Featured Artists
Two truths and a lie with Kathleen Horton
Valley Artisans Market is celebrating our 35th year in business with a contest: Two Truths and a Lie. Each week, from Sept. 18-Nov. 20, we will post two truths and a lie about one of our members on our FaceBook page. Guess the lie correctly by responding in the FaceBook post and you will be entered into a drawing to receive 35 percent off ONE item at VAM. (Yes, you can receive a discount off of an expensive painting, an item out of a Small Gallery show, or that piece you have had your eye on that is just out of reach.) The more correct guesses, the better your chances are of winning. The drawing will be held at VAM during our Holiday Open House on Nov. 26, 2016. To be a winner, you must sign up for our monthly email newsletter; find the link at the bottom of the home page of our website. The winner will be notified via our newsletter. Winners must come into the market to make their purchase in person. Good luck!
Clothing artist Kathleen Horton continues our contest. Which is the lie?!
1. My first job was on a tobacco farm, harvesting tobacco leaves.
2. I have walked the Great Wall of China.
3. I have a twin sister named Karen.
Thanks for playing – the lie is #3!
Input your answer on our FaceBook page by Oct. 2 when the answer will be revealed and the next question will be posted.
Two truths and a lie with Bliss McIntosh
Valley Artisans Market is celebrating our 35th year in business with a contest: Two Truths and a Lie. Each week, from Sept. 18-Nov. 20, we will post two truths and a lie about one of our members on our FaceBook page. Guess the lie correctly by responding in the FaceBook post and you will be entered into a drawing to receive 35 percent off ONE item at VAM. (Yes, you can receive a discount off of an expensive painting, an item out of a Small Gallery show, or that piece you have had your eye on that is just out of reach.) The more correct guesses, the better your chances are of winning. The drawing will be held at VAM during our Holiday Open House on Nov. 26, 2016. To be a winner, you must sign up for our monthly email newsletter; subscribe at the bottom of the home page of our website. The winner will be notified via our newsletter. Winners must come into the market to make their purchase in person. Good luck!
Basket maker Bliss McIntosh kicks off our contest. Which one is the lie?!
1. My ancestors came over on the Mayflower.
2. I built my own house at the age of 23.
3. I attended the Isle of Wight festival in 1969 and didn’t do drugs.
Thanks for playing – the lie is #1!
Input your answer on our FaceBook page by Sept. 25 when the answer will be revealed and the next question will be posted.
Embroiderer Debra-Ann Salat
Recently, VAM member Lise Winne talked to Debra-Ann Salat, another member who is an embroiderer. Here is part of their conversation about Deb’s work:
Lise: Looking at your work, there is a theme with hands. What do hands represent to you?
Deb: Hands represent life. They are at the center of every interaction, every connection. We use them to comfort, nurture, nourish, create, and we also use them in love, even in anger. I use them because they are simple but all life comes from them.
Lise: Your pieces have a message of healing and hope, especially because of your use of hearts sewn. What is the message?
Deb: I learned how to embroider during a very traumatic time period of my childhood. I have always used the needle arts as a soothing presence, as a meditation to bring peace and tranquility to my life. I like to translate that peace into my work. Like most artists I use my art to express my emotions, be they peaceful or chaotic. I almost always end up in peace if I let myself go there. I would love a more compassionate world and think it would be if more people picked up an embroidery needle or a paintbrush.
Lise: Why did you choose embroidery as your medium?
Deb: I have been embroidering since I was a 6-year-old. Becoming an artist came much later in life. I can do more with an embroidery needle than I ever could with a paint brush; it’s something I’ve been in love with since childhood. My embroidery is very organic, it starts out with a simple design that I hand draw but all the details come from a needle. It is why if you pick up two of my heart ornaments they may have the same subject but they are never identical.
Lise: How does embroidery make you the person that you are?
Deb: It keeps me peaceful and even keeled. If I am embroidering all is right with the world. When I’m not embroidering I am an anxious kind of person and quite talkative; when I am embroidering I am at peace, quiet, contemplative. I process my feelings and create peace within myself. I have always been embroidering something but it has taken on more importance since I have begun to self express this way.
Lise: How do you want your images to effect others?
Deb: I would like them to feel peace and see the chaos of every moment. We live in a tangled twisty time period filled with emotions of all sorts. I’d like them to see the twisty turns of chaos come together to find peace. The hearts mean a lot to me because I tend to do them when I need them. If I need a little joy I embroider a little joy. If I need peace I embroider a little peace. They relate to people that way too. A customer said she loved my work and had given one of my joy hearts to her sister who was quite ill so she could bring a little joy into her life. It was a huge lightbulb moment that what I was hoping to accomplish. It’s one of the nicest compliments I have ever received.
