Art On the Lawn -- This Saturday!

The Village Artisans, a cooperative of Miami Valley artists, is pleased to announce their 29th annual fine arts and crafts festival, Art on the Lawn, to be held on the Mills Lawn green, 200 South Walnut Street, in Yellow Springs on Saturday, August 11, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

This year's show presents scores of new and returning artists with a wide range of specialties, including yard, metal and glass sculpture, ceramics, jewelry, painting, drawing, photography, woodworking, hand-made furniture, stained glass, fused glass, painting on glass, fiber art, batik, face painting and even unique baby clothes.

Our featured artist for this year is jewelry designer Mary Kleismit.  Mary is now in her 80s and has been creating elegant jewelry for the past forty years.  She and her husband, Richard, have scoured the country for decades, collecting precious and semi- precious stones, puchasing rare pieces at international shows, as well as digging for the crystals that they use in their jewelry. 

Born in Yellow Springs, Mary grew up helping her father farm their 150 acres. She met her husband when she was attending school half a century ago, and they have been working together ever since, Richard specializing in rosaries, silver work, wire wrapping, and Mary in bead work, and tabbing - stone cutting and rounding and polishing for free- form pendant creation. Their display this year will include earrings, bracelets, necklecases in precious and semi precious stones, also large and small minerals and rough rocks. Mary says her purpose is to "help people appreciate what there is on earth and who put it there for us. I've always wanted people to love what God put here. So often, people don't realize what lies around them." 

An extra l attraction for Art on the Lawn, back for his 4th year, is Mozart Dane.  He’s a Great Dane and a Great Artist: “The dog who paints with his paws for a good cause.”  All his sales benefit Harlequin Haven Great Dane Rescue. "I have dedicated my life to this cause," states Mozart Dane on the Harlequin Haven website, " and in doing so I create art by painting with my paws.  Painting helps me to overcome my pain of my early days in a puppy mill and also helps with bringing awareness to these issues."

Whether it’s noshing from old-time food carts, listening to street musicians, having your face painted by a professional artist, taking a chance at the 50/50 raffle, or having the opportunity to see and purchase beautiful, hand-made art, Art on the Lawn is the perfect way to have fun in Yellow Springs on August 11. For more information, call Village Artisans at (937) 767-1209 or visit www.shopvillageartisans.com.

July's featured Artist -- Pam Geisel

 The summer has been busy for Yellow Springs fiber artist Pam Geisel. She had an article featuring her art quilts and note cards published in the summer issue of “Art Quilting Studio” magazine, and her art quilt, “Early Morning Nine Patch – Montana Sky,” won “Best of Show” in the Rosewood Art Centre’s annual juried landscape competition, “The View.” In addition,  she joined the Village Artisans cooperative and is the featured artist for the month of July in their gallery. She has several new art quilts on display through the end of July. A reception for Pam will be held at Village Artisans from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. as Yellow Springs celebrates Third Friday on July 20.

Meet Pam Geisel

Pam Geisel was born and raised in Ohio and took shop class in junior high so she wouldn’t have to learn how to cook or how to sew. Since then she has taken a few quilting classes but is primarily self-taught. She’s always considered herself an artist and has explored using many different mediums, but it’s designing with fabric that really grabs her passion, much to the surprise of her junior high self.

Her education and work experience was as a graphic designer and also as an instructor of both graphic design and desktop publishing. Her quilts often have a strong graphic quality to them, even if the sewing technique is sometimes non-traditional. She creates and sells original, handmade art quilts and quilt-related art both on-line and at art shows in southwest Ohio. She enjoys making both traditional quilts and art quilts and also makes custom quilts.

What interests her about traditional quilting is how a quilt square can look completely different if the shapes that make up the square are in different colors or tones of the fabric. She is also fascinated by the secondary patterns that emerge when quilt blocks are arranged together.

Lately she’s been doing more exploration with non-traditional fabrics and making art quilts that incorporated traditional piecing but in new ways. She’s often discovering new techniques and incorporating more than just fabric into her art.

Pam is inspired by everything around her: patterns in the trees and the leaves, designs in a tile floor, the shape of a wave. Sometimes she get an idea like a flash and other times the fabrics tell her what they want to be.

She has exhibited her art with the Ohio Designer Craftsmen’s “Best of” shows, OH+5, the Springfield Museum of Art member’s shows, and a special exhibit in the Experiencenter at the Dayton Art Institute.

She currently lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with her husband and four cats. You can view more of Pam’s work at www.PamGeiselArtQuilts.com and www.PamGeiselArtQuilts.blogspot.com and Pam-Geisel.pixels.com.

