Category: Artists I Love

March 27, 2011

Gifts in Green: A Bit of Spring in My Mosaics

Bunny Topiary Print by Michelle Masters with a frame by Margaret Almon

Since I’ve discovered Wordless Wednesday, I have found some very cool bloggers, like Michelle Masters, who makes topiary themed illustrations in watercolor and ink. When Michelle said she was going to be at the Philadelphia Flower Show, and my tickets came in the mail, I was excited. I stopped by her lovely booth of prints, cards, pillows and linen towels, and said hello. It was a pleasure to meet a blogging friend, and to see her art in person. I bought this Thinking of You print, with such a sweet bunny perched on a wash tub, and clipping a leafy heart, as a gift to myself. I am usually busy making things for other people, but for this print, I made a mosaic frame for it with bits of pale green glass, to hang in my studio(next to my orange rabbit art tile). Perhaps I am fond of rabbits because my husband was born in the Year of the Rabbit?

New Watch Face in Mosaic by Margaret Almon.

At the same time, my friend Cynthia, asked me to mosaic an antique silver pocket watch, which was missing the clock, as a gift for a friend. This was the polar opposite of her last commission, the Mosaic Bowling ball! She wanted greens for the watch mosaic. I loved working within the engraved border of vining clover, and giving something broken a new face to the world. I found a teeny tiny millefiori bead for the center, and used one of my tins of offcuts to find the rest of the pieces. Cynthia said her friend loved it, and I’m glad I could be part of her birthday celebration! I enjoy new challenges, and welcome commissions for gifts for others, or for yourself.

March 17, 2011

Earth and Spirit: Jewelry by Bette Conway and Pastels by Suzanne Halstead, at Water Gallery in Lansdale, PA

Universe-all-love by Suzanne Halstead

If you have an opportunity to check out the new exhibit at Water Gallery in Lansdale, PA, head over on Friday March 18th, 5-9 pm or Friday April 1st, 2011, 5-9 pm, for two special openings. Tomorrow’s opening features Bette Conway’s modern celtic and contemporary jewelry as well as the special treat of the artist playing Irish Fiddle.

Friday April 1st focuses on Suzanne Halstead, my good friend, and one of the first people to nuture my love of making art! Pastels that are reproduced in her book, cowritten with Wanda Schwandt, Drawing Nearer: Devotional Workbook of Creative Prayer, will be on display in all their live vibrancy. There will be refreshments, a book signing, and music by her talented son Joel Halstead. Suzanne has graciously agreed to let me interview her about the exhibit, so look for a future post featuring her work.

EDITED: Sadly, Water Gallery is no longer at this location.

Wordless Wednesday: Alice Bailly Self-Portrait, 1917

Alice Bailly Self-Portrait 1917. Photo by Wayne Stratz.

Alice Bailly Artist Profile

January 29, 2011

An Interview By Metals Artist Wendy Edsall-Kerwin and a Shout Out for her Super Bowl Challenge

I was excited to be interviewed by Wendy Edsall-Kerwin, Metals Artist extraordinaire, as her featured artist for February. Go to her post on Hammermarks to check it out!

I also wanted to send a shout out about her Super Bowl Challenge 2011. In 2009, Wendy challenged herself to make a bowl on Super Bowl Sunday, and then in 2010 invited her readers to do the same, and for 2011 she wants it to be a party!

The bowl can be made of anything, metal, wood, plastic, bread, papier-maché, and you can start before the day, but hopefully finish it on Sunday, February 6th, 2011. Go over to Hammermarks to read more about it, and link up with other folks who are taking the challenge.

January 20, 2011

Double Vision Glass Exhibit Opening Reception 1/21/11: at Water Gallery in Lansdale, PA

It’s a thrill to have an art and craft gallery within walking distance of my house! And that the new exhibit, Double Vision, features two glass artists, John Jones and Aaron K. Wiener, is even more exciting, since glass is my creative passion and the main material of my mosaics.

Aaron Wiener bottle details

Aaron Wiener is Director of Visual Arts at the Crefeld School in Chestnut Hill, and has been on the art faculty at the school for more than twenty years. Born in 1967 in Philadelphia, Wiener lived in various places in the area, eventually moving to Lansdale to raise his family.

John Jones

John Jones has benefited from the glassblowing program at Crefeld, having been a student of Aaron Wiener, and he is also a mixed media sculptural artist who works with fired ceramics, steel, and wood. Collegiate studies at Ohio State University and Architectural and Art majors at Temple University during the 1970’s laid a foundation for his current work with glass.

