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Featured Artists in June

JOIN US FOR THE
FIRST FRIDAY ART WALK
JUNE 2nd

Ashland Art Works will host an Artist reception from 5 to 8pm

Drop by to meet our Featured Artists
Cheryl Kempner, Bonnie Morgan
and Shari Southard

Also enjoy live music featuring The Holy Misfits singing group.  A Folky gospel bluesy trio who look for the good and sing songs of light and love.

 

CHERYL KEMPNER

Cheryl Kempner enjoys creating artwork that makes you smile. Over the years her hand built clay birds have appeared holding flowers or wearing designer high heels. Crazy Birds started appearing drawn on plates, cups and vases. As featured artist for June, the birds will be appearing in “Crazy Birds: Up, Up and Away.”  Bubbles float up the front of  …Birds perch on top of the bubbles and the Birds float up and up an away on their next adventure.   As an artist in her seventies, Cheryl is looking for a  floating bubble to take her on a new adventure.

 

SHARI SOUTHARD

Ashland Art Works is excited to present the works of self-taught, Plein Air watercolor painter Shari Southard in our gallery spaces.  Shari’s contemplative love of nature is a key element of her artistic process. Her paintings often happen as she is hiking along the Oregon Coast, in the Cascade mountains and Colorado mountains, in the deserts of Utah and the small towns of New Mexico.  A place or a sound makes her stop to smell the air, view the view or listen to the birds, the wind or the water… hear the land.  The paintings become her visual journal, where she has been and what has grabbed her brush.  These paintings are as if you are looking over her shoulder, seeing the world as she sees it.

 

BONNIE MORGAN

Rebuilding from the Almeda Wildfire of 2020 continues to be the focus of featured artist Bonnie Morgan. She lost two buildings in the Old Town district of Talent and continues to make decorative metal art for the rebuilding of the historic Malmgren Garage.

 

Clay+Wood Collaboration

Woodworker Dave Maize wanted to help with fundraising and has donated a group of ceramic jars that he commissioned Bonnie to make back in the 1990’s. Dave at the time lived in Talent and planned to make wood lids for the jars. But years passed with Dave focusing on carving custom wood doors and then jumping into guitar making, specializing in building acoustic bass guitars for musicians like Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam and Adam Clayton of U2. Dave has phased out of guitar building but continues to sell instrument woods, takes on an occasional furniture project, and after all these years decided to make the wooden lids for Bonnie’s jars and donate them for the Malmgren Garage rebuild. All but one of the lids are native hardwoods, a few coming from street trees in the Rogue Valley, all chosen for their compliment to the glaze color and clay body. Imagine Bonnie’s surprise to hear from Dave after all these years and her feeling of gratitude for his collaboration and gift to the rebuild.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Decorative Metal Art

Working with debris left by the fire, Bonnie has taken the fire marked metal flashing from the destroyed building and cut out the stepped parapet façade along with different sized hearts. All the funds raised from the metal flashing go towards rebuilding Malmgren Garage and placing it on the National Register of Historic Buildings.