Pumpkins for Barbara

Every year some of Barbara's friends get together to carve pumpkins for her porch. Years past we worked together with Norm Ives to create pumpkins for Barbara's porch. Call these pumpkins Norm, Barbara, Friendly, Loving or tradition. They are for Barbara. Two of them were grown from seeds captured from last year's pumpkin and next year's will be grown from fat slippery seeds saved from this year's. Such is tradition.

Carvers: Ed Eicher, Jim Horn, HM Bateman, Rick & Elaine Hardman, Pete Midgley, Allison Midgley, The Great Pumpkin.

Thanks to Barbara Cobb for supplying some of the pumpkins.

Sol LeWitt Scibble part 2

The Sol LeWitt Scribble Drawing continues to advance with more than a hundred hours of pencil contact to the walls of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery each day. One of the people penciling this historic piece is Wellsville’s Allison Midgley, Technology Coordinator at the David Howe Library and mixed media artist.

Midgley’s on leave from the Library for 8 weeks during each of which she will practice 42 hours of precision drawing flowing from first one hand and then the other.

Midgley said, “The drawing is about our ability to collaborate, coordinate and communicate. Each artist works in an area for some hours and then moves to another area. In this way each artist has the chance to give the work a personal impression while we also blend the many styles into the whole.”

The drawing was commissioned in 2006 by gallery director Louis Grachos. Sol LeWitt (American, 1928-2007) finished the design, producing an artist sketch, computer generated plans and a maquette (model) before his sad death in 2007. Following his vision, work at the Albright-Knox began this August.

The process involves drawing chaotic, rounded scribbles across the 2200 square feet of wall to create LeWitt’s intertwined pipes. The piece is the largest of LeWitt’s 1261 wall drawings.

While working, the artists look closely, many of them holding a shop light in one hand and a pencil in the other. They lean forward moving the light and turning their heads watching and evaluating as they trail graphite over the wall. They stand or sit on floors or scaffold boards or reach through spaces to contact the different parts of the wall – in some places 22 feet tall.

They examine the work up close and from a distance. The piece is about chaos making precision - about small becoming great. The team of artists and artisans blend their hands into a single work of art. In the end scribbles become pipes bending, pushing out from and stretching across the 3 interior walls of the stairwell – including 2 inside corners - another unique feature for this work.

From a few feet, the lines present disarray but stepping back the lines advance with continuous gradations somehow changing into crisp divisions where the “pipes” meet at right angles and diverge with clear boundaries. Boundaries made of controlled chaos. They do it by always drawing with the same amount of pressure and the same line quality but by changing the density of the lines. The layered lines create texture and become reflective surfaces.

Midgley said that it’s been interesting to see how the lead use changes. “On the first days, each person went through several leads or pencils daily and then as the density of lines within an area increased, it took less lead to make more apparent change. It’s a study in contrasts.”

“Honored,” is the word she uses when she muses over her role in the drawing. Midgley received her undergraduate degree art from the University of Dallas in 1988 and moved to Wellsville in 1990. At the Library she coordinates computers with patrons, staff and materials. During off time she makes mixed media art, rides her bike and practices yoga.

“Yesterday,” she said, “I just looked around and thought, I’m part of this. I’m involved in this.”

So, is every line important? “Yes,” Midgley said. “If you pulled one out, you’d see where it had been. Each line builds on preceding lines. They are all part of the whole, part of the texture. We look at the small area but think of the large. Each line matters.”

It is estimated that the artists will put pencils down early in October and that, possibly, on October 12 clear sealant will be applied to protect the delicate graphite lines. Then the plastic will come down and scaffolds will be removed and the warren of steel pipes that seem to pull the walls into rounded, burnished steel forms will be open to visitors from around the world.

Until then, at the bottom of the stairs, there is a sign stating that the crew includes “painters, printmakers, illustrators, architects and one librarian.”

By mid October all of their names will stand proudly for decades as this industrial image shines in one of the country’s premier modern art galleries in this old, manufacturing city.

Elaine Hardman is a potter, member of the Allegany Artisans and friend of Allison Midgley. Elaine grew up on the corner of Hertel and Delaware Avenues in Buffalo, NY. -Support for the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s exhibitions and installations are provided, in part, by the Seymour H. Knox Foundation, the John R. Oishei Foundation and the Margaret Wendt Foundation.

