Potter/sculptor Elizabeth MacDonald of Connecticut and New York works in clay. Her most intriguing designs are rectangular slabs with an archaeological or geological effect. Their earth-toned layers and striations give the effect of a mountainous landscape, a glimpse beneath the surface of the earth, or a close look at one of nature’s exquisite details. Her aim is to convey, through contrasting textures, shapes and surfaces, an intuitive awareness of time and space. Ms. MacDonald has completed commissions for the chapel in New Milford Hospital, and the Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven. 

With clay, I try to create the effects of intimacy and vastness through the use of fragmentation. Small surface elements draw the viewer into a larger context where hundreds of parts interact to form a whole. Marks of color, texture and layers of powdered ceramic stain are revealed as finished surfaces after the firing. As I choose powders of one imagined hue to mingle with another, I know that every bit of pigment, though hidden in the powdered mixture, will affect the whole. Results of this initial process become the chaos of fragments from which I work. Each element becomes a discovery.

https://www.elizabethmacdonald.com/ceramics.php

My goal is to make unique, functional and lovable pots.  Animal imagery underpins all of my work whether animals decorate the plates, bowls, platters and mugs or animal sculptures are assembled from thrown or hand built pieces. I like the fluidity of moving between the two modalities. The tesselations found on the plates were/are designs that I started to develop during the pandemic when everything was so up in the air and unnerving.  In retrospect, it was a  personal way of containing and controlling (in my head) the chaos that was going on in the world. I immensely enjoyed the long hours I spent in the studio during that time of isolation. As with any art form one idea leads to the next and sometimes my inspiration comes from the previous pieces I’ve worked on and sometimes i turn to ancient pottery to be inspired.This has been my mode of creating through my many years of working with clay.  Remembering back to when I made my first piece in pre-school, I remember the feeling of being totally enchanted by the magic of working with clay and luckily for me that feeling still holds true.

https://alisonpalmerstudio.com

I was born in Czechoslovakia and studied at the Hollar School of Visual Arts in Prague. After graduating and working as a graphic designer, I lived a year in France, then moved to the United States, where I began to work in New York City in advertising, both as a graphic designer and computer graphic artist. I did this for many years, but in the end the work seemed unfulfilling and constricting, and eventually I moved to Kent CT, and started to pursue my main interest full time – creating sculptural work, kinetic whimsical objects, assemblages and videos.

My work is 3D, mostly framed or placed in wall enclosures that I build out of salvaged wood. I like to work with recycled materials and find it satisfying to look at the finished piece and see how a previously worthless piece of metal or wood becomes something else altogether – unique, and hopefully a more interesting object. It consists of one of a kind pieces, limited editions (numbered, usually a series of 5), and unlimited production (mostly some of the kinetic objects). However, as all are made using found materials and figures cut individually by hand, there will always be differences – different patinas, variations in texture, and other variations making each piece in fact an original.

tomassavrdaart.com

Elizabeth Place is a South Kent-based woodworker and member of the Berkshire Woodworkers Guild. Working under the name Berkshire Place Tables, she creates one-of-a-kind serving boards and furniture, using locally sourced woods with dramatic grain and live-edge character. From ashwood charcuterie boards to walnut writing desks and large applewood tables, each piece is crafted by hand in her studio. Elizabeth collaborates with area sawmills and a local blacksmith who forges custom steel legs and brass handles, honoring a tradition of honest, regional craftsmanship.

Her process is deeply personal—she offers clients video tours to select the perfect slab or burl, shares behind-the-scenes updates during production, and delivers the finished piece herself.  Place’s work celebrates the natural beauty of the wood, showcasing unusual shapes and grain patterns that inspire her designs. Learn more at www.bptables.com and follow at #BerkshirePlaceTables to see new pieces. 

https://www.bptables.com

Danielle Mailer received her BA from Bowdoin College and studied at the New York Studio School and School of Visual arts. In the last decade, she has completed four larger than life, public art pieces permanently installed in Connecticut’s Northwest Corner.

Mailer has shown in galleries and museums throughout North America. She was honored with a retrospective at the Mattituck Museum (2009) with over 40 works on display. She was also part of a traveling retrospective of Provincetown artists titled “The Tides of Provincetown” produced by The New Britain Museum of American Art.

In 2013 she debuted her Dancing Muse installation at Five Points in the East Gallery. In June 2020 (the height of Covid), The Mattituck Museum invited her (along with five other Connecticut artists), to offer a cyber studio tour showcasing to their members her current work. She is represented by the Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown Mass and also has her own Gallery in her home town Goshen Ct.

