While I was out in California, I did guest-artist gigs at California College of Art and San Diego State University. Since I don’t teach full-time, these quickie jobs give me a sense of craft education today – at least how it looks from a metals studio. I can tell a lot from talking with the students: what frustrates them; where their true interests lie; where they position themselves along that craft-art spectrum. CCA offered an interesting case study. The metals studio is he

I recently saw the Louise Bourgeois exhibit at the Guggenheim in New York. While they couldn’t stuff her largest spiders into the confines of the Guggenheim, it was still a great show. Walking up the spiral, you could trace her Surrealist-inspired period into the more mature – and quirky – sculptures for which she is famous. I was never much of a Bourgeois fan. The few works I saw didn’t appeal to me, and I was never impressed with the mythology about how her work was formed