Shannon Bueker

Artist's Statement

A few words about my approach to painting and drawing

I have drawn since my beginning, in books, on my shoes, and now on most any surface. Years ago, a Chinese painting class introduced me to the long strokes of Asian brushes and the varied beauties of ink on paper.

I paint and draw animals and people and things on the move. Gesture is the backbone of my approach. I am fascinated by gesture and am challenged to see how much shape and power I can express with the simplest of lines. I look for what is essential or of the essence. Watercolor and ink, or fluid acrylics and charcoal are my tools of choice. I work on canvas, board and paper in all sizes, large to small.

Sally L. Sutton

Much of my inspiration comes from local landscapes in rural Chatham County where I live. This collection of paintings at the General Store Care includes many scenes of Pittsboro and the county. I started my Hometown Pride series right after September 11, 2001 after taking a walk around Pittsboro one Sunday afternoon. I was inspired by all the American flags hanging everywhere and the color the flags added to my already colorful town. I felt a patriotic glow about Pittsboro which influenced my first painting in the series that has the title Hometown Pride 30 x 40 oil on canvas. I have since followed with many other paintings as View of the General Store Cafe 36 x 36 oil on canvas and smaller pieces as Antiques and Collectibles and Pittsboro Afternoon which are both 12 x 12 oil on canvas.

My paintings are expressing all that I am. I paint my feelings of excitement about a place, see mystery in the shadows or perhaps feel the warmth of a sunny Pittsboro day. I am compelled to paint a scene in the way that it affects me. Many of my paintings have an urgency about them in style while some are languid and relaxed. Just as my emotions change, so does the canvas.

Linda Carmel

My images are usually from nature, often from photographs taken by my husband. I want to go beyond the photographic image. Keeping one foot in the reality of recognizable images, I explore the unexpressed possibilities. I want to dance on the razor’s edge between the world of what is and what could be. My brushstrokes strive to blend both color and line to create a gentle path for the eye.

When I look at art, I want to be moved, to be awed by the image. I want to be drawn in; I want there to be space left for me to live inside the image. I love the sense of mystery in the works of Turner and Monet. I am moved to tears by the works of Schiele, Giacometti, and Van Gogh. I am awed by the magnificence of Klimt and Redon.

I want to make Art my life’s work and make my life a work of art whether I am cooking or cleaning, teaching or painting. I am striving for that total attention to detail that provides true harmony with the world around me.

Juan Pons

As a nature and wildlife photographer, Juan is a strong supporter of wildlife and natural habitat conservation and is a member of several conservation organizations. Though private individuals purchase photos directly from him, Juan donates his images to non-profit organizations with nature and wildlife preservation missions.

Tamera Mulanix

I have always danced to my own rhythms and have often felt more “unique” than I wanted to be. This was difficult to accept as an adolescent, but I have begun to appreciate, and even celebrate, seeing the world through these eyes. Through my work I try to play a small part in transitioning this divided and chaotic world toward a planet full of acceptance, love and unity. I actually see the creation of my art as a form of worship. I try to pull inspiration from the Source of our Oneness when I am in the process of creating and try to breathe that energy into each of my pieces. If I can make something that moves someone to feel a small sense of peace, or brings a bit of joy to their heart, then my life as an artist is a life well spent..

Monnda Welch

I make original one of a kind jewelry and a few production pieces. I use 14 and 18K gold, fine silver, sterling silver, bronze and copper with precious and semi-precious stones to fabricate unusual pieces of art. I have studied jewelry at The Old School House; County Wicklow, Ireland; John C. Campbell Folk School, Duke University, Penland School of Crafts, NC State University Craft Center, Meredith College, The ArtCenter all in NC and Arrowmont, TN. For large welded outdoor sculptural pieces, I use found material and purchased steel. I am a self-taught welder. I have made dragons, garden flies, tripods and trellises, snails, proctors, small tables with mosaic tops and very large praying mantis holding flower baskets.

Edwin White

These past few years have yielded an opportunity for Eddie to pursue sculpture. His studio is now at home on the Rocky River in Silk Hope, NC with his wife, Gwen and daughter, Jesse. In 2000, he joined the Chatham County Arts Tour as a sculptor. He is now spending much of his time scaling up models, working on commissions and preparing for each year’s Chatham County Open Studio Tour in early December.

