“Botany Bay” © Mary-Jo Bennett

Mary Jo Bennett’s image “Botany Bay” was accepted for the “Best of West Virginia” Juried Exhibition at Tamarack, the state’s Center for the Arts.  The exhibition will open on June 17 and end August 18 at Tamarack’s David L. Dickirson Fine Arts Gallery.

Eric Johnson, Southwood Farm Forge

Patricia Perry, founding Board Member of the Washington Street Artists’ Cooperative, invites you to the first annual Warm Springs Road Studio Tour to visit three working studios on historic Warm Springs Road, Jefferson County, WV, on May 12, from noon to 5pm. Southwood Farm Forge (Eric Johnson, farmer and blacksmith), Joy Bridy Pottery (wood-fired potter), and Patricia Perry (oil painter) will open their studio doors for the day, with work available for purchase, demos on-site, and time to explore and meet the artists in their work spaces.

Warm Springs Road is part of the historic Alexandria and Warm Springs Road that George Washington traveled from Alexandria, VA, to Berkeley Springs, WV. While the name of the road has changed in many areas, all three studios are located on the original route, in close proximity, along Warm Springs Road and Van Clevesville Road, 3 miles from Shepherdstown, and 1 mile from Kearneysville. The Alexandria and Warm Springs Road is now part of the Washington Heritage Trail, a 136 mile road that passes through Jefferson, Berkeley, and Morgan counties from Harpers Ferry to Paw Paw.

Joy Bridy Pottery: 2533 Warm Springs Road; Patricia Perry Oil Painting: 2367 Warm Springs Road; Southwood Farm Forge, Eric Johnson: 251 Southwood Drive. For a map and more information, visit www.joybridy.com/current/warmsprings/warmsprings.htm.

“Fruit Table” by Suzanne Ravgiala

You have another opportunity to observe and interact with an artist at work “Making Art.” This May 12 from 2 – 5 p.m., the Washington Street Artists’ Co-op will pull back the curtain on what goes on in the mind and hands of an artist, featuring the work of Suzanne Ravgiala doing her broken plate furniture decoration. For more information about Suzanne, see her Artists’ Profile below.

On the second Saturday of each month through September, the Washington Street Artists’ Cooperative will feature different member artists working in a variety of media from drawing to painting to photography to furniture decoration and wood working and porcelain carving right in our Charles Town gallery.

The monthly sessions are informal and gallery visitors are invited to sit and watch each artist and ask questions about materials or technique or how an artist makes decisions as he or she works. Visitors will see art developing right before their eyes as they watch and learn about what it takes to make a work of art.

"Cow Table" by Suzanne Ravgiala

Suzanne Ravgiala loves Victorian design – the fabric, the beaded trim, the busy window treatments, the piling on of different designs in one room.

And that Victorian influence shows, not only in her personal clothing choices but in the fabulous painted furniture that is part of the members’ exhibit at the Washington Street Artists’ Cooperative gallery in Charles Town.

Don’t be fooled by all the color and broken plates in her work into thinking these flea market furniture finds are transformed in a slap dash way. A professional sign maker, Ravgiala has done work for the Smithsonian, the U.S. Capitol Building, the Kennedy Center, and the Pratt Art Institute, to name just a few well known customers in her portfolio.

She carries over the precision and planning required by that work into her furniture painting. But she mingles more than a hint of whimsy and a total joy in bright colors with complicated designs.

"Flower Table" by Suzanne Ravgiala

“You have to limit yourself to four or five colors a piece,” she says. She is not joking.

You could say that Ravgiala is fairly handy. She started making her own clothes in fifth grade. Her mother taught her to knit, sew, crochet, and her dad got her involved in his sign business. She quilts. She wrote poetry and then put her lyrics to music thinking someone would listen to it that way.

During her songwriting phase Ravgiala moved to Nashville for 15 years, had songs on hold with some major artists, and co-wrote with 80 people. Tanya Tucker said she loved her lyrics. She also wrote two songs for a documentary that can be found on YouTube under Ravgiala.

A resident of Shady Acres for the last four years, Ravgiala can make plain paperboard walls look like marble. Her painted quilts look like the real thing. Ravgiala says she thought about carving and inlaid wood and then thought, “why should I do all that work when I could just paint it.”

All this talent is fused into a focus on painted furniture now. She finds the porcelain plates that provide the inspiration for her furniture’s color scheme at Goodwill and cuts them with a table saw so that they will lay flat. She buys the acrylic paints at Wal Mart. She is, she says, a really good color matcher.

She goes to flea markets and yard sales where she finds the pieces of furniture over which she waves the magic wand of her imagination, like the two-dollar chair she turned into a blue-ribbon prize winner at the Jefferson County fair.

Ravgiala works on one thing at a time out of her two-car garage. A small table will take portions of three days to complete to her liking. More complicated work, like a commission to put the portraits of someone’s daughters on the furniture, takes a little longer.

Have dinner, visit the Washington Street Artists’ Cooperative in our new location, and see the new show, Fox on the Fairway, at the Old Opera House. Opening night is May 4 and we will keep our gallery open until 7 p.m. Show us your ticket, or ticket stub later in the month, and get a 10 percent discount on the purchase of work by participating artists.

