The Awards of Excellence, a tradition established at the start of the American Craft Shows, recognize show artists working in a variety of ways. This year we celebrated and honored our awardees, and the lovely city of San Francisco, with a live performance by local R&B soul legend, Michael Marshall, who graced us with a chills-inducing rendition of “San Francisco (with Flowers in Your Hair).”

From a pool of more than 250 incredibly talented makers, only 4 were chosen to be honored with awards at our 2019 American Craft Show in San Francisco.

Honoring artists in a variety of categories awards were given to ceramist Karyn Gabriel (booth 315), whose work beautifully balances as an object and as an interior. Juror Rob Forbes said, “There is a lightness, simplicity to her forms that comes from her modern attitude. She makes the difficult seem simple and elegant. This playfulness and the non-acceptance of tradition has deep roots in Bay Area culture.” Fashion and textile artist, Mau Schoettle, (booth 403), also took home an award, for her “post industrial folk wear.” Schoettle uses both sustainable materials as part of her practice, and donates some of the proceeds of her sales to environmental causes.

Focusing both on work and booth design and presentation, fashion and textile artist Amy Nguyen (booth 129) stood out due to her lovely work and color palette, inspired by Japanese cherry blossom trees, and her minimal - yet creative - booth aesthetic.

Woodworker and new ACC’er Terry Holzgreen (booth 623-2) won the Award of Excellence for an emerging artist as part of our Hip Pop program. Holzgreen’s work stood out not only for his beautiful forms and vessels, but also his practice of using scraps from his former life as a cabinetmaker or felled trees. “Beauty, craft, a unique vision, and sustainability are all reasons to give Terry this Award of Excellence.” ~ Jennifer Morla, Morla Designs, juror

Thanks to our wonderful partners and guest jurors for their time and support of the show Awards of Excellence: Rob Forbes, founder of Design within Reach and PUBLIC Bikes; Jennifer Morla, president and creative director of Morla Designs; Mansur Nurullah, resident artist at Recology; and Cindy Weil, founder and creative director of the Immigrant Yarn Project. 

Congratulations to all of our recipients!