Artists Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Nonprofit Seeks Artists For Community's 250th Anniversary

A West Virginia community is marking the 250th anniversary of its founding, and the local arts council is looking for artists to help with the commemoration.

The Berkeley Arts Council plans an exhibition beginning in mid-May entitled Berkeley County, WV: Future, Present, Past, according to a news release. The council is seeking submissions for the exhibit that reflect the artist’s interpretation of either a future vision or a present or past adventure, event, memory or experience in the county.

The event is open to artists throughout the continental United States, over the age of 18, working in any medium. Awards will be given in the visual arts category and the literary, music, performance and video category. More information is available on the Berkeley Arts Council website at berkeleyartswv.org.

Childhood Love Turns Into Adult Lifestyle For W.Va. Artist

It probably started with her first set of crayons.

“Anytime she got a coloring book she would color the blank inside pages before she ever colored a picture,” Cande Ratliff said of her daughter Carli.

Cande remembers teachers reveling in her daughter’s artwork as far back as kindergarten.

“Hers (art) was just different,” she said. “Her people had eyelashes and plaid shirts. Her animals had whiskers. You had to ask other students what they drew but you could always tell what her picture was without asking.”

The 35-year-old Oak Hill native laughs as her mother recalls those early years, but says she remembers them well.

She also remembers how her love for animals — and creating them on a blank canvas — was born.

“I grew up with a lot of different animals,” she said. “I had a pony, raccoon, chicken, guineas (pigs), turkey, rabbits, cats and dogs.”

And when her grandfather, who owned his own art gallery in Michigan, began sending her home from visits with catalogs featuring the work of well-known wildlife painters Carl Brenders and Robert Bateman, Carli decided to give it a go herself.

“I would look at those catalogs and I would practice drawing,” she said, explaining she spent hours trying to sketch her own versions of the animals she saw on the pages. “I decided I wanted to be like one of those famous artists.”

Carli’s love for art grew through the years, but by the time the 2004 Oak Hill High School graduate entered Concord University, her career path changed.

“I planned to teach,” she said, explaining her goals for her music and studio art majors.

It was the advice of Professor Fernando Porras coupled with the recurrence of epilepsy, a condition she lived with throughout her childhood but hadn’t dealt with for six and a half years, that prompted her to forgo that plan.

“My art teacher told me if I was a teacher I wouldn’t have time for my own art,” she said. “(He said) I would never get any better.

“He definitely encouraged me to pursue my own career.”

At Concord, encouraged by Porras, Carli made the shift from pencil sketches to paint.

“When I was younger I was afraid to make mistakes, but he (Porras) made me less afraid, which helped me get better,” she said.

Carli’s process involves more than just deciding to paint a bird or a dog.

Instead, it begins with a hike in the woods or a road trip throughout West Virginia.

“I take a whole lot of photos,” she said. “I go to places like Three Rivers Avian Center, the West Virginia Wildlife Center and photography centers,” she said. “I take hundreds and hundreds of photos and then I make a sketch and paint.”

The Oak Hill home Carli shares with her mother is full of her wildlife creations.

Though she said she enjoys everything she paints, she said her favorite subjects right now are owls.

“Their eyes are just so big,” she said.

She said she often works on as many as three paintings at a time, but a painting of two barred owls — one perched in a tree, staring over his shoulder as the other approaches in the distance — is her current focus.

The painting, when complete, is one Carli plans to submit to the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources for consideration for its 2023 wildlife calendar.

Carli was first selected for the calendar in 2013 for her winter scene titled “Bunny Love,” and then again in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021.

Those who purchased this year’s calendar will again find her work with December’s “Snow Bunnies.”

In addition to the DNR calendar contest, which attracted more than 300 entries from across the country, Carli has won several other competitions.

In 2011, her “Squirrel in Paulownia Tree” won first place in the Division of Culture and History’s “West Virginia Wildlife” juried exhibition. Then, in 2016, her “Climbing to the Top,” featuring a raccoon in a tree, won the Diversifying Perspectives Art Contest and Exhibition.

That contest, she said, was special to her as it was used to promote National Disability and Awareness Month.

As part of the recognition, both a portrait of Carli and the painting were featured on a poster designed to help raise awareness about disabilities.

“I was proud of that because I felt like it was very important,” she said.

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Though she earned her driver’s license in high school, Carli has been unable to drive since her seizures returned in college.

On Cande’s days off work, she and Carli often drive to places where they can view wildlife for future inspiration. And, in the coming year, they said they hope to explore galleries where Carli might show, and potentially sell, her work.

“My epilepsy makes it hard to get around,” she said. “But my mom is a big source of encouragement, for sure.”