Lise: Are there any other things you would like to say about your work?
Deb: I am so thankful to my grandmother who taught me to embroider as a child. I make custom pieces and create bereavement work where I will finish an unfinished piece of hand embroidery or teach someone how to finish it themselves.
To see her full profile: http://www.valleyartisansmarket.com/debra-ann-nielsen-salat/
Clothing designer Peggy Gray
Member Peggy Gray has been a member of Valley Artisans Market since 2014 where she sells her handmade clothing. Here is her story:
Peggy Gray grew up in a family of sewers. Her grandmother, mom and aunts all sewed for as long as she can remember. “They made what were called broomstick skirts in the 1950s,” says Peggy. “They all had about 50 of them with wide elastic belts to match. My mother also made matching outfits for myself, my two sisters and our dolls. I loved standing by and watching her operate the sewing machine; it fascinated me, even then.”
She started working in the garment industry at the age of 18 because she needed a job, but never imagined she would eventually start her own business using many of the tried-and-true techniques that she learned along the way. “In a very short time, I was making 
clothes for myself and my daughter. By the time I was 30, I was working full-time and had my own side line business selling my own designs,” Peggy says.
“After working in the garment industry for 30 years and building up my side line business substantially, I decided it was time for me to dedicate all of my time to being a sole proprietor and designing full time.”
Peggy did just that and created her company, 22 Shades of Gray, in her studio adjacent to her home in Buskirk, New York, where she has a gorgeous view of the Green Mountains of Vermont. “My favorite thing to do is to come into my shop with a vague idea of what I want to do and just play with fabrics and ideas to see what emerges,” she says. Sometimes she is disappointed but more often than not she is pleasantly surprised with the results. Trial and error is still her best teacher even after 50 years of playing with fabric and garment design. Each piece seems to build from the piece before it. “The more I explore the more ideas come to me. It really is like playing in a make-believe world where anything is possible.”
Peggy finds her fabric either online or from suppliers who sell at wholesale events that offer small minimums. She recently purchased a wide variety of upholstery fabrics from a business that was closing. “Because I create so many one-of-a-kind designs, I like having a lot of different colors and textures of materials on hand to play with.” Many of Peggy’s designs are a patchwork of colors and patterns, building on a theme or color story. She loves to combine different types of fabrics to create entirely new fabrics, allowing her to create unique and one-of-a-kind garments.
The purchase of knitting machines extended the possibilities of creativity. “Counter to my original thinking, I have less time to use them than when I was also working a full-time job. I thought when I gave up my full-time job that I would have more time to knit but having your own business is like having two or three full-time jobs,” she says. Peggy would love to learn how to weave but she doesn’t know where she would fit a loom of any size in her studio. “It is pretty well packed with fabric and garments,” she says.
Peggy brings an interesting life of experience and perspective to her work. She has owned horses and competed in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association for many years as a Barrel Racer (and her husband rode bulls). But Peggy’s second love is astrology. She has followed astrology since she was a young girl, and has practiced professionally for the past 20 years. She has done thousands of charts and has helped many people find a richer and deeper meaning to their lives. All of these wonderful experiences and her rich life bring forth a deep story that shows in her designs.
To see her full profile: http://www.valleyartisansmarket.com/peggy-gray/
Painter Mary Lou Strode
Mary Lou Strode, a member of Valley Artisans Market since 1981, is a painter from Argyle, New York. Here is her journey in art in her own words. The painting shown is titled, Snowmobile Trail.
In the Beginning I Drew
“My earliest memory of drawing was sitting on the floor of my grandparents’ home in Rutland, Vermont looking at the “funny papers” and drawing an X. How that simple maneuver could have spawned a lifetime of art remains a mystery to me. However, at the time, I was amazed at being able to control the pencil or crayon and make it go the way I wanted it to. I think now that it was a realization of being able to make something that I had thought of making and to have it coming out the way I had envisioned it.
“All through my childhood I drew. I never thought of painting and was always content to just draw. Always with pencil, I drew people mostly. Being an avid movie-goer I bought movie magazines and drew the stars — at first just the faces, but later the bodies as well. The pin-up artists of those years were my idols. In high school my art teacher, Lucy Doane, encouraged me to paint. As an older chiId, I had once done an oil painting under the tutelage of an amateur artist, Elmerine Bove Finn. She gave me her oil paints, brushes and a new canvas board to use and for subject matter I chose a photograph of sailboats that advertised Seagram’s whiskey. I still have that painting!
