By Madison Butkus
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Those looking for some beautiful, handmade works of art were in luck earlier this month as the Needham Free Public Library (NFPL) hosted the Needham Open Studios (NOS) Fall Art Pop-up shop. The Community Room was filled with twelve unique artists who were excited to share their creations with everyone!
This annual non-juried event is open to all artists, performers, and craftspeople living and/or working in Needham. This specific event happened to be the first time ever that all of these vendors were in the same spot together, for usually they will be scattered all over town.
Floods of crowds filed in throughout the day, taking in the incredible items up for sale. Each vendor had completely different art pieces, including watercolors and oils, jewelry, cards, block prints, and various other craft items. What made each artist extremely special was the process in which they go about creating their works of art. No two processes were the same which showed an amazing diversity of talent!
One artist at this pop-up shop was Jennifer Yogel of Local Color Jewelry. When talking about her craft, she mentioned, “Every piece of my work is handcrafted using sterling silver, 14 karat gold fill, 14 karat rose gold fill, pearls, gemstones and more. And I will tell you what is really unique about my work: I use the technique of viking knitting. Everybody here has a method, this just happens to be mine. It is like sewing but with wire and the wire acts like both the needle and the thread. I’ll go in and place the wire while also placing the stitch. With this, it’ll take me about an hour to weave an inch and the most important thing is that it lines up straight all the way down. At the end, it creates these stunning bracelets and I just think it is really cool, almost like a magic trick!”
Another artist at the pop-up shop was Printmaker and Book Maker, Gail Hansen. When talking with her about how her artistry came to life, she had stated, “Well I make a lot of marbled paper, and I had to learn how to make books so I could have something to do with them! Making marbled paper, in my opinion, is the most fun thing to do.” At her booth, she sold different sizes of these books as well as her silk-screen prints.
No matter if you were shopping for yourself, or looking for a gift for someone else, there was definitely something for everyone at this pop-up shop. For more information about these artists and their work, please visit their website at www.needhamopenstudios.com.
