Join us as we celebrate the last of Summer with a glass of wine and the art of two artists Mary Byers' from Trillium Pottery and new emerging artist Karen Judnich.

  For many years artist Mary Byers has been exploring and embracing the versatility of clay.  She loves this medium becasue of the unlimited opportunity for creative expression.  Most of her work is based on slab construction and from there artistic energy takes over to achieve a continuing evolution of work.

She has garnered some acclaim for her rustic animal portraits.  These slabs maybe freestanding or mounted on prepared wooden backings.  Animals of choice are horses and African wildlife.  The animal portraits are usaully monochromatic or dichromatic, but don't let that fool you.  The horses have a whimsical, almost ethereal quality, while the African wildlife is known for their almot human expressions.  Even though thery are bas-relief they convey remarkable depth. 

She also enjoys integrating form and color to create striking abstract works.  Sometime during this process the pieces seem to evolve naturally and almost independently, as the spirit and essence of the clay comes to life in her hands.

She considers it a great gift and blessing to be able to pursue this work and hopes those who view her pieces will find them compelling.                                

Karen has a degree in graphic & commercial art.  Over the years she has painted & sold to family & friends who have been pushing her to do more & more with acrylic painting.  Acrylics are very versatile in the sense that you can paint them to appear to look like oils.You can also thin the paint to use them like watercolors.  In the painting of the Macaw birds you will see that it is the appearance of using watercolor with pen & ink to bring out the shapes of the birds & branches that they are perched on.

The theme for fall is Tuscany.  Karen has demonstrated her version of what it looks like if you were in Tuscany through a couple of scenic pictures, as well as doing a couple of pictures representing poppies looking up into the sky for that ray of light.