Margaret Black- Quilting
Margaret Black is a full-time textile studio artist in rural Jenner Township, Pennsylvania. Although she is a retired accountant, a sewing machine has been central to her life since the age of eight. As a 4-H leader, she has taught basic sewing and tailoring for over 30 years. In the mid 1990’s she discovered a quilter named Nancy Crow and began following her work. It was not until 2011 that Margaret ventured to the Crow Barn Art Retreat Center to begin her studies into quiltmaking as art. She has studied with Nancy for the past ten years. Among other teachers who have facilitated Margaret’s artistic journey are Lisa Call, Jan Myers-Newbury, Claire Benn and David Hornung.
She is an improvisational machine piecer creating original art without using rulers or measurements. Rhythm and repetition, as well as abstract line patterning, are at the core of her designs. During the past several years, she has been dyeing her own fabrics using wringer washers and MX dyes. Additionally, she also utilizes surface design techniques using thickened dyes with screenprinting, paper lamination, monoprinting and shibori.
In 2017 Margaret was honored to receive Best of Show Quilt National ’17 at The Dairy Barn Art Center in Athens, Ohio. Recently, she received Best of Show at Biennial 2020, a regional multi-media show. She has also received Awards of Excellence and Honorable Mentions at national and regional juried shows, including Quilt Art Elements at the Wayne Art Center in Wayne, PA, Form, Not Function at the Carnegie Center for Arts and Science Center in New Albany, IN, and Quilts=Art=Quilts at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, NY. She has work in several private collections.
Margaret is active on The Gallery Committee at Laurel Arts, Somerset, PA, has participated in their Souper Bowl Event, and permanent collection documentation.
@peggymargaretquilts
Kathy Trexel Reed – Papercutting
Centuries of papercutting developed into beautiful visual Folk Art traditions in many cultures. By cutting folded paper designs or silhouette stories, ordinary people, without professional training or the influence of sophisticated artistic movements, have used papercutting to express themselves and to reflect on life experiences. Sometimes described as honest, charming, and even naïve, examples of the art form demonstrate how people have used the common materials to celebrate and creatively mark special moments in their lives. Often the simplest of tools and paper have been used, and now specific tools, techniques, and stylistic traditions are associated with particular regions. Called Scherenschnitte (scissors/shears cutting) in Germany, Switzerland, and Holland, the images have often been made as intricate black and white contrasts, sometimes with elaborate borders. Polish Wycinanki (veecheenonkee), Belorussian, and Ukranian designs, however, were sometimes cut with available sheep shears, and resulted in bright, layered colors, repetition and symmetry. These decorative additions were applied to furniture and walls in homes. Papercuttings were sometimes created as calendars to commemorate births, deaths, and holidays such as for Mexico’s Day of the Dead (All Saint’s Day). In Judaic tradition papercuttings were hung in homes and synagogues to decorate for religious holidays. Asian and African nations have used paper designs and stencils for printing fabrics and as patterns for embroidery.
Kathy Trexel Reed became interested in papercutting and Folk Arts whilke living and teaching in the Phillipines and Germany. Her travels introduced her to many styles of papercutting, which became the basis for multicultural lessons in her art classroom. She recognized and valued how those connections represent blended American heritages. The variations, fragility, and strength of papers, too, motivated her to appreciate the medium of cutting paper and to adapt and explore it herself both in two dimensional and three dimensional ways. The distinctive graphic art form of papercutting has always appealed to her as an extension of drawing and painting. Kathy has facilitated the establishment of the Guild of American Papercutters National Museum which she coordinates in cooperation with Laurel Arts, a non-profit arts organization in Somerset, PA. Kathy also serves on the board of directors of Laurel Arts and is the gallery committee chairperson.
As a rostered PCA artist in education, she has been a resident artist in many public schools in the region served by the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, as well as a teacher for the Arts for Healing Program through Conemaugh Hospital. Her work is represented by the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor, and for many years she has demonstrated and cut silhouette portraits at Somerset County’s Mountain Crafts Days and Springs Folk Festival.
