Baltimore-American Craft Council, Part 2

Jenny Mendes uses colors I really like and relate to, so seeing her ceramic sculpture work was a strong inspiration for me. Sometimes I think I should make more functional pieces but then the Little Dudes start talking to me and I'm off making another one.

Lisa Crowder makes beautiful pieces that are mostly simple organic shapes but they have tiny little rivets in them. I know from hard experience that little rivets are very, very difficult to make. We first saw her work at a show in Austin so it was a pleasant surpise to find her in Baltimore. She also makes enameled pieces like these.

Graceann Warn makes mysterious encaustic paintings with a chalkboard effect that Susan was particularily interested in. Graceann was another artist who was quite willing to answer Susan's numerous questions (as I've said before, Susan would probably start a conversation with a corpse). I was attracted to her assemblage works and am trying to figure out ways to incorporate encaustic into my clay pieces. Stay tuned.

Sam Taylor answered my numerous questions while Susan was intrigued by the images he used. His card was a keeper -- watercolor paper a friend had loosely painted on, torn into squares with his data stamped on the back. Much more creative than the usual handouts.

Judy Stone is an enamelist which I don't really totally understand yet but the pieces were stunning. Some of her bowls were pieces she cut up and then re-wove back together with wire. She's got a great video of her work that she's planning to put on YouTube soon so be watching for it.

Susan was fascinated by Brenda Winstead's work. She had beautiful combinations of fabrics, colors and textures and even to my guy eyes they looked good. Check out her website because this scan of her card doesn't do justice to the variety in her work.

Jim Rosenau makes furniture, including book shelves made from vintage books. He doesn't just randomly put books together but instead carefully selects them to be sure they all relate to each other. He has a a great subtle sense of humor and his work shows this. As he says on his This Into That website, "You'll never look at books the same way again."

Note: All artists shown here gave us their permission to post from their websites and/or cards. The surprising thing is not that they gave their permission (everyone we asked did) but that they were so surprised we asked!