Arts and Crafts at the Museum Sunday

 We went to the museum arts and crafts fair on Sunday.  Here are a few examples of the art and the people who made it. 


KC Lowe was a neighbor when we first moved to Alaska.  She had these bars of soap dressed in wool felt. The lanolin in the wool is supposed to do good things for you and the cover makes the soap last much longer.  Is this art?  I don't recall ever seeing soap wrapped up in felt before.  And look at those colors.  And the fact that it's something you actually use,  doesn't exclude it from being art.  What she is holding is the left over felt cover after months and months of use.  I've been thinking about soap for a while now and I've been planning to do a blog post.  It's coming, think of this as a preview.

I knew Larry Kingry back when he was an administrator at ACC and then UAA.  Now he's turning wood into interesting and unique bowls.  His card says you can email him here if you're interested in a bowl. 

Another old friend, in that we've had one of his water colors up on our wall for 30 years or so, is Ken Lisbourne.  He's originally from Point Hope, but now lives in Tok. 

We had a long talk and it was interesting to hear the stories behind his paintings.  It really is a collection of Inupiaq culture and legends.  Matt Shields did a long post on Ken a few years back that gives a lot of information.

Guitta Corey's work is amazing.  I only took one photo which does a poor job of portraying the artist and her work.  But it's all I've got.  But you can see more at Alaska Home.  The work she had for sale Sunday was various sized and shaped glass trays that were 'painted' with exquisite papers.  I can't explain.  Just check the link. 







As Jacob suggested in a recent comment, if you don't keep using photoshop, you forget it.  So you'll have to bear with my experimenting.  Someday it will work more consistently for me.  There are parts of this I like and parts that I just couldn't make do what I wanted.  And parts I didn't know what I wanted. 

But Wendy Gingell's ceramics aren't ordinary.  They're strong and opinionated.  I love the shapes and designs and colors.  Her inspiration for the large plate in the background was a cyst she had in her abdomen.  The two little ones on the lower right, I was told, were a parent's eye view of kids.  And can you tell she likes yellow and black?