Although made from metal, Eddie’s sculpture is unique in that the pieces are generally curvilinear and possess a light, airy quality. Both large and small scale mobiles require only the slightest air movement to turn or oscillate, showing off their most endearing trait, the interplay of line and light. Quite often mobiles and stationary pieces alike will create ever-changing moiré patterns. Pieces are cut from a variety of materials including galvanized sheet metal, copper, cold-rolled black steel, and stainless steel. Painted pieces are sandblasted, primed and sprayed with multiple coats of industrial grade, exterior paint or for maximum protection, coated with a factory applied baked -on polyester powder finish.

Sally Resnik Rockriver

We have many of Sally's Large Blown Glass Balls of all sizes & colors ranging in price from $25 to $65.00.

Sally's Bio:

Echoing the birth of planets and capturing the life inside them, Sally Resnik Rockriver generates chemical reactions in blown glass and ceramics. While she is making her blown glass, Rockriver uses ceramic glazes and glass rocks to grow geolocial worlds on the interior of the hot glass vessel. These moments of chemical reaction become imaginary planets and frozen thermal formations.

Rockriver has redefined the aesthetic parameters of her medium by allowing geological laws to determine the content of her work. Rockriver arrives at a new form that she refers to as Geochemical Sculpture, in which compositions become planetary formations. She creates a narrative landscape by combining her multiple approaches: glass columns with a crystalline core, calcite cave formations, crystal glazed slabs, salt-blown spheres, ceramic blown glass vessels, and sandcast rocks. Exploring Ms. Rockriver’s works is like visiting another world where new geological formations are revealed. We can enter the high temperature moment at which these phenomena were created and marvel at the explosive interior of a crystalline birth.

ARTWORK NARRATIVE: From a sandcast ground erupts a ceramic glaze which fuses, melts, and crystallizes inside of a blown glass vessel. Hot rocks fume under the crater’s silica lake and release a salt gas that causes the liquid surface to swell into a dome of sparkling glass.

Siglinda Scarpa
Vessel featured is $280

Siglinda Scarpa is an Italian artist now based in North Carolina. Siglinda creates vessels and pots for cooking that, however sculptural, are unmistakably functional. Quite apart from these, she makes purely sculptural pieces that Georgia O’Keefe would understand very well. These pieces Siglinda calls Clouds, like the clouds of a summer day building to a gathering storm.

Stone-Crow Pottery
GSC Mugs $22.95

Stone-Crow Pottery is a restored log cabin along the southwest bank of the Haw River, four miles north of Pittsboro, NC. Owner Joyce Bryan has continuously made her pottery there since 1976. Her pottery is known for its playful since of whimsy and beautiful glazes. The wonderful palettes of glazes are achieved by using texture, slip and many overlapping glaze layers. The work is then fired to cone 10 in a reduction kiln.

Joyce has a BS degree from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia; has studied at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana and Peter's Valley in NJ and has, over the years, done numerous workshops up and down the East coast. Her work is held in public and private collections world wide.

Stone-Crow Pottery has an interesting array of pottery. Much of it is specifically made for the preparation, cooking and serving of food. Stop by in person or visit the on-line gallery.

Forrest Greenslade

Strange creatures inhabit the mind of Dr. Forrest Greenslade. His whimsical sculptures and paintings, which he calls Forrest DwellersSM, are derived from a life-long love of nature and mythology. Greenslade’s work is highly stylized, bounding on cartoonish. His paintings are sculptural, built up with inches of thick acrylics and modeling paste to the point that they nearly jump off the canvas. His sculptures are enhanced with innovative coatings and patinas producing color, texture and an illusion of movement.

“I want people to experience motion and emotion in my art,” Greenslade asserts, “so my faces are seldom symmetrical and my figures just can’t stand still.” Greenslade’s use of materials is eclectic. “Because of my scientific training, I tend to be experimental in my choice of media,” he explains. “I use metal, concrete, clay, acrylics, wood, found objects – whatever tells the best story.”

