Friday, September 18th, 2015
6:30pm, presentations begin at 7pm
$5 suggested donation
at Park Hill Orchard, 82 Park Hill Road, Easthampton
This month’s ArtSalon will be at Park Hill Orchard in Easthampton. The evening begins at 6:30pm with mingling and light refreshments, and presentations start at 7pm. A brief Q&A period with the artists follows the presentations. Park Hill Orchard is located on beautiful scenic farmland in Easthampton. It’s also the setting for Art in the Orchard, a unique sculpture exhibit that winds through the grounds. We encourage people to come early and enjoy Art in the Orchard before the ArtSalon.
Heather Beck, metalsmith
Petula Bloomfield, painter & mixed media
Kait Brink, fiber art
Susan Halls, sculptor
Nancy Winship Milliken, sculptor
Dawn Howkinson Siebel, painter & sculptor
Heather Beck is a bowtie wearing metalsmith who works primarily in copper, silver, and gold. She has been teaching metalsmithing and jewelry since 2006 at various craft schools around the east coast, and runs beginner to advanced jewelry courses in her studio. She spends her days creating high end custom jewelry in studio #047 in the Eastworks building. Her latest projects range from a 14k white gold engagement ring complete with a 5mm emerald, to sterling and copper arrow bracelets, etched copper money clips, and a large silver buffalo necklace. You can follow her on Instagram @HBee83 and at Heather Beck Designs on FB and www.heatherbeckdesigns.com.
Kait Brink is a conceptual artist currently working with fiber in large-scale. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her fiber work, Big Knits, combines sculpture, installation, and performance. Brink uses discarded and found materials to make the yarn and carves the wooden needles in her Easthampton studio. Brink’s Big Knits have been featured in Knitting Daily TV, Vogue Knitting Live NY, Garner Arts Festival, Paper City Studios, and Worcester Windows. For more, visit www.kaitbrink.com.
Susan Halls was born in Kent, England in 1966. After four years at her local art school she moved to London to study ceramics at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1990 with Distinction. For ten years she produced work from her London studios in Putney then Balham before moving to the USA in 1998. She teaches widely and exhibits both here and abroad. Her work is represented in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Shigaraki Ceramic Culture Park, Japan. www.susanhalls.com
Petula Bloomfield was born in the UK and has exhibited her work in the US and Europe since 1990. She has taught art at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School in South Hadley since 2004. Residencies include the Vermont Studio Center, Castello di Spannocchia, Tuscany and Norristown, PA. She is a recent recipient of grants from the Surdna Foundation in New York and the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. She has an MS in Art from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a BA in Liberal Arts from Clark University, Worcester. Her most recent show, Things That Die Interestingly with Donald Shambroom at the APE Gallery, Northampton in 2014, collaborated with Smith College Botanic Garden. www.pbloomfield.com
Nancy Winship Milliken is a sculptor creating site-specific work in urban and rural landscapes. Her archetypal structures pair ephemeral, organic materials such as wool, wax and honey with industrial components such as steel. Whether indoors, or in the landscape, Milliken’s environmentally performative sculptures layer time, and weather, sometimes including human and animal interaction. Recently, she has traded studio for farm to create work for Contemporary Pastoralism, a project that delves into the muddy beating hearts and rhythms of our small farms. www.nancymilliken.com
Dawn Howkinson Siebel is an oil painter and found object sculptor who moved to the Pioneer Valley in the fall of 2012. Since 2013, her focus has been on endangered species. She began visiting zoos this spring in order to meet her subjects. Working in the studio from her own documentation and observations, her portraits are now only of animals she has met. In a career that began in the theatre before a slow segue to the visual arts through batik, then watercolor, and finally oil, she has always been thematically inspired. Painting endangered animals has tapped an old passion, and prompted a new business model. Her two websites are www.dawnsiebel.com and www.betterangels911.com. Dawn is self-taught and always learning.