Design

The Awards of Excellence Walking Tour is - hands down - my favorite part of every ACC Show. Everyone gathers at the Council booth, and off we go to surprise the winning artists. This year's San Francisco jurors were Mike Holmes, co-owner of Velvet da Vinci, and Ted Cohen, an exhibition designer who works with institutions such as the Museum of Craft and Design and the Museum of Craft and Folk Art. It was a supreme treat to listen to these veterans of the studio craft world as they bestowed four awards of excellence.

Here's what they had to say:

As we cobbled together 70 years of craft history for the uber timeline in our August/September issue, we had way more to choose from than we could include within our pages.

Boris Bally's sophisticated reinvention of reclaimed street signs and found objects will rattle your mind. Bally transforms traffic signs into everything from entirely modern furniture to sleek jewelry and home decor items -- and even flatware! My favorite piece is a necklace created with 100 handgun triggers from Pittsburgh's "Goods for Guns" program. It's Bally's spin on the talismanic charms of aboriginal cultures, and he says, "this urban 'mojo' protects the wearer from the gun violence so prevalent in today's culture."

We could share many highlights out of the visual feast that was SOFA Chicago this weekend. The retro-cool outer-space-scuba-inspired work of Rik Allen. The delicious palette and fabulously messy composition of Therman Statom. The amazing metal torso sculpture of Niso Maman.