10 minute read
Artisans
Artisans By Megan M. Seckman | Photos by Melissa Donald
All five of these female artisans
didn’t set out to be artists. Art
found them. From Bible school and bad marriages to an intercontinental immigration, the artists living inside these medical students, counselors, or communications directors stayed silent. Now, these artisans — a watercolorist, a baker, an abstract painter, a hyperrealist illustrator, and a winemaker — are living their best lives, creating things. Art has brought them to life.
Drawing a New Life | Sravya Manohar
Don’t be fooled. Watching one of Sravya Manohar’s time-lapse drawing videos may give you the overzealous notion that if you pick up a graphic pencil, you may be able to draw just like her. She makes it look so easy from her YouTube channel, but what condenses to a three-minute video, in actuality took her seven to eleven hours.
Sravya’s hyper-realism is something of a miracle. Her graphite and colored pencil drawings play tricks on your eyes. Is this a photo? No, someone actually drew that!
Ever since immigrating to the U.S. from India six months ago, Sravya, 31, has poured herself into her drawings. In India, she worked full-time as an IT employee and put her craft on the back-burner. But since relocating, she has pursued her craft full-time. She has not only sold her drawings through her Instagram page but is aiming to be featured in a gallery in the near future.
“My husband is my biggest motivator. He will say to me, ‘Why are you idle?’ very confidently when I am not drawing. He is the reason behind my art,” Sravya says.
There is nothing that Sravya won’t attempt: portraits of different sizes, pets, still lifes, celebrities, etc. “I try to draw everything and don’t stick to a particular genre. I am inspired by challenging pieces.” Challenging pieces like a shirtless boy drenched in water from a rain bucket or a newborn baby curled in the arch of his parents’ hands. These drawings, so detailed and realistic you feel like you could reach out and touch them, are also used in her YouTube videos to teach others how to draw with precision. “I keep getting inspired. I want to reach as many people as I can.”
A Grape Adventure | Faith Hatcher
Meet Faith Hatcher, winemaker and champion of women.
Faith’s path to the artisan craft of winemaking began in college where she studied biology and chemistry, prerequisites for her future as a physician. While registering for classes for the upcoming semester, Faith got a gut feeling that becoming a doctor was not her destiny. She decided not to register for courses that semester and to pursue, instead, her passion: wine.
“I had always worked at wineries while in college and loved wine. I know it is cliche — everybody loves wine. But I wanted to learn the chemistry side; I was interested in how it was made,” Faith says. This burning curiosity led Faith to ask for an internship at the Southern Indiana winery where she was working at the time.
“My first week as an intern was during the harvest, which is the craziest time of the year. You work 12- to 14-hour days, seven days a week. The work is mentally and physically exhausting — that was my intro. But when you create, all the hard work is worth it in the end. The final product is so rewarding. I got hooked on that feeling of creating a tangible product that people love.”
Faith soon relocated to Oregon, where she worked at an organic winery, but eventually made her way back to Indiana to Huber’s Orchard & Winery, where she is the only female winemaker on staff. Women make up only a fraction of the industry, so Faith has now dedicated herself to forming a support system for other women in the field.
“I’ve had to do a lot of work to get my team to treat me like an equal. I’ve had to have some serious conversations about the definition of mansplaining. No one acknowledges the dark undertones of the industry. I wondered how many women felt alone like I did, so I started a group, Women Winemakers of the Midwest, to form some connections.”
Now, 17 members strong, Faith’s cohort aims for advocacy and female empowerment in the wine industry. Along with her activism, she also is headed back to the University of Kentucky this semester to complete a degree in winemaking and distillation.
Cheers to that.
Energetic Art | Tammie Demessie “I don’t usually have a plan when I begin a piece, I just know color and use color as expression.”
Tammie Demessie hadn’t painted for 21 years when her sister asked for a favor. She wanted an original painting as a gift, but what Tammie didn’t realize was that her sister was giving the gift of art back to her, one brushstroke at a time.
Tammie had gone to Bible school instead of pursuing art after she graduated from high school in Gary, Indiana. She later found herself in a bad marriage that squelched her artistic side. But once her sister planted the seed of the painting, Tammie finally fell in love.