“Having decided that I wanted to be an artist I majored in art in college. This was during the 1950s when abstract expressionism was the prevailing style. Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Willem De Kooning, and Helen Frankenthaler were the artists of the slashing brush stroke that occasionally resulted in recognizable subject matter but more often the result was impenetrable. It was the overall composition and the energy expressed that did it for them and, at the time, for me. Encouraged to paint this way, we did not use expensive oils but cans of enamel paint. After graduation I married and moved to rural Washington County, New York, and learned to look and paint all over again. How and what I should paint now that I was on my own away from the mentors of my youth and living surrounded by nature became my preoccupation. Should I continue to reject the living world and paint what the canvas and the colors dictated? Or should I embrace the world around me giving in to its beauty and wonder and attempt what at the time was nearly impossible. I really had to begin again but at the same time I had learned a facility with brush and paint that gave me a head start in the process of looking and painting what I saw.
“I am also a printmaker and my medium is silkscreen printing. A fine Dacron mesh, oil-based inks, wax paper stencils and a squeegee are the materials I like to use. Once, when I was teaching a class of kindergarteners, I was illustrating the assignment for the day. They were to simply paint some shapes and then turn the paper upside down and see what was there. As I was doing this for the class I turned my painting upside down and saw two happy figures prancing with banners. This serendipitous moment later inspired a design for a silkscreen print and a valentine.
“My studio, located on the upper floor of our house, beckons, welcomes and more often than not admonishes me for not getting in there and buckling down. Once I enter and begin to work the hesitancy evaporates and I enter a realm of mystery and revelation and curiosity and contentment. I am working and I am at peace.”
Wooden toys by Tom Hutchinson
One of Tom Hutchinson’s toy trains takes about 8 hours to make. It’s not just all the cutting and measuring that is so time-consuming. He must visualize how all the pieces fit together once they are assembled so that he doesn’t sand the sides of the wood that must eventually be glued to another piece of wood. (If they are sanded smooth then they won’t hold glue well enough). Multiple sandings are the most time-consuming aspect of making a toy — there can be no splinters for little fingers and all the cor
ners must be rounded and very smooth. Nontoxic mineral oil coats the wood and any small pieces are permanently attached to prevent a choking hazard.
Tom has only recently “branched” out (pun intended) into making toys. He has been mentored by former VAM member/toymaker Warren Stoker for the last year or so and feels he has elevated his toys and they are now a superior quality to sell. Tom uses native wood like oak, poplar, walnut and cherry for his woodworking, which he purchases each September at the wood auction through the Adirondack Woodworkers Association, of which he is currently president. His toys include airplanes, dump trucks, trains, tractors, cars, tops and even yo-yos for older kids. But, of course, he also continues to make bowls, cutting boards, peppermills, pens, rolling pins and other wooden objects. He also welcomes special requests from customers looking for something particular that he doesn’t have for sale or a specific change to what he does offer. (And speaking of special requests, he was recently commissioned by the Saratoga County Fair to make 100 pens with “175” engraved in them for the fair’s 175th anniversary.) We hope you will stop in and see everything created by Tom, one of multiple talented woodworkers at Valley Artisans.
Felted Wool Figures by Naomi Faltskog
Naomi Faltskog has only recently learned her whimsical craft. Her felted wool creations sprung from her daughter’s time attending the Waldorf School in Saratoga Springs where artistic expression and creativity are deeply explored. But Naomi has been heavily involved in art ever since high school and is drawn to many media. Felting is the easiest because it is accessible and compact and she doesn’t need extensive time, space or concentration to do it, which is in short supply since Naomi home-schools her daughter.
Naomi creates her work with needles, by repetitively stabbing the wool to tangle and felt it together. It is a labor-intensive process and, you guessed, a lot of pin pricks in unwanted places. Much of the inspiration for her work comes from children’s stories. The piece she has at VAM with tree roots was inspired by the German tale, “Story of the Root Children.” Her intention for the play set was as a lap toy for long car or plane trips without electronics, so that a child’s imagination could be awakened. (There are also no little pieces to be lost or bothersome electronic sounds or electromagnetic rays.) Naomi recently began “wool painting,” a process where she builds up layers and layers of wool to create a picture, just like painting with oils. She hopes to explore this art form more in the future as well as wet felting. Naomi is proud that all of her wool is locally sourced, some of it already dyed but some that she dyes herself. She uses onions skins (for flesh tones) and turmeric (for golden-red hair) – and we imagine it is a great science home-schooling lesson, too!