftland.

Faythe Levine traveled 19,000 miles to visually document what has emerged as a marriage between historical technique, punk culture, and the D.I.Y. ethos. In HANDMADE NATION (along with the book of the same name, published by Princeton Architectural Press) she selected a variety of makers and essayists who work within different media and have different methodologies to provide a microcosm of the crafting community. Together they have forged a new economy and lifestyle based on creativity, determination, and networking. This “new wave of craft” is no longer just about cross-stitching samplers or painting floral scrolls on china. Instead, it has increased its realm to embrace an emerging movement of artists, crafters and designers working in traditional and nontraditional mediums to intervene in mass-market consumerism, to challenge the familiar and to attempt creative and economic freedom.

Join author and director (and guest-curator) Faythe Levine for the Providence premier screening of Handmade Nation! Local artists featured in the film will also be present!

Do you remember how at the beginning of the month we transformed between the year-round Craftland Shop and the Annual Craftland Show? It resulted in entirely new stock created by 170 artists. Well this weekend, while you are going to the gym and eating only salads and not swearing and putting stuff in organizer bins and remembering to breathe deeply and vowing to no longer drink things that end in “ka”, we will be RE-transforming Craftland into the year-round version! This includes the Craftland Shop with a hand-picked selection of new work! The Craftland Gallery with an amazing upcoming show! And The Craftland School of Craft with a stellar line-up of classes to get you through winter! SO - if you’ve got your heart set on anything from the Big Craftland Show, you have until TOMORROW to call it your own.

We will be closed January 1st - 4th while we transmetamorphosize the Show into the Shop-Gallery-School of Craft! We reopen on January 5th at 11am with new merchandise for a new decade!

Visit all our amazing artists here: CraftlandShow.com/artists.

Here is just a small sampling of the super gifts available at Craftland!

Stay tuned next week for more gift suggestions! And in the meantime, we don’t need to remind you that most of the work we carry is one-of-a-kind or limited edition, so if you want it, come and get it, but you better hurry because it may not last. Nope, we don’t need to remind you because you already knew that! Speaking of which, Leif Goldberg and Alec Thibodeau / Tiny Showcase calendars are limited edition - if you catch my snowdrift…

We are busy gearing up for our Annual Craftland Show. We lay awake when the sky is pitch black and the streets are so quiet and we think about things like toggle bolts and inventory forms and don’t forget to reinstall the phone jack by the new cash-wrap area… don’t forget! These trifling details should not give you, dear customer, so much as a rustle of disruption to your sleep.

No. What you should be thinking about is how the transformation between the year-round Craftland Shop and the Annual Craftland Show will result in not only entirely new stock, but a such a dramatic increase in the amount of artists we will be representing that we are up for a Tony Award. That is drama folks. From the work of 70 artists to 170 artists. That is approximately 340 hands busy working at this very moment creating your holiday gifts as well as presents you get for yourself which you so very well deserve.

How can such a metamorphosis happen when Craftland Show is just around the corner, opening on December 4th? It takes a complicated algorithm involving dedicated volunteers, delicious pizza, delicious whiskey, and closing our doors between December 1st - December 3rd. On the morning of December 4th, after we have slept like cherubic babies, we reopen our doors to you - with a bigger, and surprisingly more amazing shop.

So if there’s anything in the shop you’ve been meaning to get, get it now! Our entire stock of inventory will be changed shortly.

Here’s the schedule:
• Open regular shop hours through November 30th.
• CLOSED December 1st-3rd for transformation.
• OPENING PARTY December 4th, 5-9pm!!
• Girls Rock! RI Party December 9th, 6-9pm!
• Buy Art reception December 10th, 5-8pm!
• Hive O’Clock Happy Hour Workshop Dec. 15th, 5:30-7pm! $10
• Meet the Artists evening December 17th, 5-8pm!

DATES: December 4 - 31, 2009
HOURS: Seven days a week 10am - 6pm
Open late: Thursdays and Saturdays 10am - 8pm

See you there!

World of QueerCraft
10/15/09 - 11/21/09

Opening reception: Thursday, October 15th 5-9pm

Liz Collins
Michael DiPietro
Steven Frost
Monica Panzarino
Christopher Schulz
Anna Shapiro
Jason Tranchida
Matt Underwood

World of Queercraft features work by eight artists, who present the world using both traditional craft methods and concepts traditionally thought of as gay, from rainbow flags to Barbra Streisand. Each piece pushes the meanings people give queer imagery, sometimes with unsettling and unexpected results. Matt Underwood’s video work incorporates footage culled from gay adult websites, while Christopher Schulz’s Pinups question preconceived ideas about pornography and the male body. Chicago artist Steven Frost sews merit badges for ordinary tasks, while Jason Tranchida needlepointed an enormous pink screw using peg board and flaggers’ tape.

There are some odd overlaps: Frost and Monica Panzarino both incorporate karaoke into their work, while Tranchida and RISD textiles professor Liz Collins both work with flags. Collins’ Pride Blob stretches to over eighty feet when flat; the flag was created as part of a knitting performance in Waterplace Park in 2008.

So this is what we’ve been up to for the last 6 months…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ifnbooks/sets/72157622341067143/show/