Southern Indiana Living Magazine - Sept / Oct 2023
September / October Issue of Southern Indiana Living September / October Issue of Southern Indiana Living
Southern Indiana Festivals The Fourth Street Festival of Arts and Crafts Beauty and artisanship at the 47th annual event in Bloomington, Indiana Story and Photos by Sheryl Woodhouse The 47th annual Fourth Street Art Festival will return to Bloomington on Labor Day weekend, Sept. 2-3, from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. -5 p.m. on Sunday. The iconic event is one of most beloved events on Bloomington’s art and culture calendar. Typically, at least a third of the juried artists are displaying their work at Fourth Street for the first time. This allows the attendees to connect with their favorite artists and to discover new work and meet the people who create it. This year is no different. Four of this year’s new artists, from various Indiana communities, are painter Taylor Walker of Carmel, potter Kelly Meska of Bloomington, jeweler Heidi Mandich of Indianapolis, and wood turner Samuel Dean of Whitehall. While each artist has their own genre and techniques, they all share a passion for creating art and making things, a love for detail and teaching, and all are committed to experimenting, continually learning and perfecting their art, and are well-tuned into 22 • Sept/Oct 2023 • Southern Indiana Living the business aspects of making a living with their art. Walker is an expressionist painter who is passionate about animals and focuses on them in her work. Her goal is to blend technical ability and photo realism with exaggerated rainbow color and strokes to create emotion. She says, “Neutrals don’t register in my brain. Purple is my black. Green is my neutral. I want my work to be colorful, but not childish; I make it OK to be colorful as an adult.” As a young artist, she just started doing art shows last year, meeting other artists and joining the volunteer art show committees. Meska has been a potter for 25 years and has also been an art teacher most of that time. Since moving to Bloomington three years ago, she devotes her time exclusively to creating functional ceramics with nontraditional looks and uses. Meska uses a mix of throwing, altering and hand-building in her pottery, and cuts original, mostly nature-based designs into linoleum that she imprints into the clay of her hand-built work. She takes pride in being very picky about the design of her mugs, getting the weight, size and feel just right, as well as adding details that make them more unique. She loves doing shows, where customers can pick up each mug and find one that feels right to them, while hearing about her involved, multi-step process, which usually surprises them. “I was not an artist or a teacher by trade,” says Mandich. “I took my first metalsmithing class at the Indianapolis Art Center in 2006 and did my first show a year later.” Soon, she was teaching metalsmithing at the art center, and realized that she loved both, which helped spur her into early retirement after an advertising and sales career. Mandich’s two unusual techniques are quilling with metal and torch-painting titanium. As a poor conductor of heat, titanium makes a satisfying medium for painting, so that you can lay one color down next to another without changing the first one. “You’re still not in charge of the color,” she says. Admiring paper quilling, Mandich wondered,
“Can I make that in metal?” She discovered, “Yes, but it’s not as cooperative!” While he made his living until recently in engineering, metal fabrication and sales, Dean has been a woodworking hobbyist for 35 years. His father had a woodshop where he would make sculptures, carvings and furniture. The wood lathe was one tool his dad didn’t use, making it available for Dean to practice with. Recently, Dean had an opportunity to change direction in his career path, and he thought, “What do I like to do? I like to make things!” He also likes to give new life and purpose to reclaimed materials and downed trees. Since it takes one year of drying for each inch of thickness, the process for making his perfectly round bowls requires patience. After the first rough turn, a bowl can take six months to three years of alternating between wood turns and periods of sitting on a shelf to dry. The opposite is true of his little mushrooms that he wants to warp for a whimsical look — he turns those with green wood. As a bonus, the redbud, locust and walnut that he turns into mushrooms also happen to glow green, yellow and purple under a black light. These four artists are just a handful of the 100-plus artists in 2D, ceramics, fiber, glass, jewelry, painting, photography, sculpture and wood who will line Fourth Street between Grant Street and Indiana Avenue over Labor Day weekend, eager to talk with patrons about their work, their inspiration and techniques. Whether for a couple hours or the entire weekend, art lovers are encouraged to soak in the beauty of the designs and artisanship, and to connect with the stories of the people who create them. • These four artists are just a handful of the 100-plus artists in 2D, ceramics, fiber, glass, jewelry, painting, photography, sculpture and wood who will line Fourth Street between Grant Street and Indiana Avenue over Labor Day weekend, eager to talk with patrons about their work, their inspiration and techniques. For more information, go to 4thstreet. org. Pictured: (left hand page) Whimsical mushrooms by artist Sam Dean; (this page, from top) “Bruno”, a painting by artist Taylor Walker; hand built pottery by Kelly Meska; metal quillery necklace by Heidi Mandich. Southern Indiana Living • Sept/Oct 2023 • 23
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“Can I make that in metal?” She<br />
discovered, “Yes, but it’s not as cooperative!”<br />
While he made his living until<br />
recently in engineering, metal fabrication<br />
and sales, Dean has been<br />
a woodworking hobbyist for 35<br />
years. His father had a woodshop<br />
where he would make sculptures,<br />
carvings and furniture. The wood<br />
lathe was one tool his dad didn’t<br />
use, making it available for Dean to<br />
practice with.<br />
Recently, Dean had an opportunity<br />
to change direction in his career<br />
path, and he thought, “What do<br />
I like to do? I like to make things!”<br />
He also likes to give new life and<br />
purpose to reclaimed materials<br />
and downed trees. Since it takes<br />
one year of drying for each inch of<br />
thickness, the process for making<br />
his perfectly round bowls requires<br />
patience. After the first rough turn,<br />
a bowl can take six months to three<br />
years of alternating between wood<br />
turns and periods of sitting on a<br />
shelf to dry. The opposite is true of<br />
his little mushrooms that he wants<br />
to warp for a whimsical look — he<br />
turns those with green wood. As a<br />
bonus, the redbud, locust and walnut<br />
that he turns into mushrooms<br />
also happen to glow green, yellow<br />
and purple under a black light.<br />
These four artists are just a<br />
handful of the 100-plus artists in<br />
2D, ceramics, fiber, glass, jewelry,<br />
painting, photography, sculpture<br />
and wood who will line Fourth<br />
Street between Grant Street and<br />
<strong>Indiana</strong> Avenue over Labor Day<br />
weekend, eager to talk with patrons<br />
about their work, their inspiration<br />
and techniques. Whether for a couple<br />
hours or the entire weekend, art<br />
lovers are encouraged to soak in the<br />
beauty of the designs and artisanship,<br />
and to connect with the stories<br />
of the people who create them. •<br />
These four artists are just a handful of the<br />
100-plus artists in 2D, ceramics, fiber, glass,<br />
jewelry, painting, photography, sculpture and<br />
wood who will line Fourth Street between Grant<br />
Street and <strong>Indiana</strong> Avenue over Labor Day<br />
weekend, eager to talk with patrons about their<br />
work, their inspiration and techniques.<br />
For more information, go to 4thstreet.<br />
org.<br />
Pictured: (left hand page) Whimsical mushrooms by artist Sam Dean; (this page, from top) “Bruno”, a painting by<br />
artist Taylor Walker; hand built pottery by Kelly Meska; metal quillery necklace by Heidi Mandich.<br />
<strong>Southern</strong> <strong>Indiana</strong> <strong>Living</strong> • <strong>Sept</strong>/<strong>Oct</strong> <strong>2023</strong> • 23
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