The founding by-laws of Water Gallery state that the organization will be a “catalyst for growth and positive change in the Lansdale community.” I am very pleased that the gallery will donate its proceeds for the Double Visions exhibition to MANNA ON MAIN STREET, an amazing Lansdale organization that provides a soup kitchen and food cupboard, and a variety of other programs to help individuals in need. The vision of Manna on Main Street is “that everyone might be fed.”

Come to the Friday January 21st, 2011 opening gala reception where you can meet the artists, from 5-9, and while you are in the neighborhood, check out Virago Baking Company’s delicious goods, music by Jessy Tomsko from 7:30, and my mosaics and Stratoz’s stained glass, since we as Nutmeg Designs, are the featured artists for the month of January, and Virago is right across the street from the Water Gallery.

[Sadly, the Water Gallery is now closed]

Top Ten Favorite Restaurants in Lansdale

January 13, 2011

Tiffany Lamps at Reading Public Museum January, 2011: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls

Tiffany Dragonfly Lamp. Photo by Mr. T

Stratoz and I took an excursion to see the Tiffany Lamps on display at the Reading Public Museum in Reading, PA. The gallery was darkened, with the lamps glowing like fireflies. It reminded me that I had a book, A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls. I finally read it, and was entranced with Clara’s account of her life as an artist in Tiffany’s workshop in his “Women’s Glass Cutting Section.” Many of the lamps are attributed to her and her department. Tiffany had an amazing vision of beauty, and the workshop was his creation, but at the same time, the actual designs for lamps and mosaiced desk sets came from Clara Driscoll’s imagination.

Clara had her own studio space and her letters are full of specific details of the process of making stained glass. It’s exciting to read an account of a woman, at the turn of the 19th to 20th century, in the midst of her creative life. If a woman married, then she had to leave her job at Tiffany and Clara married 3 times in the course of her tenure. Her first husband died shortly into the marriage, so she returned to her job, and her next husband disappeared, and again she returned but with her final marriage she left permanently. It’s hard for me to reconcile how much Clara seems to have enjoyed her work and how wonderful her designs were, and the automatic ceasing of her work because she was a married woman.

Tiffany claimed that women were more sensitive to colors in glass than men, and that’s why he created a Women’s Department. I would imagine being able to pay them less than men could’ve also been a lure, but he recognized the excellence of Clara’s designs. She had a dream of starting a weaving cooperative in her home town in Ohio, to help young girls earn money, and work together. She didn’t get a chance to bring this into reality, but her work with the Tiffany Girls left a lasting legacy, even if mostly unknown by name.

Over on Stratoz’s Blog:

Fridays in PA–Tiffany Lamps Come to the Reading Public Museum

January 12, 2011

Dynamic Duo of Nutmeg Designs in Blue

Dynamic Duo Margaret Almon and Wayne Stratz, reflected in a Christopher Ries Sculpture.

December 28, 2010

Knowledge Begins in Wonder: The Interior Decoration of the Smithsonian Children’s Room by Grace Lincoln Temple

I came across this delightful swirly mosaic floor at the Children’s Room of the Smithsonian castle on vacation this summer in Washington DC. Originally commissioned by the Secretary of the Smithsonian in 1899, Samuel P. Langley, the Children’s Room was an expression of his belief that children should learn by personal observation and experiential activity rather than by memorization. He had “Knowledge Begins in Wonder” stenciled over the transom of the South Entrance. The room had display cases low to the ground, colorful fish, stones, plants, a kaleidescope and hanging birdcages. This philosophy of experiential learning reminds me of the Waldorf Schools, and our favorite show at Kimberton Waldorf School, with all the lovely handiwork by the students.

I was intrigued that the decorative painting on the walls and ceiling were done by Grace Lincoln Temple, one of the first women to decorate public buildings in the US. Among other things, she decorated the ballroom for Theodore Roosevelt’s inauguration.

For the Smithsonian, she created an environment of fanciful birds, among grapevines and leaves. (For a cool picture of her on scaffolding, check this out.) Over the years the room was turned into an office, and layers of paint covered Temple’s work. In a neat bit of fortune in 1987, a chunk of paint was dislodged by a water leak from above and the decoration revealed. The Paintings Conservator, Roland Cunningham, tested other spots and found more intact stencils, and all the layers of dull utilitarian paint were removed and the room restored.

Sometimes it seems like there is a whole legion of creative women who are part of the fabric of our visual world, but yet are invisible. I scrounged for information about Grace Lincoln Temple, and found passing references in newspapers and reports, like this quote, “She had charge of the decorations in the Woman’s Building at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895, and her work then made an impression that was national and everywhere favorable.”

It’s alien imagining a world where women decorating the interiors of buildings in on a grand and public scale was ground that had to be broken by pioneering artists like Grace Lincoln Temple.