Wellsville artist adding to the Albright Knox

Early in my life there was an incident with a bobby pin as a scribble-device. Looking back through 55 years of cobwebbed time, I faintly see varnish dust fly from the broken tip of a black bobby pin. The scribble grew, intertwined and danced with movement and intricacy.

Unfortunately my creativity involved a treasured parlor end table. I remember my mother’s crestfallen face as she rubbed the table top in disbelief and despair.

Many of us likely have early life scribble experiences ranging from achievement to disaster. At the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo scribble lives as noun, verb and art as a team of artists, printmakers and architects scribble over walls bridging the 1905 gallery with the 1962 wing with the installation of the last, the largest and possibly the most intricate of the world’s Sol LeWitt drawings.

Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) created structures, drew, made prints and painted, showing his work at hundreds of solo exhibitions around the world from 1965 onward. He was interested in music, mathematics, architecture, line, process, communication and ideas. Over 1200 of his works were huge, architectural drawings executed by crews as is this Scribble Drawing at the Albright-Knox.

The team working now in Buffalo includes head draftsman Takeshi Arita and 4 assistants from the Sol LeWitt Studio in New York, 2 Albright-Knox Art Handlers and 9 apprentices including librarian/printmaker/mixed media artist Allison Midgley of Wellsville. For 8 weeks the crew will draw millions of layered, chaotic scribbles that will, over time and from a distance, become an ordered, precise drawing covering 2200 square feet.

Now, in week three, the artists enter a scaffold area covered in taped plastic sheets housing ladders. The air, filled with graphite motes – escapees from the process - is forced through a filtration system that drones during work periods. Zippers in the plastic allow entry and exit. Disposable booties over shoes trap some dirt and on either side of entry points sticky floor mats are tattooed with graphite footprints.

The plastic walls defining the work area were constructed weeks ago and the scaffolding held painters who covered the walls with 2 coats of oil based paint and then 5 more of latex – sanding between coats - giving the walls the look and feel of paper.

On the uniform surface, the artists measured out the drawing, masking areas with craft paper and labeling it in white chalk numbers with each number indicating a level of density of line. They had a short lesson in basic scribble technique and started turning graphite into the first of millions of lines. They created flowing curves, sharpening the lead by pulling it against the surface of the wall, bending and turning their hands over the lines, becoming ever more graceful as they worked and received individual coaching.

Like many huge undertakings this is not work for the faint of heart - or arm. They work 6 days a week/ 7 hours a day with lunch and an afternoon break. While at the wall, they are asked to be in the moment with intense concentration. “Be present,” Arita tells them. “Don’t be automatic. Each person is an artist. What you do makes the whole thing work.”

Could they cut the number of drawing hours from the estimated 5,000 if they used brushes? Sprayers? Chalk? Not if they want to accomplish the goal. To give the effect required, the drawing must be of many lines, layered and focused.

The apprentices and draftsmen draw crisp, even, whispers of graphite that build on each other to create the visual roar of millions of butterfly wings. The many lines give the drawing depth so that now, 3 weeks into the project, the densely filled areas look luminous. From one side, they are rich velvet and from another point of view they become huge pipes of burnished steel. The surfaces reflect light as if mirrors. All from a simple pencil.

Sol LeWitt began his drawing career in the 60s with pencil on walls – radical for the time and, according to Ilana Chlebowski, Curatorial Assistant at the Alright-Kinox, still radical.

LeWitt explored paints and colors, shapes and shadows, lines and angles over the decades. To give an idea of his stature, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (with Williams College Museum of Art) opened an exhibition of LeWitt’s work that will be on view for 25 years and offers 105 drawings covering nearly an acre of wall space.

Pieces for that exhibit were among the last works LeWitt created before his death in 2007. They were created with the materials he used in 1960 and returned to – the pencil on a wall. Now, this crew of artists is bringing his last huge graphite, wall project to the world.

Allison Midgley saw the notice of Scribble Wall Line Drawing while surfing the internet. She mulled it over reading through the criteria and applied for the position after learning that she could take a leave of absence from her job at the David A. Howe Library. She put forth her art with her willingness to commit to the 8 week task and after time was thrilled to be accepted.