Click here to return to the list of artians

Spring has Sprung

Spring has sprung all over our Lobby Gallery.   Please join us for our reception

on Friday, May 18th from 6-9 

Thinking Inside the Box

Yellow Springs author and artist, Kathy Verner Moulton has been invited to participate in a mixed media exhibition, "Inside the Box," at the Expriencenter at the Dayton Art Institute. Kathy's 3-D collage, entitled "Inside Thinking Outside," is tied to her children's story, "Six Small Rabbits," in which the rabbits decide to explore the world. The opening reception will be held from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. on April 28 in conjunction with a “family day." The exhibit will run through April 7, 2013. Kathy is a member of the Village Artisans cooperative of Yellow Springs.

According to the Dayton Art Institute, "INSIDE THE BOX is an exhibition that explores creative expression and problem solving using that simple container we call a box. Although boxes are primarily functional, throughout history artists have elevated the box from something ordinary and mundane to something beautiful.

"With that premise as the basis for the exhibition, INSIDE THE BOX will demonstrate the beauty of the box as seen through the eyes of artists from various cultures as represented in the museum’s permanent collection. The exhibition will also include the creative work of 25 area artists who take a simple box and respond to the question: What would you do with an empty box to change it from ordinary to extraordinary?"

"When I first spoke to Arlene Branick after receiving the invitation," said Kathy, "I asked her how she knew my art. I was assuming me saw my show at the Fifth/Third Bank Building in Dayton. She said she had seen my work in the Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour brochure and that she had followed the link to my website www.kavooom.com. She noticed my children's illustrations and thought I would be a good fit for the show.

"My piece for the "Inside the Box" Show is tied to my children's story 'Six small Rabbits.' The rabbits in my story decide to explore the world and to stretch themselves beyond their normal activities. The box in my piece becomes a rabbit's burrow. I covered the outside of the box with a layer of dirt made of cork. The top has a grassy garden and a little picket fence. An easel and some paintings are standing in this garden. Inside is a beautiful home, with a pebble floor and of course carrot wallpaper. Sitting in the front room is a very comfortable stuffed chair and lying next to it, open, is a copy of 'Six small Rabbits.'In the background you can just catch sight of the rabbits' bedroom with a tree poster bed, a lamp table with a top hat waiting for some magic to happen, and a guitar case in the corner. Returning to the front room, you find a ladder leading to the ceiling, which is covered with clouds. Perched on top this ladder is Rabbit number 1. His elbow is outside of the burrow and his chin is resting in his paw. He is holding a paintbrush and thinking about what adventure is next. He is 'Inside Thinking Outside.'

"Each bit of my piece was handmade by me. The rabbit was sewn from a pattern of my own. The chair was also designed and sewn by me. I drew the wallpaper on my computer and printed it out on watercolor textured paper to give it that wallpaper look. The pebble floor was glued together piece by piece. I built the ladder and created the tufts of grass. The little book is an exact copy of my real sized book printed very small. The bedroom beyond the archway was painted on my computer, the bed, the table and the lamp all created on separate layers and fit into place."

Access more information on the Experiencenter and the exhibit at :

http://www.daytonartinstitute.org/learn/youth-family-programs/experiencenter

We're not clowning around.

Sue Brezine's Retrospective has been held over.  She's having her second reception 

Friday April 20th from 6-9pm.  

If you can't make it Friday you still have until the end of the month to check out this great exhibit.

Sue Brezine Retrospective

Sue Brezine brings "March Mindfulness" to the Village Artisans Event Gallery, 100 Corry Street in Yellow Springs, March 1 - 31. Inspired by Fredrick Fanck's "Zen of Seeing," Sue presents a retrospective of her work "to the viewer's quiet place of recognition" in watercolors, pastels and abstract acrylics.

Sue is a native Daytonian, and as a child, she studied at the Dayton Art Institute. Her teaching career began after a trip to the University of California, Long Beach to study with Betty Edwards, author of "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain."

Sue taught this method at Riverbend Art Center, Dayton, Kettering Adult School, and many other venues, and these classes let to the creation of the workshop, "Sketching Your Spirit," which has been presented to countless religious and professional organizations over the years.

Drawing led to painting in watercolor, and she has received numerou awards for her work, including recogniztion from the Western Ohio Watrcolor Society and "The Artist Magazine."

Sue is presently president of Fairborn Art Association, a member of Dayton Society of Painters and Sculptors, and past president of Western Ohio Watercolor Society. After a long and successful career of teaching, Sue is retired, except for membership in the Village Artisans in Yellow Springs. "Thank goodness artist never need to really retire," she says.

You may view her paintings at shopvillllageartisans.com or call 937-767-9457 for further information. A reception for Sue will be held at the Village Artisans Event Gallery on Friday, March 16, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.