The FINAL Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour: meet my guest artists

This weekend is the 15th and Final Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour. On Sat., Oct. 17 and Sun. Oct. 18, from 10 am-6 pm you can visit 26 artists at eight locations. This is my eigth year participating as a host, and this year I have three guest artists. Let's have a look at what they do.

Alice Young-Basora creates unique jewelry using beads of stone, glass, and handmade paper, vintage buttons, and recycled fabrics and painted canvas. Each handmade bead is unique, as is each painted canvas flower, yielding completely different pieces of jewelry art. When using hand-painted canvas, fabric, paper and beads, she uses up-cycled materials when possible.

Geno Luketic creates both functional and sculptural pottery. Wood firing allows the nature of the material be apparent in the finished work as he does not want to hide the clay beneath harsh uniform glazes or sharp structured forms.

Krissie Mastin’s art is a journey. She scours the Midwest for leftover articles from the past. Once her stash is sufficient, she pounds, melts, hammers, transfers, patinates, and shines to reinvent beauty from the leftover and forgotten. Most of her designs include basic metalworking techniques incorporated with found objects, recycled metals and oddities unknown to create inspirational pieces that have meaning to their wearer.

The tour is a driving tour. Visit the Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour website for more information about the other hosts and guest artists and to download a tour map. Maps can also be picked up at the Winds Cafe, Young's Dairy, the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce, and at the artists studios the days of the tour. All studios will have red balloons and signs. 

Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour: meet my three guest artists

The Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour is this coming weekend, Sat., Oct. 20 and Sun. Oct. 21, from 10 am-6 pm both days. This is my fifth year participating as a host, and this year I have three guest artists. We have 27 artists at eight locations with seven guest artists who are new this year.

All three of my guests are artists whose work I admire so much that I own art made by all of them. Instead of using the promotional photos that were provided for the brochure, website, and other print material, I'm including photos of the pieces that we have in our house.

Lisa Wolters makes wonderful sculptural clay vessels that incorporate her love of typography and words themselves by pressing messages into slabs vessels that she then decorates with oxides, vibrant underglazes and touches of clear overglaze.

Libby Rudolf paints lovely watercolors inspired by the beauty of natural spaces around the country and she enjoys paint plein-air. I know she has been busy painting new paintings for this weekend.

Guustie Alvarado makes amazing jewelry, beautiful blown and fused glass creations, and bold mosaic wall hangings which often use fused glass and oil paints or cut glass

The tour is a driving tour. Visit the Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour website for more information about the other hosts and guest artists and to download a tour map. Maps can also be picked up at the Winds Cafe, Young's Dairy, the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce, and at the artists studios the days of the tour. All studios will have red balloons and signs.

Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour: meet my three guest artists

Photo by Susan Gardner, 2010.

The Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour is this coming weekend, Sat., Oct. 15 and Sun. Oct. 16, from 10 am-6 pm both days. This is my fourth year participating as a host, and this year I have 3 guest artists. We have 27 artists at 8 locations! 13 of the guests are new to the tour and we also have one host who is new to the tour.

Kate and Dave Chesar are guests at my studio. They make pottery that is a collaborative effort in their home studio in Dayton. Each piece is created by trading and combining their inspirations throughout the throwing, decorating, and glazing process. Carved textures and scenes, slip brushwork, and sculptural elements serve to accentuate the graceful forms of their functional artwork.

J Austin Jennings is also a guest at my studio. She creates a unique treatment of collage application which takes ‘mixed media’ to a new level. Her works stem from earthly themes, and present a playful interaction, both between the metaphoric inferences and within the mixing of mediums, creating a correspondence between the ‘real’ and the ‘imagined.’ Critically acclaimed, her original collage-over-acrylic pieces have won numerous awards, including a featured spot in The Artist’s Magazine’s Year’s Best Art, 2009. 

My third guest is Theresa Mayer. Theresa is captivated by melting rods of glass and turning them into beads. She has discovered that she can express feelings and emotions in the beads she creates. She enjoys seeing that different people see an assortment of things in them.

The tour is a driving tour. Visit the Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour website for information about the other host and guest artists and to download a map. Maps can also be picked up at the Winds Cafe, Young's Dairy, the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce and at the artist's studios the days of the tour.

Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour: Meet my guest artists

The Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour is this coming weekend...Sat., Oct. 16 and Sun. Oct. 17, from 11 am-6 pm both days. This is my third year participating on the tour, and this is the 10th tour so we've decided to do something a little different this year...guest artists! Each of the 8 host artists will have some guest artist in their studio.

My first guest is Theresa Mayer. Theresa lives in Yellow Springs and works with glass. She makes lampwork beads that can be worn as necklaces or used to embellish other projects. Above is a photo of the first pair of beads that I bought from Theresa...I liked them because they looked like a tiny universe. She also makes beads with tiny landscapes on them.

She says, "I began to play with glass when I took some traditional stained glass classes. Then I got a mini kiln and became enthralled with fusing. One day just for fun I signed up for a lampworking bead making class at the Springfield Art Museum. I became addicted to taking rods of glass and melting them in front of my eyes and turning them in to beads. As I began with my first nearly beads I struggled to get shape and form. As practice made that come more naturally I have discovered that I could express feelings and emotions in the beads. What I find the most fun is that different people see different things in them, so the adventure begins with the viewer and their imagination."

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My other guest is J. Austin Jennings, who lives in Kettering. She is a painter and has been exploring mixed media by incorporating a collage technique in her paintings. At left is "Less Traveled" which I own.

She says, "Creating art is a process of ‘seek and hide.’ I sort through life, selecting scenes, looking for secrets, and pursuing the oft-overlooked ironies of the natural world. In the studio the seeking continues. I search out colors, textures, value tones and fascinating images. Cut paper, shards of printed material lay scattered across the worktable. The pieces reassemble themselves to form a new whole in a process I like to compare to alchemy...a transmutation of small, ordinary scraps into a more profound whole. Then the viewer becomes the seeker—finding secrets I myself have hidden."

Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour this weekend

I'm am honored to be included on the annual Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour this weekend, Oct. 17 & 18 from 11 am to 6 pm. I'll be joining 13 other exceptional artists as we open our studios so you can explore the inner workplaces of some of the finest artists in the region. Along with my fiber art, there are potters, sculptors, painters, a clock maker and more.

Print a map from the website. Or pick up a map the day of the event at Young's Jersey Dairy or The Winds Cafe.Make an event out of it and eat at one of the local restaurants or go for a hike in Glen Helen or John Bryan State Park.