Danielle divides her time between making art and teaching art at The Salisbury Boys School in Salisbury Connecticut. She lives with her husband jazz music Peter McEachern, their three adult children who visit often, and little Merlin the beloved and sometimes wicked terrier.

https://www.daniellemailer.com

Alan Turner, who is happily retired and living in Connecticut, has been working wood for about 60 years, having been introduced to woodworking when he was 6 while shadowing his father around their home workshop. Turner’s father was an excellent amateur woodworker, and a good teacher. Over the years, Turner honed his skills as an amateur, and when his family’s homes were filled with his work, he hung out a shingle as a studio furniture maker. He still enjoys commission work.

About the same time, and after pursuing a long career in the law, Turner began teaching basic woodworking classes through an adult night-school program. His classes were run out of a former high school woodshop, which lacked any power tools and quality workbenches since woodworking had been dropped from the curriculum. As a result, he was limited to teaching the basics of hand tools, and small projects built with hand tools. Over those years, he dreamed of opening his own school, and eventually made good on his plans. PFW is the result; its first class ran in March 2006. And in 2014, in order that the school would continue after his retirement or death, he started a nonprofit, donated the school to the nonprofit of the same name, and secured a tax exempt determination from the IRS. Turner is now a recovering lawyer.

Turner has found that, in general, woodworkers are an honest and unusually community minded group, often willing to share their skills. You can’t talk a joint into being tight. It is there for all to see, and no amount of talking will change it. For Turner, the sharing of woodworking skills is very much a labor of love; it is his commitment to the craft. He has done some writing, and some video work as well.

https://www.philadelphiafurnitureworkshop.com/alan-turner

Tanya Kukucka’s art includes sculptures and portraits, both filled with vast symbolism and mystery. Her hard skills and sophisticated techniques are as notable as her unique conceptualizations. All of her artwork is exceptional in its rich originality and unusual visualizations. Her paintings, in particular, showcase refined elegance and exquisite style, with realistic, stunningly beautiful portraits of androgynous figures in fantasy world settings. Her sculptures combine natural and manmade materials to create otherworldly figures, often with dolls as the basis. She adorns and transforms them with paint, decorations, skulls, bones and other things until they are metamorphasized into illusory fantasy figures. One often repeated feature of her doll sculptures is an open torso cavity containing some other object. The reaction to her sculptures varies. Some viewers see it for what it is, a creative collage, an artist’s surrealistic play on unusual juxtapositions to create interesting new forms, part alien, part animal, part human. Others see a darker side, projecting their own perceptions on Kukucka’s sculptures, imagining them to be representative of something sinister, like witchcraft or occult. Kukucka categorically rejects the notion that her work is in any way demonic or satanic, “It’s their issue rather than mine. I am just exposing my inner feelings. Actually, I make these so that I can be a nice person. I am facing my own inner darkness. People ask me if I have nightmares. I don’t, because I do my art. As a child I held things in. Now I let it out. I see things from a different perspective”.

https://www.hammondmuseum.org/tanya-kukucka-1

Jill Scholsohn’s anthropology background is evident in the pieces of jewelry she creates. She uses a mixture of amulets, talismans along with rare, exotic beads and mediums from sourced from several cultures spanning the globe. In her work you’ll find Indian Rubies, Ancient Coral, Turquoise dating back 2,000 to 4,000 years,  Gaspeite, Sugilite, Glass Seed Beads, Carnelian, Fossilized Mammoth and Walrus Tusk and more.

While in Thailand she bought her first spirit lock and still wears it today.

In 1997 Jill Scholsohn had begun a new career as a NYC paramedic. To reduce her stress level, she chose to take a kayak lesson in Cornwall, CT. That was how Riverstone was founded. She married Dan Greenbaum, her kayak instructor, 3 years later. They both had a love of travel so they spent months traveling the world learning of other cultures and collecting artifacts for a store in Kent, Ct.

