Glistening glass sculptures, beautiful beaded jewelry, paintings and much more line the room as you walk into a cozy brick building nestled in the North Berkeley area.

The snug interior filled with delicate trinkets is like no other in the East Bay with their one-of-a-kind pieces.

The Arts and Crafts Cooperative Inc. Gallery displays a wide range of work by member artists, including: paintings, fine art, jewelry, ceramics, photography, textiles, and sculptures, among other work.

Friday marked the 6th Annual Printmaking Exhibition’s opening reception at the Berkeley gallery.

“Tonight is definitely for the art because we do this once a month, we have our art opening,” said Lisah Horner, executive director and curator. “This is the largest audience we get once a month; people coming in for the artists’ reception.”

The Cooperative started by a small grassroots group of artists and craftsmen in the mid-1950s and became an official organization in 1959, Horner noted.  She also stated it is the oldest arts and crafts cooperative west of the Mississippi.

This year’s annual exhibit featured print-style making, which incorporates an artistic design of manufactured prints as woodcuts and silkscreens.

There is a wide range of techniques that can be used in printmaking, according to Karin Lusnak, a cooperative board member. This is one of the oldest types of art in the world Lusnak said.

Transferring ink from a matrix or through a prepared screen creates the prints to a sheet of paper or other material such as fabric Lusnak defined. Screens are made of silk or synthetic fabrics, she added, and are used to transfer ink onto the medium.

Art enthusiast Susan Nicholson explained her appreciation for the intricate techniques of printmaking.

“Its a medium that is its own master, some of it is absolutely beautiful,” said Nicholson.  “I’m very intrigued by the method and application of the line of print and printing and coloring.”

Artists like Elly Simmons, a Bay Area co-op member displayed at the gallery, explained she draws her inspiration from things like the love of her Jewish culture and her views on political and social issues in the Middle East.

“I’ve been doing print there; silkscreen prints and the works on the wall are from a book art project, and its around a bombing that happened in Iraq in 2007, a lot of people were killed,” said Simmons.

“And as a response to kind of rebuild and replenish, the area’s artists and poets have worked together all over the world to create these artist books that are showing; a set of them in the Baghdad National Library that’s like our Smithsonian. So the pieces in this wall that incorporate the poetry, are some of the 24 pieces I did for that show.”

Horner, who is also participating in the gallery, said she is featuring her own work for the first time in seven years. Her style, completely different from the rest, incorporates a Japanese woodblock, which is a form of carving that is very physical and sculptural. Her inspiration for her watercolor piece, which is made of linoleum block, comes from her travels to Corsica, France.

“I’m a little nervous tonight, I’m a relief painter,” said Horner, who is the founding executive director of the Alameda Art Center. “There is also another relief print maker, Debra Harris, and she’s just doing a flat block print and hers is a little different. She doesn’t go back and hand color hers which is what I do. And then we have Elly Simmons’ work and she’s a mixed media print maker as well, so there is a lot of different printmaking here.”

All exhibiting artists Cathy Coe, Deborah Harris, Lisah Horner, Elly Simmons, and Dobee Snowber are current or returning Arts and Crafts Cooperative Inc. Gallery members, celebrating in the gallery’s 55 years of art exploration.

“It’s pretty vibrant it’s very diverse, it’s a huge community and it’s been vibrant for years. I’ve been apart of it for 16 years now and it’s a huge community of people that have fallen together some are very isolated but for me and this gallery in particular we cultivate a community and its a part of been cooperative so I’ve known a lot of these people from other galleries, but we are an extended family.”