Kristy McNulty’s world, Heron Hill Yoga and Art, and the Country Mouse with Jen Ricketts-Swales
By Heather Davis,
A few years ago as I was working as a summer faculty member at a craft school in Western Massachusetts, I happened to see a postcard announcement that one of my favorite artists was participating in a local studio tour. I’d been following her for a couple of decades, and since I was not local to the area, I’d no idea that her studio was local to the community. I was elated at the opportunity to meet her, an opportunity I never dreamed possible, and to see her studio was almost an almost unimaginable privilege.
Being invited onto the home turf of an admired artist, visiting the place where they create, seeing the tools they use, standing where they stand and seeing what they see… it’s intimate, and gives us a special peek into their inner world. When I moved here a few years ago, I was happy to learn about the Allegany Artisanry Tour, to see that local artists connect with each other and connect with the community in this way.
Some studio tours begin on Friday evening. I was able to visit three studios here in Wellsville, and chat with the artists, Kristy Hall McNulty, Kristin Buchholz, and Laura Hunsberger, with her studio guest, artist Jen Ricketts Swales.
At Kristy McNulty’s home, I was greeted by what looked to be a friendly chow mix who gave me a sniff and led me into Kristy’s studio. Kristy is showing two bodies of work this year: pen & ink collage with watercolor on paper, acrylic florals on canvas.
She compares the two techniques and the qualities that can be achieved with each, and loves both, especially the continual learning through experimentation. For the watercolor, she works in stages, waiting hours for each layer of color to dry. She loves to see the colors bleed and blend together. For the acrylic, the paint dries almost instantly, and she is able to achieve intricate detail.
Kristy showed me a specific brush that she says most people would throw away, but these are her favorites. She calls them, “bad hair day brushes,” and they “make the best textures,” for watercolor blends. Follow Kristy on Facebook for nonstop art flowing from this prolific painter.
My next Friday night stop was Heron Hill Yoga and Art Studio. I was here Thursday as well when the room was filled with incense and soft music, and I along with four others breathed and stretched our bodies in unison. That was my first visit to Kristin’s yoga class, and will be the first of many.
Tonight, Kristin is wearing a dress as bright as her work and as cheerful as her smile. This weekend, she is demonstrating her painting technique on an almost finished work inspired by a sunset captured by her husband.
Her varied work surrounds her, a smorgasbord of still life, landscape, spiritual-themed illustration, mandala, and at least a couple of illustrations of cow skulls, which, as any art kid knows, is a staple of any respectable studio.
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My final stop was Laura Hunsberger’s Country Mouse Studio. Laura became one of my first friends when I moved to Wellsville a few years ago, a potter I knew from the Art Center. She’s been making pottery for about five years, and she built out this studio about three years ago. This is her second year on the Artisan tour, and her first Friday evening opening. She and her guest, Jen were “grooving on the Grateful Dead,” as folks browsed, asked her about black clay, and took noodle bowls home (made with a special chopstick rest).
Laura was first hooked onto ceramics in childhood, as she grew up surrounded by ceramics in her family home, and has kept family heirlooms, even the simple pieces, like casseroles. Laura pots some offshoots of her own plants into some of the small planters she makes, and loves seeing people take her work home with them, “I hope that my pieces bring a little bit of joy and art into everyday life.”
At her studio, Laura hosted Jen Ricketts Swales, “Sweet P’s by Jen,” a collage and fiber artist who wears many hats, including educator, EMT for Filmore, NY, and county legislator. For her art practice, she collages old magazines, donated to her from the library, into imagery, sending the scraps of paper, “back into circulation,” pun intended.
When working with thrifted and gifted clothing, she recycles and repurposes “everything, the whole thing if I can. The scraps can be used as patches that people can sew [onto the clothes] themselves.” Follow Sweet P’s by Jen on Facebook for more!
At the end of the evening, the three of us relaxed, listened to the music and the rain, and chatted over crackers and olives.
When I teach, I show my students that art is a method of communication from artist to viewer. Art is a text, and an artist imbues their work with meaning using color, line, texture, and the other elements of art. But when one can sit with an artist and chat with them in person, an artist you’ve admired for years like that one time in Massachusetts, or a fellow potter from a community studio, or a yoga teacher painting details into the sky as you chat, or a new friend showing you her favorite paintbrush, what a wonderful thing it is.