“When I first started painting, I was not confident. I couldn’t do still lifes or portraits, so I started playing around with abstract art. I didn’t really know anything about abstract art or the art world, but I did know that when I painted, I could focus my energy. I get lost in it. I put on my music and light my candles and things just happen,” Tammie explains about how her craft helps her adult ADHD.
Tammie has now painted almost daily for eight years. “I don’t usually have a plan when I begin a piece, I just know color and use color as expression. I am not schooled in art, so I am not bound by others’ influences. I have my own style and do what I like to do without any rules.”
Her giant abstract paintings have been featured in Norton’s Cancer Institute, E&S Gallery, and at Vincenzo’s restaurant. She met Vincenzo after missing the bus outside his restaurant one day, and this chance encounter helped Tammie fulfill her dream of being featured at a bonafide art opening, complete with wine and cheese.
Painting is her passion, and color, Tammie says, is an expression of life. “There is no box you can put it in.”
Beautiful Tastes | Courtney Yopp Norris
From the palette to the palate, Courtney Yopp Norris’ creations are multi-sensory. Not only is her art appealing to the eye, it also tantalizes the nose, and is meant to be relished on the tongue. You see, Courtney is a cookie artist, and her business, The Pocket Bakery, which she started in 2018, marries her creative talents in the fields of baking, art, and business.
Courtney has always considered herself creative but never dreamed of turning cookie art into a thriving business. However, after taking a cookie decorating class with Preston Fouts of Sweet June Bakery, she started posting a few of her creations on social media. Within a month, she had so many requests for cookies that she realized she might just be on to something.
“In high school I took an aptitude test, and it said I should be a mechanic or carpenter. I thought, ‘What?!’ at the time, but now I get it. I make things. I’ve always loved to bake, and I have a background in communications [she previously was a press secretary for a senator], so this business just makes sense.”
From Derby dresses to pets to tiered cakes, The Pocket Bakery specializes in beautiful and delicious works of art. “My cookies aren’t just cute, they actually taste spectacular. I use lemon zest in the batter, and they aren’t overly sweet; they are balanced between sweet and tart. When you bite into this super-cute cookie, you aren’t disappointed. People send me pictures of their cookies a year later. They don’t eat them because they say they’re too pretty. No! They are meant to be eaten. You won’t regret it. That’s what pictures are for!”
The Details of Nature | Cathy Hillegas
There is magic in Cathy Hillegas’ trees. A play of light and shadows gives a sycamore divinity. In her painting “Rise Up,” the vantage point from the lowly ground makes noble the tree’s massive height as it stretches upward toward the sky, its leaves and bark bathed in holy white light.
This piece took Cathy over 200 hours to complete and secured her a spot in the most recent National Watercolor Society show in California. Like many of Cathy’s watercolors, it represents her draw toward finding the dramatic lighting, bright colors, and shadows in nature.
“I like to paint things in nature that might go unnoticed. I look for little things and blow them up big, like a fern uncurling its fronds in the sun or a leaf laying on ground,” Cathy says. Because her watercolors take so many hours, she likes to work from a photograph and looks for the way light can be captured on film before putting it to paper. “The thing about watercolors,” she explains, “is that you don’t use white paint. The white is the paper and only water can lighten up a color, so it takes a lot of planning.”
In 1993, after her mother bought her a class at Preston Arts Center for her 36th birthday, Cathy said she fell in love with the art form. “I had quit my counseling job when my second child was born, and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I ‘grew up.’ After I took that class, I fell in love. I’ve been obsessed ever since,” Cathy says.
In her near 30-year art career, Cathy has learned to turn her passion into business through art shows (she is currently showing her work at Chestnuts and Pearls gallery in New Albany, Indiana), teaching, and selling her art on websites like Etsy.
At 65, Cathy still struggles to find a “room of her own” in which to paint. “The pandemic has been hard. Most of my students are older than me, so I have had to quit teaching this past year. Finding a quiet space with five people and five cats and dogs in my house has been tricky. The whole year has been stressful for artists. Either you are prolific or stunned; I’d put myself in that last camp.”
