Actually, Connecticut moved to Mount Holly three years ago.
Connecticut's where I learned how to be a potter from a very awesome guy, Bob Parrot,
and I just love it.
These are some of my favorite pots.
They're sawdust kiln-fired pots, and I have my own technique where I put a fern on them,
and during the sawdust firing, the fern burns off and leaves the image of the fern.
So they're very unique pots.
And so this is a stoneware pot that, after burnishing and a low-bisk fire, I actually
glue a fern on it, at which point it's a white pot, and I put it in a sawdust firing outside,
and the fern burns off, and we're left with the image of the fern, the reverse, and then
it's waxed, about four or five coats of wax on the outside, and polyurethane on the inside
so it would hold water.
What are your influences, how do you describe what it is that you're doing because it looks
pretty unique?
Yeah, so it's all recycled.
Everything's recycled, so barnboard, we're using roofing slate, and it's a collaboration
between my friend and I, so it's the business is based and reclaimed, and it's me and Jesse
Billidoo, and that's B-I-L-O-D-E-A-U, just so you know, and we together create these
sculptural paintings that are meant to kind of encourage environmental sustainability
and reuse and kind of start the conversation about reuse, and everything is nature-based,
so yeah, we just want people to get outside and do what they want to do, do what they
love.
He creates, hand makes, stainless steel, copper, and brass garden ornaments, dragonflies,
butterflies, mosquitoes, katydids.
They're created by hand, everything, the stainless steel mesh is cut and torched to create designs
on the stainless steel wings.
They have jeweled eyes, glass eyes, his workshop is the garage, and we are on the Shrewsbury
River.
Right, so this is like, this is an art, this is more like, this is a craft, actually.
What's the difference between art and craft?
Hmm, that's a good question.
If you are in your humble opinion.
Well, what is art, I guess, is the basic question.
Okay, what is art?
What is art, it's something that you create that pleases you in some way, it pleases your
senses, it pleases the eye, you know, I think that's art, and whatever materials are used
to create that for everyone to enjoy.
I am an artist, I do oil paintings and watercolors, and I sell prints here as well at Art in the
Park.
So, who's an artist, historical artist that we might know who might have influenced you
at a young age to become an artist yourself?
Hmm.
Some influence.
It's hard to pick one that would be more widely known, it's more artists that have, I've
met personally in my life, I have artists on both sides of my family, from my grandparents
down to my parents, craft fairs or something, that would be different.
Yeah.
It comes with the territory.
Yes.
Also, Vermont artists have been great inspirations to me, I was fortunate to work in a gallery
and meet artists like Saber Field and be influenced by them and learn from them.
She's wonderful.
Yes.
We love her.
Tell me about this, what do you call it?
This one's called Night Rising, and it's a real place, but it's not from a photograph,
it's a memory of a place.
So I do a combination of black and white and color photography, I lean more towards black
and white.
It's mostly central Vermont, I just do my ability to travel right now, but I do get
over to Maine and I've done some work down in Florida, mostly on the Atlantic side, down
through there.
Tell me about your influences in photography, what photographers might we know that influenced
you growing up?
Growing up, so obviously Ansel Adams, Clyde Butcher is a phenomenal black and white photographer.
He's out of Florida, he does large format black and white work, just does some amazing,
amazing stuff.
I hear locally Kurt Budlinger, who's from the Montreal area, Montpelier area, those are
pretty much the ones that I kind of lean towards in terms of looking at what they do, how they
do it, things of that nature.
You could travel anywhere in the world and make photographs.
Where would you want to go?
I'd probably want to go to the Alps, you know, Germany, Austria, and the only other place
I think I would really, really, really love to go would be Death Valley.
I love the extremes.
I really enjoy looking at the extreme tones and textures that you can get, and I think
that's part of what leads me towards more towards black and white photography, because
if you remove color, you remove the distraction of color and you're just left with the shapes
and the tones and the textures and things of that nature, which I think is something
that here in Vermont doesn't quite get the play that it should.
I think everybody is always amiss with the color, especially in the autumn, which is
a beautiful time of year, but I think there's other times of the year where if you remove
the color, then you can really get some of the tones and textures and shapes that I think
get lost.
Tell me, tell me, you're a visitor to the art fair today, and what have you seen that
has stricken you?
There's a lot of very unique pieces here, and it seems to be a lot of talent here that
I don't always see at other craft fairs.
What kinds of things do you like?
Jewelry and the pottery and the woodwork.
Have you bought anything?
I'm going to buy some earrings, I was waiting for this lady.
Most of my influences are my surrounding, the views at my house around the Rutland County
area, mostly Chittenden where I live, the mountains and the ski resorts, and I just love painting
the things that I find very beautiful, and lots of landscapes, clouds and winter scenes.
How long have you been painting?
Since I could hold a paintbrush, I used to spend a lot of time with Bob Ross on the public
channel, him teaching me how to paint my pretty clouds.
And we do wire wrapping and all of the bees that we do are rare stones, precious, semi
precious, and we kind of got into it as a way to ward off retirement boredom.
Where are some of your influences in your work?
Where did you pick this up?
We went over in Florida and there was a young couple living next to us who do this as a
full-time job, and I was admiring his craftsmanship, and he took an interest in me and insisted
upon me trying it out and what you believe I fell in love.
