Members Showcase

----- Yuanyuan Li - Souls of Plants - Picking up leaves ----- ----------------------- 14" x 12.5" x 5.5" ----------------------- Materials: stainless steel, silver, nylon, embroidery floss, needles. Process: Through the creation of fictional souls in the plant world, I made jewelry and wearable sculpture to express my connection with nature. My memory of plants in my hometown Guangzhou influences my love of plants. After moving to the United States, I am still profoundly connected to the natural world. Whenever I am free, I enjoy walking around in the parks in Rochester to get close to nature. In creating these fictional relationships with organisms in the plant world, I hope to create a connection between the wearer and nature as a means to heal the wearer through the poetic and peaceful atmosphere of plants.

---------- Joni Oye-Benintende - Impermanence ----------- ------------------------- 11" x 7" x 2" ------------------------- Materials: stoneware clay, slip glaze, wood salt fired, shell detritus. Process: "Impermanence" is one of a series of wall pieces that are partly inspired by Buddhist grottos, Japanese Buddhist ritual objects and the concept of tokonoma, a niche found in most Japanese homes where an aesthetic object is displayed. As suggested by the title, this piece itself has undergone natural change since its firing in the Peters Valley noborigama, an analogy on the fragility of existence and the constancy of constant change.

----------------- Joni Oye-Benintende - Relic ----------------- ------------------------ 19" x 15" x 2" ------------------------- Materials: red and white clay, underglazes, fired, smoked. Process: "Relic" is one of a series of wall pieces that are partly inspired by Buddhist grottos, Japanese Buddhist ritual objects and the concept of tokonoma, a niche found in most Japanese homes where an aesthetic object is displayed. The piece asks the viewer to contemplate ritual in relation to the objects arrayed in the niches. Scrolls hint at the writings of ancient chroniclers, whose bones may accompany the authors’ words. Or the bones themselves are an analogy for writing only the essential, the “bare bones” of a story, to be embellished, enhanced and completed or not by the viewer. The piece is purposefully enigmatic, inviting the viewer to explore their own mystery, find their own story.

------------------------- Jonathan Sevy -------------------------- ------------------- Acoustic #47, Olive Ash ------------------- ------------------------- 41" x 16" x 5" ------------------------- Materials: Wood (olive ash, Sitka spruce, walnut, Indian rosewood), shell (abalone, mother of pearl) Process: To the extent possible, I try to start with the raw materials for each instrument in their roughest form, with wood for the back and sides coming from logs supplied by friends or recovered from forest logging and sawmill leftovers. This chainsaw-to-buffer process provides me a closer connection with the materials, and gives each instrument a place of origin (Buck County, PA, for the instrument displayed here). It's especially gratifying to be the first to see the beautiful figure that can lie inside an otherwise nondescript log, and to be able to give new life to a felled tree that may once have shaded a friend's yard.

-------------- Carl Whitaker - Big Yellow Taxi -------------- ------------------------- 6" x 6" ------------------------- Materials: Spalted Maple. Process: "Sometimes you don't know what you got 'til you look inside".  This piece was turned from a chunk of spalted maple I got from one of my favorite woodturning instructors, Rick Angus in a class he called "The Beauty Within".  The spalted figure you see only emerged after I started carving the wood on the lathe. I could see how beautiful and interesting it was and tried to find a shape and form that would bring that figure forward. For this piece I imagined Native American pottery. I was further challenged by this wood because large sections had become "punky" .  These were cut away or are hidden inside the hollow form.  Much of the remaining wood was soft and tore-out when I cut it.  I was able to stabilize the outside surface with a varnish applications during the turning process. A tedious and time consuming process but worth the effort, I think.  I heard a woodturner once say that "life is too short to turn crappy wood", but I would say you just don't know what you have until you cut into it.

--------------- Norma Bernstock -As We Are --------------- ------------------------- 41.5" X 10.5" ------------------------- Materials: Vintage linen napkins, papers, photos in wax paper, doilies, embroidery. Process: The images of my mother’s social group from the 1920’s were created at Peters Valley at a paper lithography class. I had a collection of vintage linens and was inspired to combine these with the photos to create this wall hanging.

---------- Norma Bernstock - My Father and Me ----------- ------------------------- 25.5 X 22" ------------------------- Materials: hand-dyed fabric, image transfers, miscellaneous items. Process: Karen Hampton’s class at Peters Valley inspired this piece that tells a story of my relationship with my father. We learned how to dye fabrics and how to combine various items (including one of my father’s prayer shawls) in order to create a narrative.

------- Christopher FitzSimmons - Fusion in a Bowl ------- ------------------------- 24” x 13” x 7” ------------------------- Materials: Live edge ash, copper, epoxy. Process: Hand carved and finished ash with live exterior married to recycled copper sheeting.

