Our Artists’ Creative Sparks

I spent most of my career in front of an audience as a touring, performing, and teaching artist. I ran a gallery in a small town— a different sort of audience. And there was a German traveling circus, and busking on the streets of Europe. I became weary of the energy required to hold a live audience. Still, the immediacy of interaction between performer and audience inspired me. Studio work is different.

As my artwork has gained greater attention, I think about the similarities and differences between being on stage and creating in my studio. The immediate vs the contemplative, music vs silence. My audience now appears after I finish a work. Creating with encaustic paint and monotype printmaking sometimes feels like improv theater with all its risk and surprises. I hope that my creative energy is experienced by the viewer as they look at my work. So far, nobody has burst into applause in my gallery, but perhaps they are clapping on the inside when they find a piece that resonates.

Susana Abell
susanaabell@gmail.com
susanaabellart.com
828-333-3456

As a kid I loved working on craft projects. I started work as a secretary in the garment district but became totally enchanted when I passed by the design studio. That was it for me: colors and patterns galore. I was fortunate to be hired as a colorist, then designer, then VP of Design creating designs for a variety of printed fabric. I still get great joy putting colors together, whether in creating dyed scarves, bookmarks, or felted pieces. 

Judy Ott
judy.aboutcolor@gmail.com
aboutcolor.net
704-560-1601

I make artworks always thinking about the ways objects communicate ideas. And I always make objects I would like to live with. Not so I am talking to myself, but because I don’t want to make anything I would not like in my own home. I started making objects in grade school, took wood shop in junior high, and wood carving in high school. The forms I work with and the way I approach surfaces started back then, with some of those intuitive forms and techniques still present in my artwork today.

Robert Milnes
milnesstudio@gmail.com
robertmilnes.com
408-772-4654

When I was a young girl, I enjoyed making crafts with both of my grandmothers. One of my grandmothers taught me to knit, but not how to cast on or cast off. She would load up my knitting needles with stitches and I would knit until I saw her again to help me finish my piece. I ended up with some very long scarves! Since then, I’ve enjoyed many forms of art, including weaving, felting, enameling, and jewelry making. My favorite medium is basketry. I’ve particularly enjoyed working with sweetgrass in making traditional Gullah baskets, and weaving baskets with black ash. I recently started weaving reed and fiber on river rocks which adds another texture and dimension to my work.

Deborah Druhot*
dkdruhot@gmail.com
216-224-9094

For as long as I can remember, I have loved making. I was encouraged from a young age to be creative: drawing, painting, cooking. As I grew up, I stuck with it, continuing to paint and then went to college for painting and ceramics. That is when I found glass blowing. Glass is truly something magical and I have so much passion for it. It takes all my attention and focus to create a piece of hand-blown glass art. I am challenged every day to make a specific technical shape or to just play and figure out something new. I am so grateful to have found an artform I feel connected to and can run a business from.

Haley Jelinek
haleyjelinekglass@gmail.com
haleyjelinekglass.com
814-464-7970

What attracts me to nature photography is the quality of attention required to see and feel, to truly be present to the environment I am in. I find this quality of connection intense! It allows me to identify what is deeply speaking to me. My challenge is finding ways to best express a multi-dimensional experience in a two-dimensional art form. Of late, I find myself attracted to creating multiple exposures in camera and playing with intentional camera movement. Both techniques create a dimensionality not offered in a single still exposure.

Bonnie Cooper
bonniecooperphotography@yahoo.com
bonniecooperphotography.com
828-788-5142

I’ve worked with fiber from childhood: learning sewing and needle crafts at a young age. There were many women in my mother’s family who loved to sew. My father’s grandmother sewed as well, but also painted and loved flower arranging. The first time I sat at a loom, I felt I had found where I needed to be. I still love working with fiber, but I also paint, and am fascinated with enamels– by the brilliant effects that happen when putting ground glass through the firing process. I learned about enamels from the mother of a high school friend who encouraged me to follow my desire to be an artist. Without her encouragement, I’m not sure I would have majored in art. I still think of her whenever I’m working on an enamel project.

Joanne Bossert
rjboss49@gmail.com
404-909-9878

My woodturning began with a Woods and Metals class in 9th grade. In college I studied business in a Professional Golf Management program in Michigan and returned to woodturning in graduate school. My work experiences include being a golf professional and a cabinetmaker as well as working in personnel management, finance, and tool sales. I have taught woodworking in secondary schools, woodworking retail stores, and as an artist-in-residence at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. I am captivated by off-centered turning, creating askew and whimsical forms. I use the lathe in conjunction with enhancements, modifications and special effects to produce work inspired by nature and imagination that not only reveal an exotic character but also are creative and playful.

Thomas Irven**
trirven@icloud.com
713-705-2050

What led me to pursue art? I’m not exactly sure! Whatever artistic leanings I may have shown as a child were not nurtured or developed by my parents, and I believe my later-in-life pursuit of art thrived as a result of that earlier benign neglect! When that spark ignited, I was ready.

I enrolled in the UNCA BFA program when my children were young, already having a Bachelor degree In Sociology, which did not inspire me. Initially I found portrait painting to be my passion, but my path led me to landscape painting, still life, and flowers- genres I found much less constraining. My inspiration was the sense of light and how it affects color and form, creates a mood, tells a story. I am an intuitive realist, creating paintings that I hope will evoke a mood, a memory, or a pause for a moment of reflection.

Susan Sinyai
susansinyaiart@charter.net
susanmeyersinyai.com
828-337-0263

I was a maker as soon as I could manipulate found objects with my hands. When I was 4, I found pure joy in a pocket of clay in the creek bank in our yard. I made small animals and clay worm houses and got in trouble when my brother ate the worms. No more clay! By junior high I made wide coil clay vessels. I took 3D art in high school and created a bronze lost wax sculpture with welded elements, carved an alabaster head, and sold almost all my hand-built ceramic pieces. I was hooked by the making and selling! The “art is not a career” message came loud and clear from my science-minded parents. I got a Phd and taught college but gave it up to get back to my soul work, creating stuff! I taught art in many media and in many venues in the past 30+ years while doing my own creative work. Now in Asheville, I am once again able to make and sell functional and sculptural ceramic pieces, including other media in my work.

Peggy Ann Johnston
pajart@comcast.net
peggyannjohnston.com
408-655-1737