President’s Message

November 2024

Hi everyone,

It’s hard to believe that it’s almost time for Thanksgiving and Christmas. So much has happened this year in the guild, with fascinating topics each month in the monthly meetings, a newsletter full of information on our artists, opportunities for members across our area and playdates and classes to introduce our members to even more ways to make glass art.

If you haven’t yet looked at our improved website, please take a few minutes and look through it at all the changes. Karen Seymour spearheaded the work to do a theme switch and now our pages are less cluttered, it’s easier to find things and soon we will be transitioning to Stripe to manage the financial transactions on the site in a more reliable way.

The new vendor event, Margie’s Farm sale, was a fun experience for the 9 vendors who participated. The venue was spacious, all of us were mixed up with other kinds of craft vendors and we did well at the two-day sale. Look for new opportunities to sell in the future like this.

President Lesley Kelly

Earlier this year, in the late summer, we were notified that the costs of the Gathering of the Guilds sale had increased significantly due to price increases from the Convention Center. The board, when faced with the impact of these increases, felt that we could not afford as a guild to continue to participate in GOTG in 2025. After notifying the other guilds and the Oregon Potters Association of this decision, they all came together and developed a plan that was presented to me for us to participate in 2025, with a smaller footprint and reduced costs. All the other guilds felt it was worth it for them to do this as having all guilds, together with OPA, brings so many people to the event that they could not afford to lose one of the original guilds that had established the event. So, I am pleased to announce that we will participate in GOTG 2025 in a smaller footprint that will still allow us to be co-located with Bullseye, have a joint demo booth with Bullseye, and have room for a limited sales space for our members to sell their work. Look for more details in the coming months, as this is “breaking news” and just got approved.

I wish all of you a wonderful and joyous holiday season, with lots of family time and joy. I hope to see as many of you as possible at the holiday parties in December.

Thanks,
Lesley