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Sparking art,
talk and fun
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| Laura Carlson
participated in a papier-mâché workshop, led by Beth
Holyoke, Saturday at the Senior Center Great Room. |
Every now and then an artist has to break out of the
mold, dip the brush in a new color, turn the camera upside down and shake
things up for a challenge. So, too, does an organization of artists need
fresh vision, and the Yellow Springs Arts Council has been planning for
a year just how it wants to grow to serve and inspire the many artists
who have helped to define Yellow Springs for decades.
Artists and artists’ groups have an image
of being exclusive, closed off or separatist, which is everything the Arts
Council does not want to be, local painter and Arts Council member Shayna
McConville said. First and foremost, the current group of officers sees
the organization benefiting from as much diversity and as much inclusivity
as possible, according to Arts Council president Beth Holyoke.
Secondly, the Arts Council wants to encourage members
to talk about art. The current leadership plans to help artists organize
gatherings, throw parties, hold gallery visits and create venues for dialogue
and sharing. The exchange of ideas is precious for those whose livelihood
is largely governed by the lonely creative process, Arts Council vice president
Lisa Goldberg said. Socializing around art would bring artists together
to help each other solve problems as well as produce ideas.
The Arts Council would also like to start offering
more workshops and classes led by artists and open to anyone in the community
who wants to learn about a specific process.
The Arts Council, in short, wants to work to make
the local arts community more vibrant.
Growing up in Yellow Springs in the 1980s, Goldberg
took photography, batiking, Japanese brush painting, jewelry making and
almost every other class the Arts Council offered at the Bryan Center, she
said. Though art was the only thing that kept her sane in high school, she
eventually left her passion and Yellow Springs behind to go find a more
traditional career.
When she returned to town in the late ’90s
and became a full-time potter, she noticed there weren’t nearly as
many art classes being offered, and that the Bryan Center pottery shop was
one of the few community venues to create visual arts.
Holyoke, also a Yellow Springs native, saw the same
reduction of local outreach and activity centered on the visual arts and
wanted to spark a renewal, she said. When she became president last year,
she had a lot of ideas about how to reach her goal.
One idea, the artist-to-artist workshops, has already
been set in motion. During the months of February and March the Arts Council
is sponsoring a one-day papermaking class, a papier mâché class
and a glassblowing class with three local artists who offered to share their
skills. Holyoke taught the papermaking workshop last weekend in the Senior
Center activity Room, and the maximum number of eight people signed up right
away.
Local resident Laura Carlson has been interested
in paper making for a long time, but never before took a class. She signed
up this time because it was in town, a convenient one-time Saturday, and
it was an affordable $35 for Arts Council members, $40 for nonmembers, she
said. She enjoyed the wide choice of materials to work with and the six-hour
block of time to be creative, she said.
The Arts Council is exploring other new ideas as
well. Members talked about having open studio tours, where artists would
open their studio spaces to the public and allow people to peruse the space,
discuss the art and perhaps buy some. Larger cities hold similar events
that have become very popular, Goldberg said.
“We think we’ll be able to bring people
from out of town twice a year,” she said.
Shannon Crothers, the new manager at the Yellow
Springs pot shop, has attracted a new wave of students interested in taking
pottery classes, which are now going “like gangbusters,” Goldberg
said. The center now teaches adult and children’s classes four nights
a week and is collaborating with Antioch College and Sinclair Community
College to bring renowned potter Malcolm Davis to Yellow Springs for a lecture,
demonstration and workshop the first weekend in April.
The Arts Council also supports three annual scholarships,
for $500, $250 and $50, to recognize talented Yellow Springs High School
seniors who have taken a serious interest in the arts. The application process
has been streamlined and now includes an artist’s statement.
The Arts Council receives no direct support from
the Village and subsists mainly on membership dues. But those involved plan
to have an annual fundraiser and aim to try this year to create a putt-putt
golf course designed by local artists at the fall street fair. They are
working to get an Ohio Arts Council grant to pay for the construction of
the holes, ensuring all the proceeds will go to the organization.
But in order to make the organization function optimally,
the group’s leaders believe that the greater the membership the better
the Arts Council will be. Though traditionally the visual and performing
arts groups have not collaborated, the Arts Council hopes to join forces
with and get input from those interested in both forms of expression.
The group will host an art party Friday, Feb. 20,
at 8 p.m., at the Herndon Gallery that is open to anyone and everyone who
is interested in supporting local art. Artists can bring a piece of art
or slide to talk about if they choose, but the point, Arts Council members
say, is to have fun.
The next Yellow Springs Arts Council meeting is
on Thursday, March 11, at Marianne Wolfe’s home, 1405 Birch Street.
“We’re eager to find out what other community
members want to see in the art world,” Goldberg said.
—Lauren Heaton |
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