2013 Art On the Lawn welcomes back 2012's Best of Show - Kotah Moon

The Village Artisans will host their 30th annual fine arts and crafts festival, Art on the Lawn, on the Mills Lawn green, 200 South Walnut Street, in Yellow Springs on Saturday, August 10, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Scores of new and returning artists will have their work on display at the show. Their specialties include jewelry in gold and silver, beadwork with seeds and metal, paper-craft  watercolors and acrylics of nature and landscape scenes, drawings, caricatures, beeswax candles, garden and yard art, ceramics, stained glass, pressed flowers, masks, fiber art, leather accessories, scarves, and fused glass bugs! The setting is idyllic, and food vendors will be there to complement the outstanding artwork.

The featured artist for this year is Kotah Moon, a spiritual Eco-Artist, who specializes in sculpture and the reformation of previously used metals. Kotah won the Best of Show award at last year’s Art on the Lawn, and she is returning not only because Art on the Lawn is “well organized” and “attracts good artists,” she stated, but because Yellow Springs is a “good energy town.” Moon has even researched that energy and has found convincing evidence that shows Yellow Springs to be located in an “energy vortex.”  And energy, say Kotah Moon, is a major part of her life and work. Traveling to art shows throughout much of the year, Kotah and her wife, Suzy, spend winters in Florida, working and looking for the used or scrap material with which she creates her eco-art.

She finds used metals wherever she goes, says Kotah, and “each piece has its own story.” New metals, she explains, “don’t have the energy that comes with used metals. They don’t speak to me.”

So she looks for “metals that have had a life before...that have had life experiences” Those experiences, says Kotah, can come from the soil and the place where the material has been used, and from the people who used it.

“When you deal with recycled metals, you don’t know what is going to come out of it until you start working,” she says. Sometimes the energy of the materials contributes to the creation process. Sometimes there is other energy at work: “I love waking up every day and not knowing what’s in my head,” she says. “I dream some pieces, and I wake up and have to go and make what I’ve dreamed.”

Kotah’s relationship with the metal she finds complements the history of the metal itself, and, she says on her website, “Most people who visit my booth leave with more than just a piece of art, they leave with some of the energy God has given me, they leave with a story, and they leave wanting to share this experience with others.”

In addition to Kotah Moon and so many other artists, this year’s Art on the Lawn will feature music by Bettina Solas: “My musical repertoire consists of quite a variety of music,” writes Bettina. “My style is generally relaxing. I play a lot of Celtic, traditional Americana, folk, gospel and even some more modern selections on the autoharp and mountain dulcimer and I sing.”

In addition to Bettina’s music, Mark Camban, an artist who makes a Native-American style flute, will have a booth at the show and will be playing his flute throughout the day when he is not talking with customers.

For more information, call Village Artisans at (937) 767-1209 or visit www.villageartisans.blogspot.com