Holyoke

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Location: Gateway City Arts

Date: Friday December 6th, 2013

Sponsors:
Hamel’s Creative Catering

Artists:

Daphne BoardDaphne Board has been making traditional leather shoes inspired by vintage designs for men and women since 2001. While she loves the look and feel of handmade shoes, she also loves how they are inherently repairable. In this age of disposable goods, a sturdy handmade item that is built to be worn and repaired is a rare thing. Her small studio is in Holyoke, Massachusetts, a city full of old paper mills and hydroelectric canals. In addition to footwear, she also makes bags and felted wool slippers, and re-upholster the occasional piece of vintage furniture. She teaches cement-construction lasted shoemaking to those who are interested in learning what is historically referred to as the “gentle craft”.

 

 

Caleb ColonCaleb Colon was born in Maricao, Puerto Rico and moved to Springfield in 1984.  He became an active artist showing at art festivals, juried shows and displaying work for the Puerto Rican Cultural Center. Colon says, “Due to my Anglo like features and rapidly adoptive approach to the environment, I was constantly struggling with my identity. I couldn’t speak fluent Spanish but I could understand it. As oppositional human behavior would have it, neither White or Hispanic groups, outside of family, would accept me as part of their culture. A cultural outsider on both fronts, I had to find an independent view of myself where I felt valuable and accepted. The arts provided me with all I needed to experience that.”

 

 

 

cynthia consentinoCynthia Consentino sculptures utilize the human figure to explore gender, familial and societal roles, religious and cultural mores, and human perception. Metaphor and story are used to make connections, provide layers of meaning, and incorporate the universal within the personal. Objects and qualities from different worlds are juxtaposed and exaggeration, or distortion, is used to address dualities and apparent incongruities within human experience such as the beautiful with the ugly, the fantastical with the realistic, the whole with the fragmented, the tragic with the humorous, and the sacred with the worldly.

 

 

 

Sentinels Peter DellertPeter Dellert is a furniture maker, sculptor and collage artist who over the last twenty five years has worked in a multitude of materials to refine his personal aesthetic. Even when making functional furniture he has developed a personal language and statement, bringing together the rough hewn sensibility of wood, a minimalists’ style and a painterly approach of surface decoration. Dellert has exhibited extensively in museums and galleries all over the United States. Recent one man shows were at the Northampton Center for the Arts in 2010 and at Open Square Gallery in Holyoke in 2012.

 

 

 

 

303 ZONE Chris NelsonChris Nelson came from Colorado where he received his BFA in sculpture at Colorado State University.  Now based in Holyoke, MA, Nelson focuses on site-specific/responsive installation art. These pieces address the interaction between person and space, both on a physical and emotional level.  His work has been viewed throughout Western Massachusetts, various parts of the country, and in Japan.