Over the weekend, Michelle and I went to our first "Starving Artist Show" at nearby Mt. Mary College. The event takes place annually and has lots of great artists selling their work at a maximum price of $100 per piece.
We found some art that we really liked, and I thought I would show it off a little here.
The first piece we got is a watercolor on watercolor canvas by Peggy Engsberg Furlin from Lake Mills, WI. She had some beautiful work and we had a really difficult time selecting which piece to buy. You can see more of her work at her website. We really liked her style. I took the picture of the piece on our stairs, because we have yet to determine where we want to hang it.
The second piece we picked up is a limited edition print by artist Kae Taylor from Madison. We were first attracted to her stand by the batik work on display, but we ended up deciding on this work called "Autumn Celebration," which contains three prints: Autumn Oak, Autumn Ginkgo, and Autumn Maple. As with the first art work, we are deciding exactly where we want to hang the piece.
The next stop was for some pottery. There were lots of pottery artist present at the show with some beautiful work, but we settled on some bowls by Lisa Weber, an artist from Oak Creek, WI. Unfortunately neither she nor Kae Taylor have web sites so you can see other work by these artists. While we were at Lisa Weber's booth, she commented on the watercolor we purchased from Peggy Engsberg Furlin. Apparently they used to live close to each other. Small artist world. :)
Our last purchase of the day (that I will describe here, because other items are going to be gifts), was from an artist we discovered through a PBS auction at a home and garden show earlier this year. We ordered a piece from Dick Cooley for Michelle's Dad as a gift. He makes really cool sculptures using spark plugs as people and other various items to depict them in various activities. My father-in-law described it well when he let us know he received it:
"Got the package from you guys yesterday but I'm a bit confused, it was full of just a bunch of old junk parts.
"Lets see there is a old furniture caster, bottom half of a muffler clamp, 2 wood screws, an allen wrench, 2 kitchen knives, a teaspoon, 2 sockets, a couple of gears, a washer or two, 2 spark plugs and some other assorted odds and ends.
"Of course all these junk parts are put together in a really neat way."
His sculpture was of an adult and child on a red tractor.
We had a hard time deciding between the piano player or the baseball players and opted for the baseball players (a batter hitting a ball with a catcher crouched behind the plate. Unfortunately, our little point and shoot camera couldn't focus on the sculpture very well, so it is a little blurry. Maybe we will retake the shot when our new camera arrives later this week.
Overall the show was fun. Certainly not as large as the art fairs we've gone to in Sunapee, NH or Ann Arbor, MI, but very good nonetheless. I think we'll go again.
