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.
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