They opened the store in order to sell their crafts but they soon found they were too busy running the store and had no time to create so in 2004 the store was closed in order to pursue their crafts.

www.riverstonejewelry.com•

Sidney Schatzky received his BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology and his MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. He was Associate Professor of Communications at Virginia Commonwealth  University in Richmond where he taught design and illustration. Sidney built a successful career as a freelance illustrator in New York City, working with leading ad agencies and their clients in the demanding world of beauty and fashion. After many years working as a painter and printmaker, Sidney has shifted to exploring the many possibilities of ceramics. His clay practice, all hand built, is inspired by the elegant simplicity of classical forms. Sid has been represented by some of the finest galleries in country, including Rizzoli International and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. https://www.instagram.com/sidneyaschatzky/?hl=en

My knitting focuses on color and pattern. I am inspired by the way colors interact and how they change in different patterns and combinations. Using a knitting loom, I make pillow covers with patterns that I design, based on anything from tiles, Art Deco, or patterns from other countries as inspiration. The covers close with a mix of vintage and modern buttons. I also knit larger abstract geometric wall hangings in wool, which is then felted.  I handknit colorful and warm cowls that button in front, using cotton chenille, which provides the warmth of wool without the itch.

My name is Estelle Trabucco. I am a French native, grew up in Africa (West Africa and Madagascar) and France (Bordeaux region), and have lived in the US since 1994, Kent CT since 2006. 

I am a licensed massage therapist by day, and a painter by night. I have always enjoyed painting, from the youngest age. So I have always made the time for this passion of mine, except when my three daughters were very young and needed me most. 

My main style is abstraction, using primarily acrylic paints and inks. I am what you would call a momentist: I almost always start and finish a piece in one session. I start on the blank canvas without a plan. I just go with the flow and see what happens. Painting, to me, is playing with colors, expressing the emotions of the present moment in the rawest kind of way. I am a lover of bright and cheerful colors. They uplift my mood and I hope affect viewers in a similar way. 

I was first introduced to ceramics in the late 1960s, watching potters work at the original art fairs. During high school, I managed to take ceramics every semester for four years, guided by my mentor and teacher, Mr. Jerry Bolland. After a long pause, I returned to pottery during the past decade, rediscovering the creative energy that first drew me in. I work pottery working with both porcelain and stoneware and focusing primarily on functional forms. My approach is strongly influenced by Japanese ceramic design and esthetics. Most of my work is wheel thrown and made in my studio in Roxbury Connecticut.  I fire both in atmospheric kilns and in a non-atmospheric home kiln. I especially enjoy making teapots and teaware, along with vases, bowls, and other decorative objects. My goal is to create work that is both useful and quietly beautiful.

Focusing on the form and shape of fallen trees and found objects on our property, I have been creating original pieces of furniture and sculpture for the past 15 years in Warren, Connecticut. Using my chainsaw and other tools, I deconstruct logs using their natural form and texture and “reconstruct” the milled lumber into striking and stylish furniture and sculptures. Developing each piece as I go, and rarely knowing where the process will end, I create tables, benches, chairs and sculptures using the unique qualities each tree contributes. I incorporate a tree’s texture. form and shape to develop original pieces of furniture and art.

Everything in art breathes a story; a memory of movement set with intention, and the voice used to share it. I’ve lived with this concept for as long as I can remember, influenced by the many wonderful family and friends surrounding our home. Cooking, ceramics, music, gardening, textiles, woodworking, writing, sketching, and even the simple art of a laugh… all threads to weave together who I am and what I explore & create. 

I suppose I should start with watercolors. Crayons and colored pencils, yes… but watercolors were one of the first mediums that gave me a lesson in the flow of color on paper. Pottery has a huge influence for me as well. My dad is Guy Wolff, a potter renowned for his horticultural flowerpots and historically influenced stoneware. I’ve lived my whole life in and out of the pottery studio, and though I don’t throw clay, I’ve learned to slip trail some of Mom and Dad’s wares with cobalt trees, mountains, and animals. Slip trailing shares a similarity to watercolor and calligraphy combined; free, fluid, and loose with no hesitation, then a moment of calm, when I work on shading the paws of a terrier or the side of a mountain. 

The pierced tin lamps come from my childhood years of watching Dad. Granted, it wasn’t often, but it was magical. I’d sit on the basement stairs, peering through the bannisters as he’d work on making a lampshade from an olive oil tin and a few thousand whacks from a hammer & nail. The way the holes in the tin went from dark specks of shadow to captured starlight was positively thrilling. I’ve taken Dad’s abstract spiral designs and made them my own, using my love of animals and fascination in book illustration, textile patterns, and block printing to create stippled patterns of light. 

Block printing is a newfound fascination for me. It shares a similar technique of understanding positive and negative space as used to make the pierced tin lamps. I won’t know the exact character of the work until I’ve inked it, and even then there’s the aspect of the work being backwards till it’s printed on paper. Each block print has a wild, lively nature that speaks of medieval parchments or taking a slow photo using only a carving tool, a block, some ink, and one’s personal perspective.

https://www.instagram.com/elizabethwolffstudio/?hl=en

After 40+ years of teaching high school art, middle school art, pre-K- high school home schoolers AND adults, I decided to stop making visuals and demonstrations. After all those years of teaching in public school, home school co-ops and owning my own art “education” classes business, I chose to create for myself. Don’t get me wrong- I decided as a sophomore in high school that I wanted to teach art, and I definitely chose THE BEST direction for my path to wander and I enjoyed every second!