Christopher FitzSimmons - Excape from Expresso Island ------------------------- 28” x 16” x16” ------------------------- Materials: Live edge ash, Copper , copper paint, crate myrtle, paint and epoxy

--------------------Joel Brown - Splash 31 -------------------- ------------------------ 13" x 13" x 12" ------------------------ Materials: Wood fired stoneware. Process: Coil built, shino glazed, wood fired in an anagama. Crazy Quilt surface cuts. Photo Credit: Steve Katz

--------------------- Joel Brown - Orbital --------------------- ----------------------- 13.5" x 13.5" x 9" ----------------------- Materials: Wood fired stoneware Process: Coil built, shino glazed, wood fired in an anagama. Crazy Quilt surface cuts. Photo Credit: Steve Katz

--------------- Minu Chaudhuri - Spotted Vase -------------- ------------------------- 3" x 5" x 5" ------------------------- Materials: Porcelain vase fired to cone 6, decorated with terra sigillata and underglaze

----------- Susannah Rose - Sprinkles and Drops ----------- ------------------------- 28" x 0.75" ------------------------- Materials: Enamel over copper. Process: This necklace uses the torch-fired enameling. Black glass is sifted over pieces of copper, then torched. Following torch firing, red liquid enamel is dropped on the pieces and glass sprinkles are applied. Then the pieces are retorched. This process has been used on both sides so that if the enameled pieces turn over, they are still interesting. Between the pieces are a variety of black beads, which are chosen not to compete with the bright enamel components. The necklace is a "slip-me-over" with no clasp.

---- Lisa G Westheimer - Our Lady of Czestochowa ---- ------------------------ 8.5" x 8.5" x 6.5" ------------------------ Materials: Stoneware, glass, metal, wire glass. Process: Raku fired glazed stoneware with fused reclaimed stained and Murano glass inclusions surrounding a fused glass glazed decal of a vintage prayer card on an steel and fused reclaimed wire glass base assembled with epoxy and E6000 adhesive.

----------------- Jane Biron - Sunset Bonfire ------------------ ------------------------- 20" x 16" x 1" ------------------------- Acrylic on Canvas

-------- Daryl Lancaster - MAGICAL BIAS DRESS -------- ------------------------- 39" x 20" x 3" ------------------------- Materials: Mixed warps, rayons, cottons, Cottolin, rayon from bamboo, Metallic, handdyed with MX Fiber Reactive Dyes. Some variegated hand dyed skeins and a Kathrin Weber Blazing Shuttles hand painted carpet warp (large aqua tones stripe). Process: Handwoven combination structures, plain weave, twills, and supplemental warps on 8 shafts. Original design. Recycled sandwashed silk accents. Pockets. Pattern adapted from the Daryl Lancaster Pattern Collection, #900 Bias Top

--- Daryl Lancaster - BUSY BISTRO WALKING VEST -- ------------------------- 48" x 22" x 3" ------------------------- Materials: The yarns are all hand-dyed with MX and Procion fiber reactive dye. Mixed cellulose, rayons, cottons, Tencel, rayon from bamboo, and some silk. Weft is 12/2 wool. Process: Inspired by a poster from a Magical Puzzle Company puzzle called The Busy Bistro. Handwoven combination structures, plain weave, twills and variations, basket weave, and supplemental warps on 12 shafts. Original design. Caviar leather trim, acetate and rayon jacquard lining. Pockets. Pattern from the Daryl Lancaster Pattern Collection, #600 Walking Vest

------------ Brad DeLamielleure - Slice and Dice ------------ ------------------------------ 15" ------------------------------ Materials: Carbon Steel Blade; Oak handle with Micarta Spline. Process: A friend gave me the oak years ago and it looked like it had great grain and flecking. I was looking for a blade that could be a little longer in the handle, to show off that grain. The blade is 1084 carbon steel hand forged using a gas furnace. The blades barely fit inside for the final hardening heat. Since they are mainly slicers, i tempered them to a light straw color so guessing they are >60 rockwell hardness. The long forged Japanese inspired blade style seemed like a great balance to the longer wood handle. The radial flecked oak handle is quarter-sawn and glued up and shaped and the 'zebra' striped one is cut on the bias then glued & shaped. Both are finished with a few coats of tung oil. They are hand sharpened on water stones & glide through pretty much anything in the kitchen. (a special thanks to Nick Rossi; his knife class taught me everything i needed to make these.)