Part II

The Sol LeWitt Scribble Drawing continues to advance with more than a hundred hours of pencil contact to the walls of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery each day. One of the people penciling this historic piece is Wellsville’s Allison Midgley, Technology Coordinator at the David Howe Library and mixed media artist.

Midgley’s on leave from the Library for 8 weeks during each of which she will practice 42 hours of precision drawing flowing from first one hand and then the other.

Midgley said, “The drawing is about our ability to collaborate, coordinate and communicate. Each artist works in an area for some hours and then moves to another area. In this way each artist has the chance to give the work a personal impression while we also blend the many styles into the whole.”

The drawing was commissioned in 2006 by gallery director Louis Grachos. Sol LeWitt (American, 1928-2007) finished the design, producing an artist sketch, computer generated plans and a maquette (model) before his sad death in 2007. Following his vision, work at the Albright-Knox began this August.

The process involves drawing chaotic, rounded scribbles across the 2200 square feet of wall to create LeWitt’s intertwined pipes. The piece is the largest of LeWitt’s 1261 wall drawings.

While working, the artists look closely, many of them holding a shop light in one hand and a pencil in the other. They lean forward moving the light and turning their heads watching and evaluating as they trail graphite over the wall. They stand or sit on floors or scaffold boards or reach through spaces to contact the different parts of the wall – in some places 22 feet tall.

They examine the work up close and from a distance. The piece is about chaos making precision - about small becoming great. The team of artists and artisans blend their hands into a single work of art. In the end scribbles become pipes bending, pushing out from and stretching across the 3 interior walls of the stairwell – including 2 inside corners - another unique feature for this work.

From a few feet, the lines present disarray but stepping back the lines advance with continuous gradations somehow changing into crisp divisions where the “pipes” meet at right angles and diverge with clear boundaries. Boundaries made of controlled chaos. They do it by always drawing with the same amount of pressure and the same line quality but by changing the density of the lines. The layered lines create texture and become reflective surfaces.

Midgley said that it’s been interesting to see how the lead use changes. “On the first days, each person went through several leads or pencils daily and then as the density of lines within an area increased, it took less lead to make more apparent change. It’s a study in contrasts.”

“Honored,” is the word she uses when she muses over her role in the drawing. Midgley received her undergraduate degree art from the University of Dallas in 1988 and moved to Wellsville in 1990. At the Library she coordinates computers with patrons, staff and materials. During off time she makes mixed media art, rides her bike and practices yoga.

“Yesterday,” she said, “I just looked around and thought, I’m part of this. I’m involved in this.”

So, is every line important? “Yes,” Midgley said. “If you pulled one out, you’d see where it had been. Each line builds on preceding lines. They are all part of the whole, part of the texture. We look at the small area but think of the large. Each line matters.”

It is estimated that the artists will put pencils down early in October and that, possibly, on October 12 clear sealant will be applied to protect the delicate graphite lines. Then the plastic will come down and scaffolds will be removed and the warren of steel pipes that seem to pull the walls into rounded, burnished steel forms will be open to visitors from around the world.

Until then, at the bottom of the stairs, there is a sign stating that the crew includes “painters, printmakers, illustrators, architects and one librarian.”

By mid October all of their names will stand proudly for decades as this industrial image shines in one of the country’s premier modern art galleries in this old, manufacturing city.

Elaine Hardman is a potter, member of the Allegany Artisans and friend of Allison Midgley. Elaine grew up on the corner of Hertel and Delaware Avenues in Buffalo, NY.

Support for the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s exhibitions and installations are provided, in part, by the Seymour H. Knox Foundation, the John R. Oishei Foundation and the Margaret Wendt Foundation.

The Albright Knox Art Gallery is located at 1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York. Call 716.882.8700. Summer hours are noon to 5 Tuesday through Saturday. Admission for adults $12, Students and Seniors $8. Driving time from Wellsville is near 2 hours. Parking fees apply in the front lot but is free at the rear of the buildings.

More about the project at www.Albrightknox.org.

A little dance after lunch at Better Days

Senior Thesis Show Allison R. Craver

There’s pottery in our kitchen. Honestly, there’s pottery all over our house but more is in the kitchen. Functional work, food-related stuff – that’s what my hands do with clay and how my mind sees stoneware so when Allison Craver said that her pottery rarely belongs in a kitchen my brain hiccuped.

