Holidays@Frank Bette Center for the Arts

FESTIVE FRANK
Holiday Boutique at the Frank Bette Center

by Karen Braun Malpas

Because this is traditionally a season of gift giving, the Center has joyfully complied by offering shoppers a range of thoughtful, handmade gifts in a wide range of prices.

If your friends and family are far away, they may appreciate a gift that is uniquely from here, where you are. There are beautiful boxes of  chocolates hand-crafted in Alameda! The King Family offers  a line of brightly colored  hand puppets some are on a San 
Francisco theme. Others represent a known profession for a kid who wants to be a  doctor, pilot,nurse etc. and can begin to play at  saving lives this season.

Many artists have loosed their design sensibility onto jewelry. dorieMdesigns have a carefully conceived look,understated little tone poems. Others show necklaces featuring geometric 
shapes or heavy beads. Maryanne Mock’s pieces often seem to draw with wire.Other artists feature charms, tokens, and beads. There are large, showy adult pieces here as well as delicate,tinkly youthful pieces. 

If you know someone who is not a wallflower, look at the leggings of Emily Weil in the backroom. Her purses and totes, paintings, and cards, share  bright colors  as the unifying feature.
In direct contrast are the quietly seductive pale watercolors of DrothThompson's, sometimes sly, happy paper arts.

Combining beauty with function are the ceramic pieces of Glenn Ackerman and the Keene Design studio. Organic appeal is also found in the wood works of Fred Ramsay and Ros Harper. Tiny notebooks with a flair,each an innovative little object, are shown by Bobbie Kinkead who seems to celebrate as paper. Roseanne Smith offers a variety of notecards on nature motifs for writing all those January thank-you notes. 

In short, this gift show has something for everyone…..the thing that makes them say “ Thanks, what is it?” and the thing that makes them say ”Oh, thank you, I love it!”

Holidays @ Frank Bette Center for the Arts will be open
​Nov23-December 22, with a reception Dec.14,7-9 pm.