This coming Thursday, December 4, 2008, the Wonder Fair: Art Gallery will be having an opening of new work by Justin Marable. Justin’s art is always wonderful to see, so I highly recommend checking out his work.

In case you missed it, I did a studio tour with Justin in early 2008 that was a lot of fun!
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Heather Smith Jones is a Lawrence-based painter and mixed media artist. When I first started doing my studio visit series, her name came up again and again in conversations with other local artists. I had seen some of her work at local gallery shows and we had met a few times through some mutual friends, so when I had the chance to hang out and visit with her in her studio, I jumped at the opportunity! She is an extremely kind and gracious person and allowed me to interrupt her on a recent Saturday morning to give me a tour of her work space.

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This is a collage piece that I recently came up with as a study for a different project. I ended up not using it for the project itself, but I had so much fun doing it, that I’d really like to try and do some more in this style, so stay tuned! A majority of the photographs were taken from the Library of Congress’ public domain archive on Flickr. That place is a treasure chest of interesting images from our nation’s past!

On Thanksgiving Day, 2007, I took a tour of Joe Malin’s garage-turned-studio for the inaugural DESIGNOJEK studio tour. Joe lives and works in Plainville, Kansas, a small town about 80 miles from the geographic center of the United States. He was born in a farmhouse his father built right on the outskirts of Plainville and has called Kansas his home all of his life. After retiring from a career on farms and oil fields, he put his welding skills to work again and started creating sculptures made from scrap metal, bolts, nuts and various other items lying around his shop. Although not formally trained as an artist, he creates wonderful pieces of folk art that have immense character, meticulous attention to detail, and fascinating historical significance. Also a modest man, he chuckled when I called his work space a “studio” and would likely correct me if I called him a “sculptor”, but his love for what he does and the care he puts into his wonderful pieces makes him as much of an artist as anyone.
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Ann Evans, the executive director of the Lawrence Arts Center, has announced her retirement effective Dec. 31, 2007. She has been a monumental force in not only the rise of the LAC since it’s creation in 1974, but also in promoting local artists. Her hard work has helped make the Lawrence Arts Center one of the premier art centers in Kansas and it will be interesting to see what direction the LAC will take under new leadership in 2008. Thanks to Ann for all the work she’s done and congrats on the retirement!