So…the summer of 2023 began the eras tour (to steal a phrase) of “re-direction” and decidedly, reconnection! I began making my own art. All the ideas, wishes to try, classes to take, experiments to play, whims I’d considered…all bets are now off! I am doing all of it only for myself and my mental clarity and my absolute happiness! When my hands are making, my heart is happy and my thoughts/ideas/creativity seem to be steady and peaceful. It’s an almost lulling of myself to believe the world and people will make it thru the craziness.

The past couple of years I’ve focused on clay work and mixed media/painting. I go between both all year long. I throw in a few workshops to learn new things and get back to my in home studios to put on my headphones and play. 

I can’t see myself really using the word retirement- this is my redirectment. I travel, I make art, I enjoy my family. I make art. Some of it makes a statement, some of it is play, some of it is peaceful to me. I will keep enjoying this redirectment for as long as I absolutely can!!

https://www.instagram.com/jczerenda.art/?hl=en

I’m a coppersmith and silversmith with a focus on natural materials and sweeping lines. I take a lot of inspiration from the natural world, but I like to produce pieces that aren’t quite representational or can be read in different ways–my “jellyfish” earrings that some people see as aliens or wind chimes, for example.

idlegauds.com

Arlynn has spent her adult life one step away from dressing up Cats and Dolls as a child. 

Substituting Clay for Fabric she also creates toys, vessels and the occasional scary clown. 

She asks that in these dark days that we bring some color and fun into our lives.

From the moment I gripped a crayon, art gripped me back. My dad became my first agent at ten, selling my drawings at work. By 13, I was winning competitions, and by high school, my art was stolen straight from my locker.

But at 22, buried under commissions, I traded creativity for corporate comfort. For 22 years, my pencils gathered dust, until life reminded me what mattered. After beating triple-negative breast cancer twice, I realized I wasn’t meant to live safely. I was meant to live fully.

Carmen 2E Art is my second evolution, the return of my hands, my heart, and my purpose.

Art isn’t just what I do. It’s who I am.
If it feels like remembering, that’s because it is.

Will is striving to create beautiful pieces of art that are also usable on a daily basis. The idea is that if you are pouring tea out of a handmade teapot into a thought out mug, you will be able to taste and feel the difference of your tea. It amplifies the taste and smell of whatever you are going to enjoy, if that is a bowl of soup or a cup of coffee. As far as forms are concerned, Will seems to have a strange obsession with teapots which vary in size from one person to ten person. That is not his only focus, for he creates all of the “normal” ceramic objects as well from bowls to plates. Once created, he focuses on Soda and Wood firings, which creates a unique surface that is nearly impossible to duplicate exactly.

Adrienne Abseck is a representational oil painter based in Roxbury Ct and NYC.  She loves painting people places and things.  Bringing her young daughter to the Art Students League for art classes, started Adrienne on an on-going painting journey.  

Adrienne developed her design skills as a prop/interiors stylist for print media (advertising, editorial, catalogs …)

Tickling the edges of surrealism, her still life paintings use fruits and vegetables as models in environments, real and imaginary.  

Adrienne’s paintings and fine art photography have been shown nationally. Follow her on Instagram:  Adrienne_pictures.

Carol’s passion for leather work began as she studied fashion design at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology and Rivier College. She perfected her leather craft skills while working as an artisan at various leather shops. You can learn more by visiting her Facebook @carolmentosleather

My boyhood home was full of duck decoys and decorative wildfowl art. My father loved his duck hunts on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Many school days were wasted away as I doodled ducks at my desk. Today that pencil has been replaced by a draw knife and hand plan. I carve working decoys which means I actually use them on marshes and lakes to attract the real thing. They are hand carved from white cedar and hollowed for buoyancy. This is referred to the “South Jersey” method. No two ducks look the same as they reflect my mood and temperament on that particular day. These decoys are brought to life by my wife Elizabeth who paints them. It’s a collaborative effort. Today the inside of our house has a familiar resemblance to my boyhood home. Our decoys have a wonderful presence which captures the attention of all who visit. We are offering commissioned pairs to those interested in owning a unique and fading woodworking craft.