December 2025 Arden Artisan Collective Newsletter

In This Newsletter

📌 Celebrating the Legacy Exhibits
📌 Big Little Art Show — Opening Reception
📌 Last Call: Field Trip to the Biggs
📌 A Look Back at 2025
📌 A Season of Transition
📌 Save the Date — AAC Meeting on January 13
    (With Potluck Possibility)

🗿 Celebrating the Legacy Exhibits

This fall’s two-part Legacy Exhibits were a tremendous success, drawing well over 100 visitors, most of them on reception night. These shows honored the artistic lineage of the Ardens and showcased both our history and the vitality of current makers.

Deep gratitude to everyone who brought these exhibits to life:

3D Legacy Exhibit — Blue Ball Barn

• 3D Curator: Micah Altman

• Legacy Curator: Sadie Somerville

• Assistant Legacy Curator: Barbara Macklem

• Steering Liaison: Megan Murphy King

• Support from: David Burslem, Terry Truono, Gerry Marcus, Mike Diebold

• Special thanks to Zoe Bonitatibus and the Blue Ball Barn staff

In total, we featured: 13 current artists in each of 2D an 3D  show with 4 artists exhibiting in both for a total of 22 current artisans highlighted (not including legacy artists)

Thank you as well to everyone who contributed food to the reception table. Your generosity made both evenings feel abundant and welcoming.

This was a milestone moment for our community — and a true celebration of the past and present of Arden artistry.

🖼️ Big Little Art Show — Opening Reception

Whether or not you submitted work this year, we’d love to see a strong showing of Arden Artisans at the reception.

🎉 Opening Reception: Saturday, December 6, from 6-10 PM
📍 Talleyville Frame Shoppe 3625 Silverside Rd, Wilmington

This show is always a wonderful way to connect with the Wilmington arts scene and support fellow AAC makers. Come see the tiny treasures your neighbors have created.

🚗 Last Call: Field Trip to “Our Brains on the Arts”

If you’d like to join us for this inspiring outing, please reach out now — we’re finalizing plans.

The Biggs Museum is hosting Susan Magsamen, NYT bestselling author and co-author of Your Brain on Art, for a talk on how the arts shape our lives and communities.

Date/Time: Tuesday, December 9, 5:30–7:30 PM
Program: Reception (5:30–6:15) at the Biggs → Lecture & Q&A at the Schwartz Center
RSVP: Register via the Biggs Museum website (limited seating)

I loved this book enough to read the Arden Library copy and then immediately buy my own — something I rarely do. And then I bought some as gifts.
If you’d like to carpool, text me at 717-799-7286.

🎨 A Look Back at 2025

What a year it was! 2025 offered plenty to celebrate:

• Group shows in conjunction with Delaware Theatre Company

• Continued partnership with the Craft Shop Museum for Afternoons with the Artist

• New curators stepping into leadership roles

• Additions to our online directory

• Biannual Artisan Socials that continue to anchor us

• Our first full AAC Zoom meeting

• Two group Legacy Shows

A big year, made possible by a community that shows up for one another.

✨ A Season of Transition

As we move into the next season, I want to share something important about where the AAC is headed — and where I am, too.

My own creative work — finishing my book and growing the Village Jill platform — has reached a point where I can no longer be the primary organizer for the AAC. After our January meeting in 2026, I’ll be stepping back from the steering committee and from the day-to-day coordinating I’ve helped hold these past four years.

This isn’t a departure; it’s a shift in focus.
The work I’m doing now has the potential to shine a wider light on the artists and makers of the Ardens, and that feels both exciting and deeply connected to what we’ve built together.

And truly, what we’ve built has been shared work.
The Collective has never rested on one or two people — it’s grown because so many of you have stepped in, shown up, exhibited, curated, volunteered, brought food, shared ideas, lent tools, and kept saying yes to making art visible here. That’s the spirit that will carry us forward.

At the same time, we’re at a natural crossroads. No village organization can thrive long-term if its structure depends too heavily on any one person. The next chapter of the AAC will need a broader base of thinkers and doers. I will continue to support the vision and cheer the work on, but the operational role needs to shift to the community if we want a sustainable future.

If you’ve ever felt a small nudge to get more involved, this is a meaningful moment to explore that. We’re entering a season of possibility — and of choices.

It’s likely that 2026 and 2027 may be lighter, ebbing years as we transition leadership and recalibrate. That’s not a loss; it’s a healthy rhythm after two major exhibition years. But it’s something we need to decide together.

Our January meeting will be an important moment for that conversation. We’ll explore:

• whether a membership model could offer better clarity and support,

• if we do enter two ebb years, which programs feel essential,

• how we can move toward more shared roles, and

• whether 2026 becomes a full programming year or a lighter, reflective one.

Nothing is predetermined. We’re simply acknowledging that we’ve reached a moment of choice — and the community’s voice needs to be at the center of it. Which brings me to...

📅 Save the Date — AAC Annual Meeting

Tuesday, January 13, 2025
Time: Currently 7–9 PM (Maybe earlier—see below)
We’re speaking with The Buzz about starting at 6 PM and turning the evening into a potluck gathering. After the Legacy Exhibits, our curators shared a decompressing lunch and found the conversation over shared plates so energizing that we’d love to bring that spirit to the larger group.

Details and agenda will arrive in the January newsletter.

Warmly,
Jill Althouse-Wood
AAC Steering Committee Member

The Arden Artisans Collective Steering Committee: Annette Hearing, Shay Seaborne, Betty O’Regan, Linda Toman, Megan King, Cookie Ohlson

“We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” — Gwendolyn Brooks