Get out your glue sticks girls, it’s time to get crafty. Turns out, all that glitters really is gold for summer campers who will wind up at the girls-only craft camps that Curious Jane is hosting in Marin County this summer. Young women aged six to 12 will glean a wealth of knowledge from DIY-centered classes aimed towards not just inspiring creativity, but cultivating critical thinking skills through projects -- costume design, storyboarding graphic novels, toy design, and more.Read more »

All sorts of political campaigns and causes raise money by asking artists to donate work that can be auctioned off. It's not often that the artists themselves get the benefits.

So Matt Gonzalez -- former supervisor, longtime criminal defense lawyer, and big fan of local arts -- is putting together a different type of fund-raiser. It's an art auction -- to benefit the artists.Read more »

What creative forms would you expect at the near-ends of the earth? My recent trip to Stockholm, Sweden was weird in the way that travel usually is, more just-like-home moments than alien fears realized of winding up cold and frozen because I forget to transcribe the 17th letter in the name of the street I was staying on.

Honestly, I went for the close-to-the-North-Pole party (did you know you can swim just about anywhere in Stockholm? Sunrise after-afterparty dips abound), but surprise! I ran into artistic inspiration. That's really having your herring burger and eating it too. Here's four people and projects that really did it for me, Swedishly speaking.

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This week, the Guardian examines the issue of whether San Francisco is experiencing a cultural and economic exodus to the East Bay, especially Oakland. Our cover features creative folks from all over Oakland proper. They were asked the question "Is Oakland cooler than San Francisco?" and in return we got some pretty surprising answers (though, spoiler alert: the general consensus was "Hell Yes!"). Have a listen to their responses...

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Perhaps this particular project can be traced back to a brightly colored, patchwork tent. Eliza Fernand already had a history of creating otherworldly sculptures and visual arts pieces out of unique fabrics and textures (pillowy raindrops, threaded waterfalls), but no real work in the specific craft of quilting when she began a now years-long endeavor. Under the umbrella term of Quilt Projects, she kicked off a tumble into the world of quilting with that pieced-together structure. Read more »

The triumphant Team Bling Bats might owe some of their success to German electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Without it, the champions of the Food Network reality design show Halloween Wars might not have had the kickass contributions of SF local Shawn Feeney, who helped drive the team to victory in the four-episode series final show on Sunday.

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