Barry Poglein – Sculpture
“My grandfather, Louis Poglein, was the foreman of the mould shop fro McKee Glass in Jeanette, PA., later becoming Thatcher Glass. My father, Paul Poglein, followed in his footsteps to become the foreman leading the mould-making department of the company. I soon became Jeanette Glass Company. I, because of their dedication to the craft, was privileged to grow up with both metal and woodshop in our basement. At a young age, being permitted to use the equipment, I developed the ability to visualize and produce in 3-D. Melting down car fenders and casting soldiers out of the pot metal is one of my earliest memories of the possibilities. When my buddies and I would run out of necessary foot soldiers to play, I would head back to the shop and make more. Production led me into carving original designed chess sets that were timely. During the Bobby Fisher/Spaskey tournaments, I was able to carve and sell enough to buy my first pick up truck. Having spent a lifetime building a space in the woods to raise two boys, my wife and I still walk the paths eyeing trees for possible rendering with the saw. To continue the legacy of my forefathers, to produce sculpture which stands on it’s own as a statement of the tree, is in itself, a statement of what has gone before me.”
Barry Poglein, a resident of Indiana County PA, is primarily a sculptor working in ice and wood. He performed as a chainsaw artist during New Growth, and demonstrated innovative 3-D bandsaw sculpture before an international group of craftspeople of the Woodcollectors Society. He sculpted on-site ice forms for the Women’s Help Center Extravaganza. Poglein constructs kinetic sculptures featuring a rolling marble, often a lathe turned marble of exotic or local wood, as performing art. “Marble Chute” was constructed for Art Works in Johnstown, utilizing traditional post, beam, and cross-brace building techniques, with construction paper and an antique marble for his childhood marble collection largely inherited from his father who worked in the Jeanette Glass factories. Barry’s talents range from playing acoustic guitar, vocals, performance art, and mural painting to comic and portrait drawing. He has composed and performed music which relates to activities with which he has participated, performing recently with Song Works in Johnstown. He worked as an art instructor for thirty-five years, was active in helping establish Youth Art Camp in Indiana, and is assisting in the planning and promotion of the Indiana Youth Arts Celebration.
Kulani Dance Group – West African Drum and Dance
Kulani is an interactive and educational dance group that performs West African Dance. Becky Bickford founded the group on her return from Ghana and Guinea. While in Africa, Becky took community-based and individual dance lessons, and studied with members of Les Ballet Africans. She brought her passion and experience to the Bottle Works. Drummers provide live musical accompaniment. The group has become a mainstay at the Bottle Works with Miss Holly and Miss Gwen leading the group. The Bottle Works offers, through the cooperation of the Kulani group, West African Dance classes to kids in the community every fall.
Michael Allison – Folklore
Michael Allison is a folklorist from Blair County. He has dedicated many years to studying, understanding, and sharing the folklore Western Pennsylvania and it’s roots. From Krampus & the White Lady to Monsters of the Appalachians, Michael delivers folklore talks throughout Blair and Cambria Counties.
Michael is also the caretaker of the Baker Mansion in Blair County and a well know mural painter throughout Western PA. He is also the public art consultant on the Cambria-Somerset Public Art Project, and a former Bottle Works board member.
J.R. Sherburne-“Jimmy the Potter”- Pottery
J.R. Sherburne is a resident potter for The Artists Hand Gallery in Indiana, PA, producing traditionally based functional stoneware. He works in the traditions of British Studio Pottery and American Colonial Ceramics. J.R. apprenticed at Berea College, Berea, KY world renowned school for Appalachian crafts. He operated studios in Kentucky, Ohio, California, and Pennsylvania, and received awards for his work. J.R.’s belief in the accessibility and approachable nature of ceramics reflects his laid back, down to earth Kentuckian background and style. He creates pots and ceramic pieces to catch the eye and tell a story – the kind of story your grandfather would tell on a long summer evening while gliding on the front porch swing. For J.R. clay is a unique and extraordinary material. It is “not inherently valuable or impressive; it possesses humor and yet may be dismissed as less than serious or marginalized as simply utilitarian, but it is these unassuming traits which allow us to consider it’s proposition eye-to-eye and to speak to us in a voice we trust; simple and direct, like cool sweet tea after a long dusty walk up a gravel lane”
Rayna Noel – Fiber Art
Rayna Noel is a fiber and mixed media artist. A Johnstown native, she is a full-time work at home mom of three. Rayna learned crochet from her paternal grandmother 30 years ago and taught herself to knit around 12 years ago. She makes custom fiber creations to sell online and at local shops. Her recent series of Cryptids combines the art of folklore with her talent in the visual arts. She also makes mixed media creations for local exhibits. She has taken many online drawing and painting courses. Some of her favorites are the loose mixed media styles of Juliette Crane and Joan Martin. She is currently working on her primitive rug hooking, punch needle, and slow stitch embroidery skills.