WSAC Artists Win Awards at Berkeley Arts Council’s Second Annual Art and Earth Juried Art Exhibit

"Curbside Landscape" © Gary Bergel

Gary Bergel’s “Curbside Landscape” won the “Best Photograph” award from among the 52 juried works by 32 artists at the show, which opened April 20 in the gallery of the Arts Centre, 300 West King Street in Martinsburg. Earl Mills won “Honorable Mention” for his photograph, “Live Oak.” Visitors are welcome to view the show, produced by the Berkeley Arts Council and the Arts Centre, from 12 noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday until May 19.

"Live Oak" © Earl Mills

Welcome to New Member – Doug Kinnett

"Summer in the City" © Doug Kinnett

Well-known artist Doug Kinnett has joined the Washington Street Artists’ Cooperative. Kinnett has been an exhibiting artist since the 1970s and has worked in painting, prints, jewelry, furniture, ceramics and collage. He holds a BA degree from Shepherd University, an MA in painting from WV University and a doctorate in art education from Illinois State University. He has served as the coordinator of the art education major at Shepherd University and taught art at all levels from kindergarten to graduate school.

Images of his work are available on www.mannamachine.com

Come and visit us in our new space. You will be delighted with what you see! We are open Wednesday through Sunday, from noon until 5 p.m.

On April 11, 2012 the Washington Street Artists’ Cooperative signed an agreement with the City of Charles Town, AHA, and the Convention and Visitors Bureau to move our gallery to the Charles Town Visitors Center at 108 N. George Street in Charles Town.

This historic agreement enables the CVB, AHA! and the Washington Street Artists’ Co-op gallery to share the Visitor Center space with significant support from the City, thus expanding tourists’ experience of Charles Town and providing gallery, classroom and meeting space for area artists in the heart of historic Charles Town.

When our move to our new location is completed by the end of the month we will expand our gallery hours to Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. We will continue to exhibit the work of our 30 member artists, build our class portfolio, present the Making Art series, and offer special events and collaborative exhibits with AHA. Visit us now to see our newly mounted member show and visit often to enjoy the art and talk with area artists about their work.

We are deeply grateful to Charles Town Mayor Peggy Smith and the City Council for providing this opportunity to us.

"Life in a Fish Bowl" by Joanna Athey

When Joanna Athey retired in 1994 she wondered what she was going to do with all the time on her hands. A homemaker for many years and staffer at National Geographic in Gaithersburg when her children had grown, she had never been interested in art. She couldn’t sing and she couldn’t draw, she says. But that didn’t stop her from taking a watercolor class with Elizabeth Smith Carlson in 1996 and then later, after a struggle with watercolor, a collage class.

Collage clicked. “I found myself ripping and tearing and feeling like I was back in school,” says Athey in her wry way of her first experiences in collage.

An exhibiting member of the Washington Street Artists’ Cooperative, Athey has taken many classes from teachers around the country. “I like to experiment in different media,” she explains, but she always returns to collage because she likes the texture of this art form, the almost sculptural quality she can bring to the piece.

“There is something in you,” Athey says, “that wants more color and texture.” Her favorite colors are the reds, gold, oranges, as is evident in her striking pieces.

All those painting classes have given her something else she didn’t anticipate: material for her collage work. She tears up her old watercolor paintings for collages, building layers and layers of colors that form themselves into landscapes, abstracts, and one delicious portrait of a woman who wears one of Athey’s earrings.

“Being an artist,” she says, “is being willing to experiment and create.”

A piece starts as an idea, or something she sees in nature or a photograph. “Sometimes when I don’t know what I want to do, I start just tearing up paper and putting it down.” Always, complementary colors, texture, and mood are part of her process.

This is not a quick process, however. Athey starts a piece, sets it up in the studio, and looks at it from various angles. She studies it, trying to decide what she wants to do. “I try to think of the principles and elements of design, to see if everything is in balance, and,” she adds with a slight smile, “if I like it whether I followed the rules or not.”

Although she’s been a working artist for 16 years, Athey doesn’t call herself a full-time artist. She wants to work when the mood hits her, not because she must. Having a studio her son built for her in the basement of her Charles Town home allows her to be alone with her work when she wants and close the door and “leave my mess” until the mood hits again.

“I don’t want to do anymore art unless I have fun,” she says adamantly. “Maybe as a child, I did what everyone else was doing. Now, at my age, I am doing what I do. It’s my own.”

-Ginny Fite

Photograph by Anna Gibson

The Washington Street Artists’ Cooperative will mount another beautiful exhibit in the AHA Fire Hall Gallery in the Charles Town Visitors Center, 108 N. George Street. Visit us early and often to view our members’ exhibit, opening April 7 and continuing throughout the month. The Charles Town Visitor’s Center is open daily from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

"Quiet Cove" by Sue Parker

Beginning on April 14 from 2 – 5 p.m., the WSA Co-op will pull back the curtain on what goes on in the mind and hands of an artist, featuring different member artists one Saturday a month for six months working in a variety of media from drawing to painting to photography to furniture decoration and wood working and porcelain carving right in our Charles Town gallery.

The schedule is as follows:

• April 14 –Sue Parker – drawing and painting
• May 12 – Suzanne Ravgiala – broken plate furniture decoration
• June 9 – Loretta Bailey – painting
• July 14 – Mary Jo Bennett – macro photography
• Aug. 11 – Malcolm Hally – multi-media constructions
• Sept. 8 – Joe Bourgeois – wood working and Martha LeRoi – carving porcelain

Fruit Table by Suzanne Ravgiala

The monthly sessions are informal and gallery visitors are invited to sit and watch each artist and ask questions about materials or techniques or how an artist makes decisions as he or she works. Visitors will see art developing as they watch and learn about what it takes to make a work of art.