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| Featured Artists |
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Pursuing his creative desires, Larry Allen attended Berea College in Kentucky, graduating in 1978. Berea College is devoted to teaching the crafts of Appalachia, and Larry's interests were in wheeled-thrown pottery. Early in his education he focused on vessel forms and function, and as throwing became second nature to him, turned his attention to the intricacies of each vessel’s surface.
Working with red or black stoneware clay, some pieces are cut and then altered, although most of Larry's vessels involve a surface design technique known as sgraffito. The sgraffito technique is used extensively in traditional Pennsylvania Dutch pottery.
After each vessel is thrown, it is coated with a colored slip and designs are carved into the surface, revealing the clay vessel. This sophisticated method of incising leather hard clay is a medium that is particularly well suited for intricately defined detail.
Using classical, well defined shapes from all cultures, Larry's vessels are meticulously formed and intricately carved to reveal designs inspired by Native American and African motifs. Symmetry and balance, strength and beauty, elegance and class, discipline and thoughtfulness are characteristics that are expressed through Larry Allen's pottery.
In the twenty years that Larry has been a potter, he has traveled coast-to-coast exhibiting his work in select shows and galleries.
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On May 18, 2008, Thomas Chapman participated in a juried show in a deluxe Cincinnati, Ohio area called Wyoming and the photo of his work pictured here won the BEST OF SHOW Award.
Thomas Chapman is a native of Dayton, Ohio living and working in the same house in which he was raised. In 1989 Tom built the studio called Shiloh Hotglass. Since then, in his workshop he has honed his skills as a glass blower with impressive results.
Chapman is well known in the regional art scene and his work is highly sought after. He has won master fellowships from the Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District in 1995 and 2001 and is represented in the permanent collection of the Dayton Art Institute. He created the "Heroes Awards" given by the Dayton Area Chapter of the American Red Cross in 1998 and 1999. Thomas has shown his work at many juried exhibitions in the area and across the Midwest. He has this to say about his art...
“Glass is assuredly the most fertile of the dimensional media. This feisty fluid continues to compel the imagination today as it did for its discoverers over three thousand years ago. “
“The off-hand blowing method is a genuine pleasure in which to partake. It is a microcosmic example of creation. The molton material lies in its inert state awaiting form. It arrives at the hand of man. A specific amount of its mass is taken and manipulated. This fiery mass, rotating on its axis, begins to take form as gravity, ingenuity and the breath of creation bring it to life.“
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Mary Gates Dewey was born and raised in southern Florida. Upon high school graduation, she moved north to attend the Cleveland Institute of Art, where she majored in painting. She first studied ceramics at the University of Alabama where her husband was teaching, and found a real affinity for the diverse applications of clay. Mary and her family moved back to Ohio and she continued working in clay, opening a gallery and studio in Zanesville in the early 70's, and teaching ceramics and sculpture at Muskingum College in New Concord. She was forced to make a major life change in 1980 when her teaching job was eliminated, and she was separated from her husband. She moved to Athens, in the foothills of the Appalachians, to begin her ceramics work in earnest. Athens provided an inexpensive lifestyle, and her studio and house were built in the midst of the woods, one mile from the nearest road. With no electricity or running water, she began her work. She came upon the idea for the cats purely by accident in 1982, and today it is only cats that leave the studio.
The cats continue to evolve with each passing year, and although Mary's house and studio have moved and have become what some would call more "civilized", complete with flush toilets, she still finds peace and inspiration in the woods and hills of southeast Ohio, with Kaygee by her side.
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Artistic Amber was started in 2002 by Elzbieta "Ela" Skalska-Golanka to exhibit Baltic Amber from her homeland, Poland. Each summer for three months she returns to her homeland to share her ideas and designs with the best amber/silver craftsmen in Poland. This gives her the chance to fulfill her fantasy of sharing the beauty of Baltic Amber in the most artistic forms with America.
Her first major exhibit was at the Pensacola Chamber of Commerce 2003 Expo, where she received the "Most Creative" award from over 100 exhibitors.
"I have had a strong desire most of my adult life to expose spectacular Baltic Amber to the world," Ela has said. "I wanted to take something of beauty from my birthplace to my newly adopted homeland."
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