Allison came to Alfred for art with no intention of working with ceramics. She came for the solid and sensible reason that the School of Art and Design is a good deal. When she began exploring what Alfred offered she found herself absorbed by clay – the challenges of clay’s technical issues, the varied systems for construction and the chemistry that creates and solves problems all drew her in but then she realized the soft side of clay. The community.

She became entwined with the many layers of friendship and camaraderie that the ceramics community offers. Students have to work together to load and fire a kiln; to share the space inside the fire chambers; to move the massive weight of bricks and shelves and work. Clay students rely on each other because they have to and then because that’s the way they work.

Allison is interested in personal spaces and sculptural forms. She makes bedroom boxes, forms that could be used to hold coins, jewelry, keepsakes, special things but not food. Soap dishes are in her realm; oatmeal bowls are not. She works with a series of molds so her pieces are constructed in segments but are of varied size and texture. The detail in them caught my eye when I roamed the senior work area one day so I asked to talk with her.

Allison attributes her interest in art to her family. “I grew up in an artistic, creative household and didn’t realize till later that some parents don’t make things.”

She began actively drawing in a sketch book when she was six and she just carried it around drawing her cat and things in her house. For now, Allison seems interested in what she is trying to accomplish thought she seems not to like all her work - not an unusual situation when one is so immersed in a project and seeking some ideal. She looks at her outcomes and finds the next direction to continue her work.

The work she will display at her Senior Thesis Show on Saturday will include a variety of her special boxes posed on pedestals decorated with terra cotta clay pressed into molds to create large plinth structures. The structures will be about stability; the boxes – fragility; the process – an evolving understanding of space.

For the summer Allison Craver will be at Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine. After that it’s intense work for four or five years and then maybe grad school.
To see the work of clay, fabric, paint and ideas at the Senior Thesis shows be on the Alfred University Campus from about 4 till 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 7.

Interesting insect caught in a bag - inspiration comes from many sources.

StoneFlowerPottery

In 1974 I sat at a potter's kickwheel and gave it such a solid push that I knocked myself backwards to the clay-spattered floor. That first kickwheel was at the Robinson Center for Crafts in Binghamton. Later I studied at Touchstone Center for Crafts in Pennsylvania and then worked at home while I studied with Pete Nye at SUNY Alfred and participated in shows at the Herrick Library.
I was lucky enough to work at the School of Art and Design, Alfred University Summer Clay programs with John Gill several times and in 2004 joined a group of Alfred University students to travel to Jingdezhen China to celebrate the thousandth anniversary of porcelain.
In 1998 I became a member of the Allegany Artisans and have served as a board member and officer ever since. I use an electric wheel and throw while standing firmly on 2 feet, no toppling over expected.


My hands force lumps of clay to be round, tall and wide in my little studio in our 1880s home along the Genesee River in Wellsville. I enjoy the rhythm of throwing and making miniatures with my fingertips as well as large forms with the force of all my body.
Large or small, whatever I am making, each pot is important. I sometimes feel that I reach into clay to touch earth and history, forming useful items by forcing clay between my hands and then using time and fire to harden the shapes. It is an honor to be a potter and to have bowls and creatures involved in the daily lives of people around the world.
I was recently honored by the Skutt Kiln Peep Show in Philadelphia at the National Council on Ceramic Arts Education conference and by being part of Starting Small at the Artist Knot in Andover.

Join me on Facebook at StoneFlowerPottery.

Belmont's Purple House Spring Show & Sale

When Pat Vossler told me that there was a time that she didn’t like antiques, my jaw dropped to her 100 year old carpet hitting, on the way down, antique glassware and photos. Her husband, Lew, changed her life in many ways from parenting two daughters to getting her interested in travel and by teaching her to love, and collect, antiques.

Pat lives in Belmont’s Purple House. Only a few years ago it was red, white and blue, striking in its own way but it didn’t look like it was dressed for high tea in the spring of 1890 like it does now. It needed to be painted so in trying to decide what to do Pat went to the Belmont Library and found a book about Victorian houses. She thumbed through it until she found one of those grand ladies done in shades of purple.

“Some people like it,” said Pat. “People knock at the door for permission to take photos but one woman looked at the house and asked if the paint had been on sale.”

“I wish,” was Pat’s laughing reply. It’s Pat’s Purple House and she likes it - a lot. Even the front lawn is sprinkled in purple forget-me-nots.