--------------- Patricia Mueller - Shroom Hat --------------- ------------------------- 7" x 7" x 10" ------------------------- Materials: wool yarn and mushroom stem armature are wooden dowels. Process: The “Shroom Hat” is a one of a kind creation entirely crocheted. This is an intuitively created sculptural fiber art piece without the use of a published pattern. The hat is crocheted with my own homespun wool yarn as well as commercially made wool yarn ( mostly the hat base ). Even though the piece is sculptural it can be worn. I enjoy the challenge of taking a basic style and pushing it to the next level through the sculptural qualities of crochet. I've been crocheting since 1975, when at the age of 15, I took my first class at Peters Valley called “Creative Crochet”. My teacher was Janet Lipkin, the up and coming fiber artist who was one of the first to push this “ home handy craft” out of its humble beginnings and into a sculptural art medium.

----------------- Patricia Mueller - Hobo Bag ----------------- ------------------------- 19" x 3" x 22" ------------------------- Materials: wool yarn, denim, buttons and antique bird headed handles. Process: The patterned piece on the front of the bag is a circle crochet design that is made with my own hand spun yarn. The body of the bag is recycled denim and the handles waited 10 years before I found the right use for them. My first class at Peters Valley was Creative Crochet taught by Janet Lipkin back in 1972 and I've been crocheting ever since!

------------------- Joan M Diamond - Scarf ------------------- ------------------------- 14" x 72" ------------------------- Materials: Silk 63% Wool 37% Blend Process: I was introduced to machine stitch shibori casually in a class with Ana Lisa Hedstrom which concentrated on basic shibori techniques. I was immediately taken with the possibilities, and when I got home to the studio I began exploring. Initially I used whatever materials I had around, but eventually settled on using scarves to learn on, and finesse the technique,. Instead of a sketch book I have a collection of pretty scarves. The Scarf making led me to art making (next submission), where you will see a dimensional wall hanging using different substrates with this technique.

----------------- Ann Bastian - From the AT ----------------- ----------------------------- 12 x 12" ----------------------------- -------------------------- glass mosaic -------------------------- From the AT to Freetown: The materials are stained glass and glass tile, set on sticky mesh and fixed in thin set on wall board, finished with grout.  Cindy  Fisher’s 2017 PV class in glass mosaic inspired the first work, an abstract map of the Appalachian Trail crossing our part of NY-PA-NY.  That piece in turn inspired a much larger glass mosaic piece, derived from a google earth map of Freetown, Sierra Leone and its unique peninsula on the Atlantic.  It was done in celebration of my husband’s work there in African history.  Photos can’t capture the iridescence of the glass, how it changes in shifting light, suggesting the natural space and the interaction of water and land in shifting time.  The many shapes and textures of glass and tile help give dimension and direction to the surfaces.

------- Joan Diamond - It Helps Sometimes To Take the --------------------------- Long View ---------------------------- ------------------------- 48" x 52" x 7" ------------------------- Materials: wool, silk noil, silk organza, acid dyes, single use plastic bags, embroidery floss Process: The uptake of dye is different on different substrates, and the resulting palette of vibrant or muted tones (the effect of each substrates) was intentionally explored with the machine stitch Shibori technique, using Katano (Shibori master) inspired method. Like tectonic plates shifting earth's features, lockdown imposed a paradigm shift in the ordinariness of reality.The title of this piece references a healing prayer by Shamanistic teacher don Oscar Milo-Qesada. Shibori is a technique with which dye records shape and pressure placed upon a cloth that has been manipulated-crumpled, squeezed, folded, etc. In this way the recording of pressures can be thought of as akin to forming geology. Shibori seemed an appropriate visual metaphor for the thing that is bigger than our lifetimes: the passage of time. Working with what was on hand in the studio, mountain ranges, plastic, and timeless shibori mix to ask: are me mindful enough of what we hold dear?

----------------- Ann Bastian - to Freetown ------------------ ----------------------------- 35 x 20" ----------------------------- -------------------------- glass mosaic -------------------------- From the AT to Freetown: The materials are stained glass and glass tile, set on sticky mesh and fixed in thin set on wall board, finished with grout.  Cindy  Fisher’s 2017 PV class in glass mosaic inspired the first work, an abstract map of the Appalachian Trail crossing our part of NY-PA-NY.  That piece in turn inspired a much larger glass mosaic piece, derived from a google earth map of Freetown, Sierra Leone and its unique peninsula on the Atlantic.  It was done in celebration of my husband’s work there in African history.  Photos can’t capture the iridescence of the glass, how it changes in shifting light, suggesting the natural space and the interaction of water and land in shifting time.  The many shapes and textures of glass and tile help give dimension and direction to the surfaces.

