Page 20 - the NOISE July 2014

ContinuED FRoM 18
FLAgstAFF ARt in thE PARK REtuRns to WhEELER PARK
CW FROM LEFT: Examples of the art of Zac Kothrade, Sharon McGinnis, and Natalie Reed-Goehl, found at the Art in the Park this Fourth of July.
by SArAH GIAnellI
Stu Wolf sits at his potter’s wheel in a cool workshop tucked in the back of a lush, blooming garden. A rocket ship shaped kiln just outside the studio looks prepared to takeoff out of the foliage. Turning on the wheel, he resumes “throwing off the hump,” an efficient and relatively quick method for creating a number of the small popular bowls that are his bread and butter at The Artists’ Gallery, where he also sells decora- tive wall sculptures. Working with the wet clay, continuously sponging it down to keep it moist, he deftly makes a few pieces while telling me about Flagstaff Art in the Park, the city’s largest art fair which he has been involved with for 15 years.
“These people are the purist form of en- trepreneur that exists these days,” he says. “These are people trying to make a living by selling things they make with their hands. It’s an almost nonexistent thing in this coun- try anymore. The idea of knowing the per-
son who makes what you use used to be a common everyday experience — you knew who made your pottery, who put the shoes on your horse, who made the cabinets in your house, who made the furniture in your home, and who made the clothes you wore. The closest place you can get to that today is an art show, where you actually get to meet those people. But the ability for those peo- ple to make a living selling their artwork is a difficult thing because they’re competing against countries using slave labor so they are able to sell things very inexpensively — because nobody gets paid to make it.”
Mr. Wolf’s way of combating that reality is to create a micro-economy where import competition is removed from the equation. If there is competition, it’s on a level playing field between fellow craftsmen.
“My job in this art show is to make sure it’s
successful,” says Mr. Wolf. “To make sure the money these artists are paying me for their booth, is worth the risk. I take a significant portion of that money and reinvest it into advertising to bring a crowd, generate some energy, and make sure it’s a quality show.”
This year, 100 artists will come from all over the Southwest, mostly from Arizona but also from Utah, California and New Mexico. There will be live music all day every day, food vendors, and artists representing every imaginable medium. “Wheeler Park will be- come a little city for three days,” says Mr. Wolf.
“It’s a real, local, homegrown, safe, clean, fam- ily friendly, good time.”
Three local artists returning to Flagstaff Art in the Park this year are Artists’ Gallery members Zac Kothrade, Natalie Reed-Goe- hl (both participating for their second year) and fiber arts-watercolorist Sharon McGin- nis who is returning for her fifth time.
Mr. Kothrade has recently branched out on his own after working as a bench jeweler doing repairs and production work since graduating from NAU with a degree in fine art. His unique creations — many of them like small works of sculpture — are all hand fabricated from scratch and elevates the me- dium from accessory to wearable art. Simple but elegant, he works in silver, brass, cop- per and occasionally gold for highlights and contrast, creating colorful enamel earrings, fabricated cuffs, brushed silver broaches, rings and necklaces accented with precious stones, textured and three dimensional pieces — some of which are highly abstract while others are more naturalistic — from his contemporary cage series (earrings remi- niscent of paper clips) to those suggestive of sails and leaves.
The degree of thoughtfulness he puts into
his designs is evident in small touches like entire piece with a black glaze, she then uses
the unique clips for securing the earrings, and handcrafted decorative clasps. “I’m in a phase of rediscovering my artistic abilities and creativity,” he says. “I design with a prin- ciple of simplicity and the philosophy that it doesn’t take much to create something that will look good on a person. Because my work is hand fabricated, I’m using tech- niques that have been used since humans started working with metal, so it has a time- less appearance. I’m really a metalsmith first and a jeweler second — jewelry is just what I decide to do with it.”
Ms. Reed-Goehl will be selling a selection of her functional ceramics that range from antiqued pieces with a town and country aesthetic to her line of bright, polka-dotted works. Having worked with clay for 15 years, she has found a deep satisfaction making functional pieces — including beer mugs that hold the perfect pint, serving bowls, Asian inspired spoons and dishes, unusual flower vases, and something unrecognizable to me until she tells me it’s a butter cloche.
“Making functional pieces was something I came to over time but am supremely happy to have come to it,” she says. “The idea that I am making an object that becomes incor- porated into someone’s daily ritual is very important to me. That my work could bring a smile or moment of calm and enjoyment ... this is what I strive for.”
Ms. Reed-Goehl creates all of her pieces by hand with no molds or forms, and fires them in an electric kiln at approximately 2200 de- grees. She prefers electric kilns because it gives her more control over the end result than wood-firing does.
Some of her most interesting work she creates with a technique called sgriffito, com- ing from the Italian “to scratch.” Covering the
small metal tools to scrape away the glaze to expose the white clay underneath in whatev- er design or illustration she wants to achieve. In others, she hand paints on the pieces — often rabbits and ravens — and even takes the time to add these touches to the interior of her work.
“I want my work to be my work,” she says. “And it is. I don’t know why — I can’t explain it, but ultimately, I do what I do because I have to. I am drawn to clay and feel like I’m miss-
ing something when I am away from it. And I hop around because that’s just how I am.”
Ms. McGinnis started out as a watercol- orist and soon began combining polaroid transfers of her watercolors with fabric col- lages, but when polaroid film was discontin- ued, she couldn’t combine her two favorite mediums in the same way. She continued working in both mediums, albeit separately, enjoying the looseness of watercolors as well as the detail involved in creating her fused fabric collages embellished with free motion and hand stitching, rendering col- orful nature scenes in both. Recently, the mediums have been finding their way back to each other, as seen in a recent piece of a colorfully abstracted Wupatki National Mon- ument, which combines watercolor with fi- brous rice papers.
Find all of these artists at Flagstaff Art in the Park over Fourth of July weekend at Wheeler Park. 9AM-6PM Friday and Saturday July 4-5, and 9AM-4PM Sunday July 6. You can also find the artists and their work at The Artists Gallery, 17 N. San Francisco Street in downtown Flagstaff. FlagstaffArtistsGallery. com • FlagstaffArtInThePark.com
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20 • JULY 2014 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us