With galleries — as well as future contests — in mind, Carli, who teaches piano lessons from home and also paints commissioned pet portraits, continues to create.

“… I call my paintings my mom’s grandpaintings,” she said with a laugh. “They’re my babies.”

Five Artisans Selected to Carry on Appalachian Traditions

Folk artists, musicians, and chefs across the mountain state will be teaching their crafts to apprentices during 2018, as part of a new project by the West Virginia Folklife Program — a project of the West Virginia Humanities Council. The Humanities Council selected five master artist and apprentice pairs, including salt rising bakers, gospel musicians, and Appalachian fiddlers.

According to a press release from the Humanities Council, the goal of the program is to “facilitate the transmission of techniques and artistry of the forms, as well as their histories and traditions.”

The Apprenticeship program offers up to a $3,000 stipend to West Virginia master traditional artists or tradition bearers working with qualified apprentices on a year-long in-depth apprenticeship in their cultural expression or traditional art form.

The 2017-2018 master artists and apprentices include:

Genevieve Bardwell & West Virginia native Susan Ray Brown, both residents of Mount Morris, PA, will lead an apprenticeship in salt-rising bread with apprentice Amy Dawson of Lost Creek, WV. Bardwell and Brown opened Rising Creek Bakery in Mount Morris in 2010 and have documented and taught the Appalachian tradition of salt-rising bread baking across West Virginia. Dawson, a native of Harrison County, is a baker, cook, and farmer at Lost Creek Farm, a farm-to-table traveling kitchen.
Doris A. Fields of Beckley will lead an apprenticeship in blues and black gospel music with apprentice Xavier C. Oglesby of Huntington. Fields, who performs as Lady D and is known as West Virginia’s First Lady of Soul, has performed original and traditional blues, gospel, R&B, and soul across the state, region, and country, including for a President Obama Inaugural Ball. Oglesby grew up singing in black Pentecostal churches and has performed in local a capella and theatre groups.
Marion Harless of Kerens in Randolph County will lead an apprenticeship in green traditions with Kara Vaneck of Weston. Harless is a co-founder of the Mountain State Organic Growers and Buyers Association and the West Virginia Herb Association, and has taught widely on medicinal herbs, edible landscaping, and native plants. Vaneck is the owner of Smoke Camp Crafts and has served as vice president and treasurer of the West Virginia Herb Association.
John D. Morris of Ivydale will lead an apprenticeship on old-time fiddling, focusing on the traditions of Clay County, with Jen Iskow of Thomas. Morris is an acclaimed West Virginia fiddler and tradition bearer who has been honored by the Augusta Heritage Center, the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, and the West Virginia Fiddler Award for his role in sustaining the tradition. Iskow, a West Virginia University alumni and marketing assistant at the Augusta Heritage Center, is an old-time fiddler who has studied with numerous masters of the tradition.
Doug Van Gundy of Elkins will lead an apprenticeship on old-time fiddling with apprentice Annie Stroud of Morgantown. Van Gundy, an eighth-generation West Virginian, apprenticed with fiddler Mose Coffman through the 1993 Augusta Heritage Apprenticeship Program. Stroud is a Greenbrier County native who plays fiddle with the Allegheny Hellbenders string band and is a member of the Morgantown Friends of Old-Time Music and Dance.

Should Every Artist Be in a Critique Group?

Creating art can be lonely work, so a small group of artists in the Eastern Panhandle gets together every two weeks to critique each other’s work. These are people who work with paint, pencils, cameras, and clay. But why do they need each other?

This Artist Critique Group, or Crit Group for short, was started in 2007 by Doug Kinnett.

It consists of seven members, and they meet twice a month at Kinnett’s home in Shepherdstown in a large sun room with high ceilings and big windows. The room gives off an air of art – hardwood floors, lights, and modern furniture. Some of Kinnett’s colorful paintings line the walls.

Craig Winkel shows his zebra painting to the crit group.

Each person gets a chance to stand before the group and show a piece of art on an easel. One artist has brought a painting of a zebra. He shows his work, talks a bit about his process, and then opens the floor to comments.

Painter Judy Bradshaw speaks up, “I mean you could’ve painted those stripes straight, and it wouldn’t have worked, but look around his neck, how you have that curvature with the dark stripes. I mean that is difficult to do.”

Many of this group’s members are retired and picked up visual art after finishing one or more careers. But some are experienced artists who have been doing it for a long time and do it for a living.

Gary Bergel is one of the newest members. He says critiquing each other’s work isn’t a matter of saying what’s good or what’s bad – it’s about describing what you see.