Barry Wechsler - Decorative champlevé vessel "FACETS ------------------- 20" Edition ("Mahlerian") ------------------- ------------------------ 6.5" x 6.5" x 5.4" ------------------------ Heavy gauge copper, vitreous enamel, patina This edition of the ultraWAVE Art Metal Studio decorative vessel collection invokes a unique design on each of eight sides (“facets”), visually and stylistically integrated as a set while presenting subtle individual differences - a symbolic synergy of social harmony and personal space. The edition features formed and handwrought heavy gauge copper with kiln-fired opaque enamel glass inlay (champlevé). After the hand hammering of the copper vessel is resolved, an intricate design of multiple individual cells is acid-etched on each facet. Multiple kiln firings of vitreous enamel glass slurries in the individual cells, guided by direct visual inspection, yield the finished glass inlay design. After the multiple kiln firings are finished, the metal "reserve", surrounding the glass cells, is energized by applying the Studio's special black patina finish.

------------- Sharron Famiglietti - Blues Pitcher ------------- ------------------------- 6”x 6”x 10” ------------------------- Materials: Clay and food safe glaze. Process: Hand crafted on the potters wheel then altered to change pouring area.

------------- Lorraine Parker - Tibetan Woman ------------- ------------------------- 12" x 9" ------------------------- Materials: Watercolor on watercolor paper. Process: Tibetan Woman. This woman was at a market near the Dalai Lama's Palace in Lhasa, Tibet in 2015. She she caught my eye because she had such a warm, lovely expression. When the people do not want their pictures taken, they will shake their head "no" or put their hand up in a "stop" motion. If they do not mind having their picture taken, they will nod "OK." This woman nodded to me when I held up the camera and, like others in Tibet and Asian countries, she wanted to see the image on the back of the camera after I took the picture. This communication is with gestures and smiles or, if they don't like the picture, head shakes and hand signs indicating they want you to take another shot. There is generally a lot of good natured laughter and no small amount of critical analysis of the photographer's skill. After this trip, I resolved to get a Polaroid camera so I could give people a copy of their photos.

---------------- Jane Grannis - Bird Watching ---------------- ------------------------- 12" x 9" ------------------------- Photograph

--------------- Lorraine Parker - Inuit Woman --------------- ------------------------- 12" x 9" ------------------------- Materials: Water color on water color paper. Process: This Inuit Woman was an elder in her village in the Territory of Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic. We visited the village on a trip through the North West Passage in 2019. The elders in the villages told of their histories and traditions. This woman spoke about the ancient art of face tattooing to identify the tribes and nomadic traditions. She told us that it had been discouraged by the Canadian government for a long time but now the younger women are once again identifying with traditions and tattooing as a "coming of age' ritual.

-------- Czashka Ross - DNA with Nuclei Clashing -------- ------------------------- 0.25" x 10" x 8" ------------------------ Materials: Inks, watercolor with beeswax resist on ARCHES watercolor paper. Process: DNA with Nuclei Clashing was executed while on a studio residency west of Panama City, Panama. So many issues have surfaced about the dehumanization and confidentiality vs. the advancement of targeted medicine and DNA modulation therapies in the United States. Old lines of stem cell research may continue to be developed and studied. A lot of American federal funding has been cut and the new genomics with their ethical questions is considered too controversial. New lines may not be started in the U.S. Hence the outsourcing of new projects: It is less difficult and less expensive to register and to procure funding elsewhere. One’s life can be different in an instant, i.e. family history, unknown genetics, siblings, genetic precursors, genetic disorders. And then what one does with the results? Now some of this can be changed, modified, corrected. Information about families, their history, i.e. siblings, stays with one forever. Something that cannot be unlearned or forgotten. I keep painting.

---- Czashka Ross - Projected DNA IV Fecund Spring --- ----------------------- 0.25" X 82" x 59" ----------------------- Materials: Charcoal, pastel, watercolor, gouache on Rives BFK rag paper. Process: Projected DNA IV Fecund Spring executed in Jersey City, NJ. Delving deeper into the facts, futures, questions. A full deck laid out. What will one do? How to proceed? Once you have the knowledge, you can’t go back, and not have it. Hence darker structures overlaying all information anxiety provoked – the difficult day-to-day.

-------------- Jane Grannis - Key West Sunrise -------------- ------------------------- 10" x 1" x 12" ------------------------- Materials: Raku fired Stoeware. Process: I take pictures on my morning bike rides that I use as a starting place for my wall pieces.

---- Debora Meltz - Issuer of Edicts and His Acolyte ----- ------------------------ 11" x 8" x 13" ------------------------ Materials: Stoneware. Process: This is part of an ongoing series of allegorical sculptures dealing with human beliefs, actions and intentions.

---------------- Elaine Booth - Sparkle Plenty ---------------- ------------------------- 10" x 5" ------------------------- Materials: Sterling silver & quartz crystal. Process: This was inspired by fragments of obscure memories combined with whimsy. It was fun to make.