Even More Local Art

Every December VESTA, a group of local professional artists and craftswomen, gather some of the pieces they have been working on over the course of the year and create an exhibit at the Gmeiner, the local art & cultural center here. Its opening coincides with the town's big holiday festival, Dickens of a Christmas, when Main Street is closed to traffic and becomes wall-to-wall people ebbing and flowing around vendors set up on the sidewalks. I have no pictures of the crowd this year because I spent the whole day talking to visitors to the gallery.

We are an eclectic group as this shot of a corner of the gallery shows:

Here you see hand-dyed and hand-woven scarves by Ruth Ann Miller, baskets hand woven from willow Patty Dillman grows herself, aprons made by Barb Most with pockets made from old handkerchiefs and other linens or photographs from the thirties, cards designed and hand colored by Linda Hoerner (who also makes jewelry), a quilt or two, of course, and on the bench an in-progress lace project by Judie Mainus. 

Kathy Cummings painted, among other pieces, a three-part series in oil, cleverly depicting a little girl's coming-of-age through her shoes.

And Alyson Leach, who also works in oils, included several pieces from her Vanishing Landscapes series in the show:

My photos of Alice Mickey's beautiful clouds done in pastels that you can see on the back wall of the gallery  need a retake and will be added later.

And there was more: jewelry made from re-purposed elements by Ali Taylor, glass beads and jewelry by Kathy Riley and Jen Kuhn, who also makes felted art fabric from alpaca wool.

I think our diversity adds energy to this exhibit; it certainly adds it to our conversations when we get together.

And if you are still with me, thanks for the company!