Inside are thousands of other colors because inside are thousands of other things but before describing any of those things, the house deserves a bit more time. It was built circa 1895 by Dr. Herbert A. Barney.


The March 22, 1907 issue of the Belmont Dispatch is my source of information about Dr. Barney. The entire front page holds eulogies and testimonials on the occasion of his death from quinsy at age 42. He was a doctor, town supervisor, the coroner and county jail physician. Clearly, he worked long hours with a deep sense of obligation to meet the needs of people, sometimes giving his patients money rather than charging them. The paper reports that over 1,000 people attended his funeral.

Legend has it that he was an inventor, that the second floor of his home was used as a home for elderly patients, that he experimented on himself in trying to develop new medicines but these are stories handed down from Lew Vossler to Pat and she doesn’t really know.

Clearly, Dr. Barney had the means to construct a marvelous house. Likely it had gas lamps then and multiple fireplaces. There is still a wood fireplace in the living room and the mantle from another fireplace stands in the dining room. There are two sets of pocket doors and the swinging door to the kitchen has a pair of hinges 8 inches long and large enough that a person could slip a garden hose inside.

The turret was in the original design as was the old tin roof which has lasted over 110 years (but due to be replaced this summer). After the Barney family left, the house was divided into apartments and went into decline until Lew and his first wife Jane Whitcomb purchased it with her parents in about 1940. Lew set to work restore the original glory with interior renovations and a new porch.

Pat’s favorite area is the dining room. It has the swinging door to the kitchen, a fabulous window with huge beveled glass panels as well as beveled diamonds. There is a large built-in china cupboard too. The walls and ceiling are papered in textured green and white and in the center is the table that Lew built. He built it right there in the dining room – it’s that big and heavy – and he caned the seats in several of the chairs that surround it.


Lew built a lot of things for Pat and he supported all her decorating ideas. They worked together to accessorize the house starting with his collection of antique boot jacks, door stops and tools. Then Pat got into it. There’s a little corner with souvenirs of the 14 European countries they traveled to. Then she started collecting hats and sometimes has tea parties where her guests all wear the hats.

Pat collected spoons from the many states she and Lew visited and she searched for and found hand painted photos by Wallace Nutting, a Presbyterian Minister from New England. In the kitchen is Pat’s teapot collection. She and her granddaughter washed them all recently and counted 58. One is from Cakes and Curious in Cuba. It is a divided pot with two spouts so it can steep and serve 2 teas at once.

She has a collection of dresses including her mother-in-law’s wedding dress and a celluloid collection of little boxes and pins. She collects old photos thinking that it’s sad that this bit of family history ends up in some rummage sale or antique shop. She gathers them up and takes care of them wishing she knew who that baby was or how life worked out for the smart gentleman with the mustache.



A lot of Pat’s things are like that. They are more made of memories than of wood, paint or china. The men’s hats were collected by Lew as they drove; the thermometers while driving along the old US highways during the 50s and 60s when they stayed at bed and breakfasts. The tea tiles, coin spoons, tea cups and dolls are important for what they represent as well as for their craftsmanship and beauty.


Pat’s respect and admiration for handcrafted work makes the Purple House a natural place for a craft show and so that’s why it has been the site of a Mother’s Day weekend craft show and sale for 3 years now.

Pat’s daughter is Kristen Vossler-Wigent, soap-maker and partner in Green Circle Grove. Also working as Green Circle Grove is Meredith Chilson who designs and sews totes, purses, bags, lunch bags and bitty bags. Together these ladies do a number of shows but they kick off the season with a tea party/sale in Pat’s kitchen.

Green Circle Grove often partners with Joan Sinclair with her cross stitch, weaving and and detailed needle work as well as with StoneFlowerPottery, locally known for Mommy Vases or Grandma Vases as well as all kinds of functional and fun pottery.

Green Circle Grove, StoneFlowerPottery and Joan Sinclair will be in the Purple House on Friday, May 6 from 11 till 6 and Saturday, May 7 from 10 till 4. Come over for tea and cookies and take home a handmade gift for Mother’s Day. Support the local economy and peek at Pat’s collections. White gloves and veiled hats optional.

For more information call 585 808 0385, visit GreenCircleGrove.com or find StoneFlowerPottery on Facebook.