Greenslade’s work feels rather naïve, even childlike. Educated as a molecular biologist, he spent his working life as a scientist and organizational executive -- but in his dotage, he discovered his creative self. “After a lifetime of serious business, it’s nice to let the little boy out,” he smiles.

“It’s more fun that any old guy deserves.”

JULIA KENNEDY

Oil painting

I rarely begin a painting with a specific idea in mind. At first, I just lay on a transparent base of color as a foundation for what follows. As the painting evolves, I must look at the canvas for long periods of time.

I am particularly fascinated by vibrant colors and their not-so-apparent relationships to each other. I also enjoy both the visual and physical qualities inherent in oil painting—I don’t mind wearing a little bit of the work-in-progress

SHARON BLESSUM

I grew up under the prairie skies of North Dakota. That luminous canopy at day and play of the Northern Lights at night, fed my ethereal nature. My beloved companions were clouds, trees, rocks, and spacious landscape. I’ve been poet and priest since a young woman, expressions of that calling evolving.

The roles don’t hold life together….pastor, teacher, psychotherapist, writer, healing practitioner. Only the Within Of It All. When life seemed to disintegrate, Shamanism retrieved my soul. Stones and stars began to speak to me again. My soul joined the sacred conversation through images and words.

The visual process begins in The Thing Itself. A Moment in Nature may become a photograph which simmers and then is used exactly as is, or morphs from form to form, or is computer enhanced, or nudges a poem into being. Words may ask for a surround of shapes and colors. I call them photopoems.

Recently, I began taking images of the beauty I see in Pittsboro, not realizing all the joy that would come as people see their lives through an artist’s eye. I am creating two postcard lines, Poetry Postcards and Pittsboro Postcards, and LoveInYourPocket cards. All at sharonblessum.com

The Essence of It All shines in a way that must be expressed. Mystical experiences can be too big for the singular heart to hold. I kiss the shimmer through words and images, connecting with other souls lest I be lost in the Silence and Solitude.

JOHN MAKOWSKI

Sculptor John Makowski gets his inspiration from the artists who des-cended into the cave at the end of a rope, with their suet lamp and manganese sticks 17,000 years ago to inscribe on the rock walls the magic and mythology of their civilization.

Joe Coffey

Joe Coffey's paintings are displayed in the BlackBird Bar Area.

MIZ THANG

Call her a painter, a wood worker, a lover of obscure blues music; Miz Thang is all of these things. She honors those obscure (and not-so-obscure) musicians by recreating their images as whimsical and colorful painted wood cutouts. Each one is unique, vibrant, and fun—you can almost hear the music of B.B. King, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ma Rainey and Captain Beefheart.

Miz Thang is a self taught folk artist from Hawkinsville, GA. Labels are not her thing but most folks want to know just what type of art she creates so she usually rattles off a long list of funky names that include: outsider, raw, rebel, folk, whohadada and contemporary, just to name a few. Through her eyes she sees things differently and she strives to show others what she sees via her art. She has been called weird and down right crazy, all of which she takes as a compliment because she does not want to be normal. After all a normal person couldn't create her art! Most of her life she has been a collector of what most call junk, but what she calls her treasures. When she is not riding around looking for more junk, she can be found in her back yard turning her junk into art. She is inspired by strong women, musicians, and by people, animals and events that have impacted her life.

All of her art is original. Her wooden pieces are usually cut out of cabinet grade birch and then sanded. She paints with acrylic paint and sometimes she coats her pieces with shellac. She doesn't use brushes, but prefers to paint exclusively with her fingers. When her fingers are in the paint she feels connected to her art and she feels she is passing along some of her special brand of mojo. She also uses objects she finds and that others give to her. Most of her art contains a message, sometimes serious, sometimes funny, depending on her mood.

Some of the works showcased on this website are on display at museums, folk art events, and are collected by many people worldwide. Some of her creations have been on display at shows, museums and galleries throughout the USA and abroad. Her art is on display at the Smith Calloway Banks Southern Folk Art collection and Research Center at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, GA. Her blues art has been on display at the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in Macon, Georgia since 2004.

If you have someone special in your life that you would like to honor with a work of art, just let her know. She can work from a photo to produce a custom, personalized work of art and often adds her rhyming mojo.