The Theater’s Upstairs

Philadelphia Street – 637. Enter through the side alley, climb the stairs with peeling paint, and avoid the splinters in the old railing – you’ll find yourself in one of the dingy antique halls typical of Indiana. This weekend, the mysteries of the upper floor of the Indiana Theater building were revealed in an Artist Open Studio Tour sponsored by the Indiana Arts Council. Local artists opened their studio spaces to the public and offered works for purchase. Among the artists were:

1) Charles Battaglini. Chuck is a genuinely nice guy, totally sincere, and incredibly helpful. The most important thing that meeting Mr. Battaglini inspired me to do was to meet other artists face-to-face (not just on facebook), especially those who commit a great deal of time to their art with some degree of “success.” It was amazing to be able to connect with someone so quickly – especially someone of an older generation – through discussing inspiration, method, and work. Chuck talked to me a lot about how his travels around the world have influenced his abstract paintings, from the reds he found in Chinese culture to the subtle variations he picked up from macro shots of painted walls in San Francisco. Chuck’s prints were also inspiring because they used many of the monotype techniques that we learned in Beginning Printmaking to create sophisticated abstract compositions. While I would have been totally content to listen to stories about Taiwanese landscapes all day, Mr. Battaglini encouraged me to meet his next-door-studio neighbors…

2) Jolene Joyner and her daughter Jonelle Summerfield. Both women are incredible mood-painters who capture the feelings of a scene in expressionistic strokes and semi-naturalistic outcomes. Also: they live on a farm with cows and chickens.

YOU GUYS I TALKED TO REAL ARTISTS ABOUT THEIR PET CHICKENS AND IT WAS GREAT.

Jolene even had a portrait painting she did of the chooks on display. Cool story about who else was there: a couple in Vancouver was planning their vacation to Bruges and ran a Google search, where Jonelle’s painting “Street in Bruges” came up as a result. They actually drove the whole way from Canada to Indiana to buy the painting yesterday. Inspiring.

3) Vaughn Clay was another artist who welcomed me (and everyone else) into his studio yesterday. He is a really cool guy who likes to use a particular shade of blue spray paint around the edges of his urban-disturbed painting-collages to make them appear as if the images are on a television screen. Mr. Clay is inspired by current events, political influences, and Sirius radio. Two cool things about his studio: 1) he has built a custom pole to which he can attach his radio antenna in order to get better reception by extending it out of the window, and 2) he has a model train that runs around the ceiling. Vaughn is inspiring to me because he manages to somehow stay up with the modern world while creating the incredibly labor-intensive graphite designs that take up his large square works.