BRATTLEBORO — The Cherry Street Artisans announces the dates for their third annual open house and café, and the addition of new members. This unique event is scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 4, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 5, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 44 Cherry St., near Esteryville and the hospital.
Cherry Street Artisans Open House and Café is a show of 12 artisans' work in a friendly and beautiful Victorian home on Cherry Street in Brattleboro. Judy Zemel's house becomes transformed into a fine craft show and café. Participating artisans all have in common a long history of creating fine hand-crafted items, a love of good food, and music.
The guiding vision for Cherry Street Artisans is to share cooperatively these treats with friends, family and community in a warm and welcoming atmosphere. The kitchen becomes a café offering homemade soup, sandwiches, hot drinks, and amazing desserts. Saturday evening takes on the quality of a bistro and features live music with Rich Grumbine, Teta Hilsdon and other musical friends. Hilsdon and Grumbine have harmonized on folk and popular music for nearly 15 years.
There will be something for everyone and everyone's budget. Another feature that makes Cherry Street Artisans special is that most of the work offered for sale is not generally available in Brattleboro. In addition, the cooperative group does all the work of planning, publicizing, setting up, and cleaning up together, so the relationship between artisan and visitor is undiluted.
This year, five new artists join the group, and there are three mother-daughter pairs. Many of the twelve participating artisans have been friends for decades, as many as 30 years.
Jackie Abrams has been making baskets and woven forms for over 30 years. She apprenticed to a traditional maker of white ash baskets in 1975, and exhibited functional baskets at craft shows for a number of years. Eventually her explorations with form and materials led her to redefine the very idea of a basket. Her woven vessels are often made with paper, sometimes incorporating plant materials, strips of fabric, and found objects.
Abrams may paint or stain the paper to add rich color. Her pieces are informed and inspired by her years of travel and work in Africa, Australia and other parts of the world, and have been shown in galleries and museums. For the Cherry Street exhibit Abrams is also offering woven paper ornaments and hand painted cards. A wide range of her pieces may be seen on her website at www.jackieabrams.com. Joining her will be daughter Rina Rose Abrams with her own woven baskets.
Josh and Marta Bernbaum are just finishing construction on their new glass studio in West Brattleboro. For Cherry Street, they will again have their ornaments, which were popular at the previous year's shows, and will offer tumblers and other smaller functional vessels, ideal for gifts.
Marta Bernbaum has been experimenting with torch-working techniques which allow her to make detailed, delicate glass forms by melting glass rods with an oxy-propane torch. Through this process, she has realized that the form which speaks most powerfully to her is a bead. Thus her Sumi-e bead jewelry series was born Both Bernbaums' work may be seen on their website, www.jmbglass.com. This year, Marta's mother Cher Jones will offer felted animals.
New member Patricia Burleson will be selling colorful, hand painted silk scarves and intriguing nest baskets. Burleson has been painting on silk for almost thirty-five years and creates bold, vibrant abstracts and florals on a variety of silk fabrics. Over the years she has sold scarves to Neiman-Marcus, made banners for Ringling Brothers Circus, designed chuppas for weddings, and created custom design caftans.
Burleson also creates mysterious nest-like baskets by weaving together recycled and found objects, often reminding us of the wonder of mundane treasures. The mixed media nests have been shown locally and nationally. This is the first time that a selected group of these small, sculpted baskets will be offered at a substantial reduction. You can see all of Burleson's work on her website at www.patriciaburleson.com
Pat Conner will return as chef of the Maple Moose Café, providing the wonderful smells and tastes of the soups, desserts and incredible edibles for the café which in everyday life is Zemel's kitchen. Conner is bringing new work to the event as well, showing more sides of her abundant creativity: woven baskets and luminous paintings, done by layering transparent ink on stretched watercolor paper, and adding monoprinting and pours of bold color.
Pamela Cubbage is a new member to the group, but hardly new to craft. She taught herself to knit as a teenager, accidentally turning her first sock into a Christmas stocking. She's been knitting whimsical stockings ever since, some of which will make an appearance at Cherry Street. Cubbage also will bring her “hunting season hats” – hand knitted in bright colors you can't miss, as well as potholders and napkins sewn with colorful vegetable and fruit prints.
Hilsdon works with high-fired stoneware thrown on the wheel. Hailing from a family of craftswomen and engineers, she is attracted to functional art. “I got hooked on pottery because of the grace of a curve. I make simple classic forms that serve their functions well with decorations that demonstrate the magic of clay.” She will have a variety of carved and glazed bowls and mugs in strong, earthy colors.
A co-founder of the Brattleboro Clayworks in 1983, Hilsdon now does pottery “on the side” in between full-time work at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center. Hilsdon says her mother, Eileen Hilsdon, inspired her through her own creativity: making music, sewing, crocheting and still, at age 90, gets excited about new quilting patterns that she can't wait to try out. Eileen will have quilted items for sale at Cherry Street. More information on Teta Hilsdon's work is at www.tetahilsdon.com.
Naomi Lindenfeld's functional colored porcelain pieces reflect her love of dance and patterns found in nature. Her flowing, colorful designs have a liquid, tactile quality. Since 1983 she has been refining a technique of staining clay with metallic oxides, then layering, and carving the soft clay to create patterns. The clay that is prepared in this way is hand built or thrown into vases, mugs, bowls, lamps, butter dishes, platters and other items.
Lindenfeld has been evolving her deeply carved wheel-thrown pieces which reveal rhythmic, mesmerizing striations of color through each piece, giving it added dimension. She has also been exploring further with the pinched method creating small boxes and nesting shell-like bowls. Images of her pottery can be seen at www.naomilindenfeld.com.
Jane Viking Swanson is joining the Cherry Street Artisans with her lace ornaments. Jane's love of fiber arts led her to lace making in the 1980s. Battenberg lace made by hand and cutwork lace on the sewing machine are her specialties. She loves bringing these laces to the 21st century with her own designs and recreations of vintage patterns. Swanson is honored to follow in the footsteps of the wild women of 1900.
Zemel is known nationally for her sensuous woven hand dyed chenille. This is probably the last year she will have chenille scarves to sell. Lately, she has been printing and painting on cotton, linen and silk napkins, scarves, baby clothing, and handkerchiefs. She also creates necklaces and bracelets from delicate glass and crystal beads – another manifestation of her color sensitivity.
This year she is working on something new: small and mid size decorative hangings made from beads, crystals, clay forms and found natural objects. Zemel's remaining inventory of chenille oversize scarves and shawls will be available in the Cherry Street sale room.
For more information, visit www.cherrystreetartisans.com, call 802-254-3530, or e-mail [email protected].