Craft

Shana Brautigam is a potter and teaching artist working at Rooted in Clay pottery studio in Rindge, NH. She makes her forms using hand-building techniques, such as pinching, coiling, and slab building. Without using the wheel, Shana creates a variety of unique forms, including everything from bowls and mugs, to teapots, large vessels, and clay instruments. She often decorates the surface by imprinting natural objects, such as leaves, ferns, evergreens, and nutshells into the clay. By incorporating these designs into her work, Shana shares her love and respect for the natural world.
She fires her work outside in a wood-fired kiln, built using old electric kilns. The kiln is fired with branches gathered from the woods and scraps from nearby mills. Using a local, renewable resource to fire her pottery helps Shana reduce her expenses and reliance on fossil fuels. Firing with wood, the flames travel throughout the kiln, touching each pot and creating a range of beautiful earth tones and surface effects. Towards the end of the firing, soda ash is introduced into the atmosphere. The soda ash vaporizes immediately and glazes the surfaces it touches, adding to the interesting effects. Unloading the pots from a wood-firing is always exciting, as the pots come out different every time, with many surprises.
At Rooted in Clay in Rindge, Shana welcomes visitors to come and view finished pieces, watch her work, and see the outdoor wood-fired kilns and ovens. She teaches pottery classes at her studio, and travels to school to teach workshops and artist residencies. Shana is a state juried member of the League of NH Craftsmen, and is listed on the NH State Council on the Arts artist roster.

Fiber artist Marylou DiPietro is the founder and President of Reincarnations, a company that designs and makes beautiful, one-of-a-kind bags out of vintage, repurposed fabrics, belts and buttons. The fabrics include all types of high-end jackets, blankets, and clothes, as well as woven and felted materials, fabric swatches, and upholstery remnants. Each bag is unique, utilizing materials that are devoted solely to that individual item. The bags (as well as padded envelope-style sleeves and clutches) are designed especially for computer equipment, e-readers, eye-glasses, and a few other uses.

Marylou’s sources of inspiration for Reincarnations are diverse. She has worked as a mosaic artist, both on purely decorative pieces and functional items such as mirrors, tables, lamps, and even wood stove hearth platforms. She has been an antiques dealer, teacher, fiber artist, artist’s assistant and, for her entire adult life, a writer.

As a poet and playwright, Marylou has had poems and stories published in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. She has collaborated with painter Marguerite McDonald in producing an art/poem book entitled Snow on the Brain, which explores the physical and psychological journeys traveled through the onset of Multiple Sclerosis. Also, she has worked with Painter Mary Dauphinais on shows/readings that combined the artist’s multi-media collage art works with Marylou’s poems.

Several of Marylou’s plays have been produced in theatres in and around Boston in recent years. Equity staged readings of her play Black Butterflies (based on the life of Tennessee Williams’s sister and muse, Rose Williams) have been performed at the Boston Playwright’s Theatre, at the 2007 Tennessee Williams festival in Provincetown, MA, and at the University of Michigan.

Marylou was the director of the Chumley’s Poetry Reading Series and the First Friday Poetry Reading Series in New York City. She co-founded and managed One Station Plaza, a multi-cultural performance space in Ossining, NY. She has a degree in Creative Writing from Syracuse University and a Masters degree from Emerson, in Theater Education.

Bob Englund purchased a used lathe about twenty-five years ago and dabbled with it from time to time. However with semi-retirement and now full-retirement, he is spending much more time in his workshop.

He makes lamps from wood carefully selected from his pile of cordwood; he also turns natural edge bowls and hollow vessels. He designs the lamps so that bark and the split surfaces from the woodsplitter are included in the base. Similarly he includes the interface between the heartwood and sapwood as well as unique grain patterns, bark inclusions, and even segments of arrested decay.

Bob has shown his work at many exhibitions and has donated lamps and vases to a number of non-profit organizations for their fund-raising activities. He is a juried member of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, the Sharon Arts Gallery in Peterborough, Exeter Fine Crafts,Vermont Artisan Designs in Brattleboro, and "Pocket-Full-of-Rye" in Keene.

My canvas is a white muslin, rayon or silk textile fabric. I create art cloth using textile dyes, paints, soy wax and machine embroidery.

Layer upon layer, medium upon medium, building upon the before, my textiles come alive with color, texture and movement.

Bring homeward functional fun, beauty, freedom and clarity.
Creativity is stirred by the current palettes of the eyesight.

Visual encouragement comes forward: natural plant growth, personal beauty, home, art, writings, etc.

My artistic vision is translated from such stimulation.

