Valley Artisans Market houses a rich variety of artists whose mediums and techniques vary as much as their work. The expansive range of art is made by hand using everything from foraged materials to utilizing technology to expand their creations.

Mark Madden, who makes woodcarvings and photographs of owls, finds something “mystical and magical” about the raptors. “They are quite common,” he says, “and they’re often heard at night but rarely seen.” To photograph owls, he faces the technical challenges of snapping night shots. “Some of my best photos are taken in almost complete darkness, with an exposure of a few seconds,” he says. Mark finds that photographing owls is a good way to study them in the field which helps him improve his woodcarvings. He travels all over New England and parts of New York State in search of his subjects. Last year, he traveled to northern Maine to capture pictures of a Northern Hawk Owl; last winter he visited Canada, where he saw several Short-Eared Owls and Barred Owls.

Stephanie Morton, who dyes linen and cotton gauze fabrics in stunning shades of indigo, buys her fabrics online from a California company that imports from Ukraine and Lithuania. She sources powdered indigo and dye supplies from a farm in Tennessee. She hopes to grow her own dye plants next year on her Coila, NY property.
For decades, Susannah White was a shepherd and cared for the sheep who supplied the wool she used to make her felted creations. Now she lives in the village of Cambridge and acquires her wool from friends who are shepherds. “I always try to use local wool and to make sure that the sheep have long lives and live on pasture,” Susannah says. She uses mostly local plants for dyeing, growing most, including sulfurous cosmos. “You can play with the pH and get a really brilliant orange,” she says. She also harvests some from the wild, such as the “beautiful yellow goldenrod.” She also purchases powdered indigo, madder and brazilwood.

Chris Levy only has to make a short drive to Greenwich, NY to Better Bee to find beeswax for her batik processes, such as in her Ukrainian eggs (pysanky) and her art pottery. “I’ve yet to find a human-made material that has the unique characteristics of beeswax,” she says. “It protects my ceramic glaze undercoats up to 1850 degrees Fahrenheit and allows me to multilayer glazes resulting in brightly colored and intricate designs.”

Tomi Bentley, a weaver, buys her threads and lining fabric online. “It took me a long time to figure out which threads were suitable for what I wanted to make,” she says. She mainly uses Swedish cotton thread, linen thread, Dutch cotton thread, Canadian cotton thread, and a Japanese silk thread. Because the color is not always certain online, she relies on color samples to make her choices. She has learned to be patient – sometimes it takes several weeks to get the thread.

Debra Salat, a needlepoint embroiderer, used to buy her fabrics brand new, but now she frequents thrift stores for men’s shirts and other more luxurious finds, including a beautiful piece of doeskin and red velvet curtains. She still buys embroidery thread occasionally but enjoys the largesse of friends who gift it to her. “It’s wonderful; I probably have 20 years of embroidery floss,” she says.

Diana Schleicher sources most of the glass for her stained-glass pieces from a local shop, Deluge Design in Cambridge, NY. She likes to use seashells, wood, and beads in her projects from a collection of shells and other objects she’s gathered over the years. Popular items are her bright orange glass feathers, adorned with small, colorful beads.
Nancy Roberts is always game to score a free roadside table or other small discarded wooden item in a thrift shop that can be repurposed as a mosaic work of art. She buys glass online and also boxes of glass scraps from Adirondack Stained Glass Work in Gloversville, NY.

Some VAM artists have formal art training while others are completely self taught. And some makers joined VAM decades ago as novices and have grown into their art. Would you like to join our family of makers? Please see our website for an application. Or come in any time to shop or browse. We love to talk about our art!