“We’re looking to build each other up and encourage each other along our visual paths,” Bergel explained, “Not to – even if we feel something is less than successful, there’s a way of talking about it that is still edifying and encouraging, not destructive, not critical in the wrong way, that’s why the word critique is very, very important rather than criticism.”

The founder of the crit group – Doug Kinnett – is an expressionist painter who likes to use a lot of color. He’s also a retired art teacher with a doctorate in Art Education. After retiring, he longed for something to keep his art education background alive.

He says he started the crit group because artists don’t have a lot of support.

“You know, there are lots of people that get art degrees, and then because life hits them because they graduate from school, sort of like diving into an empty swimming pool, and you see the real world, you know,” Kinnett explained, “they just have a hard time fitting it in, making it a discipline, doing the kinds of things they always wanted to do, which is to make art.”

The Crit Group’s first exhibit at the Visitor’s Center in Charles Town.

After being around for eight years, the Crit Group put on its first two exhibits together this summer – one in Martinsburg and one in Charles Town.

“What we’re hoping to do through these two exhibits – to encourage more artists to really wake up and realize they have a need to get together, to hang together, and if we could spark more,” Gary Bergel said.

The Crit Group’s founder, Doug Kinnett says every artist of any age should have the opportunity to be in a crit group. He says anyone can start one, but they should be small – no more than a handful of people to get the best outcome.

Kinnett isn’t sure how many other crit groups are in the Eastern Panhandle – he thinks around five – but he hopes there will be many more in the future – ones for all kinds of art.

Two West Virginians Join Artists Across the Globe to Reimagine Hubcaps as Art

Janice Summers-Young is one of two West Virginian artists who were selected for a new exhibit at The Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Winchester, Virginia. The exhibit, called Second Time Around: The Hubcap as Art, features 287 artists from 36 different countries and opened yesterday.

Young lives in the community of Queen Shoals, about a mile from the Elk River, right on the line between Kanawha and Clay Counties. By day, she and her husband Terry work for their construction business. Most weekends they spend hiking, camping, and collecting materials that Young uses in collages that are on display throughout their home.

“I’ve always loved art, and I’ve always done some form of art, and tried to make my whole life a kind of art,” said Young.

When Young and her husband began to build their home, they discovered fossils in the rocks that they dug out of the dirt. So they decided to use the fossilized stones to build the exterior of their home.

“The area had been coal mined quite a bit, some years back. We started building our house here, we started hand-picking our stones from where we had dug here, the excavation, the stones we turned up, and also stones along the creek bank, because they’re rich in fossils. And I also wanted it to look like this house fit here,” said Young.

Young’s art, like her home, also includes objects from nature, from wasp nests that are preserved with porcelain, to pieces of driftwood that are constructed into circular collages, inspired by whirlpools she finds in rivers.

She also finds imaginative ways to incorporate pieces of trash that other people dump in the woods, like using scrap wire to shape into trees.

Her work drew the attention of Pennsylvania artist Ken Marquis, founder of the Landfill Arts Project. He invited Young to submit a piece of art for a new exhibit, which opened on September 7^th. Over 1,000 artists from around the world were given a hubcap. Each of them repurposed their hubcap in their own way. Young was one of a few hundred artists whose piece was selected for the exhibit.

“When I got the hubcap, the first thing that entered my mind was the driftwood piece, inside the hubcap. I’ve seen so many hubcaps in the river. And I’ve watched them pop off the hill and roll down into the river.

And there’s swirlholes where the whirlpools land, and they’re circular. And they’ll have little bits of wood or stones collect inside of them, said Young.”

The Landfill Arts Project organized the exhibit to help encourage the public to think creatively about re-purposing old materials. What one person might consider trash, artists like Janice Young see as materials that can be used to create.

Painting of an owl, by Janice Summers-Young

“I thought it was a really really neat project that’s gonna have that many people from all around participating in something that I’m passionate about. You know, just not wasting so much and trying to reuse as much as possible. No, we can’t all be environmental saints, but any little thing that we can do all adds up eventually,” said Young.

Young says she doesn’t consider herself an environmentalist. But as a West Virginian artist, she does feels inspired by the delicate beauty of the mountains and the rivers. Often, it’s a beauty that she thinks is abused.

When she sees trash in the river, she picks it up, and tries to turn it into art. Now, that art will be on display in a museum, surrounded by the works of artists from across the world. All 287 of them are tied together by the willingness to create– out of the waste that most people call trash.

Young and another West Virginian artist, Romney Shelton Collins, will both have their hubcap art on display at The Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Winchester, Virginia through next March. The museum is open Tuesday-Sunday, 10-4.