The actual process involves painting on silk screens with Procion Textile Dye. Often my doodles, sketches or ideas are planned in advance and I interpret them as I freehand paint the screen. The silk screen, because of its dye process, will only print 4-6 times in various depth of color and intensity of design before it needs to be reworked into another design.

Upon the screening completion, a dyeing bath is begun. Color upon color until the end result is pleasing to me. Often Shibori techniques, which add more texture, are used in this process.

Finally, a discharge of color and another dye bath. Or rubbing of colors. Or creating of a stamp and printing more texture, color and design. Layer upon layer. Until my stimulation is satisfied. All mediums are textile related.

Nelson Richter is a retired educator from Missouri who has moved to New Hampshire after his retirement from 40 years of teaching.  He developed an interest in water fowl decoys during his days on the family farm and his involvement in Ducks Unlimited.  He is a self taught carver and now carves shore birds, individual feathers and Santa's figures.  He collects individual leaves, traces the pattern on to paper then onto wood where the leaf is created either with a natural finish or the fall color of the original leaf.  His interest in the out of doors and conservation was developed by working with his father on the farm which now celebrates being in the family for 100 years and seeks to preserve the images into wood.

Nelson Richter is a retired educator from Missouri who has moved to New Hampshire after his retirement from 40 years of teaching. He developed an interest in water fowl decoys during his days on the family farm and his involvement in Ducks Unlimited. He is a self taught carver and now carves shore birds, individual feathers and Santa's figures. He collects individual leaves, traces the pattern on to paper then onto wood where the leaf is created either with a natural finish or the fall color of the original leaf. His interest in the out of doors and conservation was developed by working with his father on the farm which now celebrates being in the family for 100 years and seeks to preserve the images into wood.

Loribeth sculpts papier mache and adds vintage fabrics to create one of a kind art dolls. Using vintage ephemera, fibers, and bits and bobs gathered and thrifted over time she also creates original cards, garlands, wreaths, cushions and other unique items.

Chris Sherwin is the Owner and sole proprietor of Sherwin Art Glass. He brings the intriguing art of glassblowing and a high quality product to his small, New England hometown community. Sherwin Art Glass is an Art Glass Studio committed to excellence in quality and unique composition of glass in various handmade forms. Chris has over 18 years of professional experience in glass making. He combines the skills of production crystal glass making and the artistic torchwork design process, learned from two internationally renowned glass studios, into his own unique style. Glass collectors and galleries are familiar with his work and his name, and Chris has had many of his product designs sold nationally and internationally. Sherwin Art Glass strives to maintain uniqueness in the world of art glass with its combinations of torchwork design, signature background colors, clear-cased surface finishes, and hand-sculpted & blown shapes. Local floral and nature themes are the focus of many of his newer designs and using his torchworking skills, Chris showcases some of the beautiful and unique New England flowers and landscapes in his glass artwork.

Sherwin Art Glass offers a wide array of hand sculpted and blown glass products, showcasing both art and functionality. The product line includes unique and collectible paperweights, vases, glass/stemware, bowls, animal and fruit sculpture, seasonal work and more!

Sherwin Art Glass Studio is designed and runs with environmental concerns in mind. The glass furnace, designed by Owen Dodge, runs on hydroelectric power furnished by the local dam in Bellows Falls, VT.

Chris is a state-juried member of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, and you can find his work in all League galleries, and at their annual Craftsmens Fair in August. His work is also shown locally at the Sharon Arts Center, in Peterborough, NH, at the Walpole Artisans Cooperative in Walpole, NH, and regionally in other galleries throughout New England. The Sherwin Art Glass Studio has an on-site retail gallery, and you can find Chris working with molten glass most days. He is open to the public By Chance, or By Appointment: Mon-Fri from 10:00am-3:00pm, some Saturdays 10am-4pm, and on select weekends for Open Studio Tours. Please contact Chris directly for more information.

I make wall hangings, sculptures and jewelry inspired by prehistoric, tribal and world art. I tell stories with my art, stories to honor and encourage others who are making their own place in the world.

I believe using our creativity makes the world a better place for everyone. I believe everyone can participate in that process. I contribute as an artist and a writer. And maybe other ways I don't know about yet.

I write about how being a late-bloomer, a mother (of young adults-- When did THAT happen??), a martial artist, a rider, a climber and a writer, have all made me a better artist. And vice versa.

I wrote a book CARVING RUBBER STAMPS for Lark Books. I wrote a regular column for CraftsBusiness Magazine (til it went out of business, and no, that wasn't my fault.) Now I write a regular column "Craft Matters" for The Crafts Report magazine, and a biweekly column for the The Fine Art Views marketing blog.

I'm also a doubly-juried member of the League of NH Craftsmen in jewelry and fiber.