Monday, June 30, 2008

A Prairie Welcome

The wooden trough in front of the gallery overflows with prairie plants. Nodding wild onion offers a cheery welcome.

Frank Carter




Monday, June 16, 2008

Sheri Lee Butler Oil Painting




Sheri Lee Butler

Figurative oil paintings on large canvases are currently the main body of work to be receiving the attention of Sheri Lee Butler. Also a mixed media and fiber artist, she paints and sculpts nature scenes, plants and flowers, and animals, in addition to the human figure.

Karma Grotelueschen's Nature Photography












Karma Grotelueschen's Block Prints




Linoleum block printing allows a series of prints to be produced for original art work that is relatively inexpensive. I do my own printing, often of multiple kinds of paper and usually using several colors of ink. This allows the prints to be used as series of 3 or 5 for long narrow walls for a graphic contemporary look.

Karma Grotelueschen's Felting

These landscapes and botanicals combine the tradition of wet felting with contemporary needle felting. Prairie and woodland scenes are reinterpreted in fiber in these 3 dimensional artworks. Each takes about 3 days of hand work to produce, and each is a one-of-a-kind original.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Dale Barbick






I make very simple beaded earrings so when I saw Dale Barbick's complex and intresting creations, I understood the quality of her materials and was in awe of her talent. She combines textures and colors in innovative and creative ways that bring out the best of the materials and result in peices that are richly layered in symbolism and meaning. Each one is a wearable individual one-of-a-kind work of art.

Alan Barbick's Work












Alan Barbick

Alan Barbick is one of the original co-op members and does what I can 'important work'. He travels around the country, visiting and documenting Native American rock art sites. He measures and photographs and uses the data to create scale reproductions of the images on slate and sandstone tablets. The documentation of rock art by people like Alan have lead to Native American groups being reunited with their ancestor's art. As groups of native people on the North American continent were pushed westward by 'settlement', they often lost track of their heritage of where their ancestral roots were specifically. Yet they continued to use the images of their ancestral culture in textiles, pottery, other art, silversmithing, in powwow regalia, and so on. So when those who have studied the rock art take the photos of the images to Native American people living today, they can see if the images match any from their current art. Matches might indicate that the rock art was done by their ancestors, and in this manner, Native American people have found their original homelands and oftentimes, gained access to the land where the rock art images are preserved. Alan's artwork truly makes a difference!

History

First we were a co-op gallery in a tiny rented space in a dental building in Illinois. There were 5 of us who each worked one day a week in exchange for the right to display their art. We had about 2 dozen consignment artists. In 2005, I moved the gallery to an historic building in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. Sometimes, I run the gallery, and sometimes my artists staff it for me. Mineral Point is a special town with over two dozen artist-owned galleries, and many of them, like me, carry the work of many diverse artists.

Welcome to Prairie Oak Artisans

I am honored to be friends with a number of talented artists who have work in my gallery in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. I want to share with you images of their art and information about them as artists and as people. Email me through my profile if you want to be contacted by the gallery about work that I might have in my inventory or if you want to be contacted by the artist for other work they might have available or for custom art. Hand made art is so much more wonderful to own, to look at in your home, to share with other people than mass produced things and I really believe that surrounding your self with art can enhance the quality of your life. Thanks for stopping by and taking some time to read about the amazing artists and wonderful art of Prairie Oak Artisans of Mineral Point, Wisconsin.