Shawna Hatton – teacher and visual artist
I photographed Shawna at The Betty, a gallery at Front Street in Dayton, where she’s had an exhibition for the last two months. .
“I put a group of my larger works in this exhibition” she told me. “They’re from several time periods.”
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Elisha makes mixed-media art at Front Street, in her studio on the first floor of the 100 Building that she shares with Kate Santucci. The first time I met Elisha she wasn’t making visual art. She was singing with the Blue Heron Trio. The group has been on hiatus since 2022 but you can still hear Elisha sing online. I asked about her shift from making music to making her multi-media art.
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I visited Tracy McElfresh of https://www.tracyssewingstudio.com/ recently. I know Tracy spends a lot of time teaching people to sew. I asked her how she learned.
“My grandmother came from Puerto Rico to New York City and sewed in the garment district there. She would bring fabric remnants from work and use them to make all of my mother’s clothes. So as I was growing up my mother didn’t want to just go to a store and buy my clothes. She taught me how to make clothes by deconstructing old clothes. I would go to thrift stores and buy things that were very inexpensive, take them apart, and reassemble them into clothes that I loved.”
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I first visited Trish McKinney in 2014 when she opened a gallery/studio, Trish McKinney Studios, a retail gallery and open studio space on the 2nd floor of the Hotel Gallery in Tipp City. Continue reading
Most artists would be content to find a studio with good light and with enough space to store their material and make their art. Mosaic artist Jes McMillan thinks bigger. She rented a 16,000 square foot building in downtown Miamisburg that once housed a J. C. Penney Store and opened The Mosaic Institute of Greater Dayton. Continue reading
I asked Diane Dover if I could visit her studio after a friend told me about an amazing commissioned piece she was doing. She is making a quilt showing scenes from Huffman Prairie, the field where the Wright Brothers learned how to fly. I had seen photos of the work online, but when I saw it in person I was impressed with the amount of detail. Continue reading
When I heard that Naysan McIlhargey would have an exhibit this month at one of my favorite art venues, I decided it was time for a visit. His show at the Yellow Springs Brewery March 2-27 is called “The Botany of Beer.” Continue reading
I first met Matt Kish when he was being interviewed on The Art Show, a program on Dayton’s public television station. I was there to take behind-the-scenes photos, but Matt’s story was so interesting that I found myself listening instead of shooting.
Matt had been making art for years, with little commercial success or recognition. He finally decided he would quit making art, but only after completing one last project. Moby-Dick had always been important to Matt, and he decided to make it the linchpin of his final art project. He decided to make one drawing a day for 552 days, with each drawing inspired by one of the 552 pages in Moby-Dick.
Matt posted each drawing online. They began to attract viewers, then speaking engagements, then an agent, and finally a publisher. Far from being Matt’s final project, the Moby-Dick drawings seem like they might be a beginning to a successful art career. Continue reading
Painter Terry Hitt works in Dayton’s most colorful building, the K12/TEJAS building at 341 South Jefferson Street. The first time I met Terry he told me how much he enjoyed working there because “it’s filled with so much good energy and artists of all ages to talk to.” Continue reading
I had seen John Sousa’s work online and wanted to know more about it. When I saw that he was to be included in a show at the Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery I decided it was time to pay him a visit. The exhibition is called “Go Figure – 13 Ohio artists explore the human figure.” Continue reading
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