By Krystal Smalley
ksmalley@wbcowqel.com
The Bucyrus Public Library is typically a home for literature but, for a few weeks, it will house another type of artistic venture. The library is currently hosting an art show in its lower level meeting room.
Artwork by members of the Crawford County Arts Council and other community members are displayed on tables and walls. On display are watercolors, acrylics, photo illustrations, stoneware, quilting, jewelry, woodwork, and mixed media forms by local artists such as Bob and Sandy Laipply, Carol Kable, Mike Hocker, Deb Cameron, Melissa Taylor, Beverly Morgan, and Marcheta Gibson.
“This is a display by the Crawford County Arts Council of our member artists and a few other artists that are likely to join us,” stated member Sandy Laipply. “We wanted the community to see what was available here in Crawford County and encourage other artists or artist-want-to-be’s to come out and join us.”
“We’re all about encouraging and supporting all kinds of art forms,” Laipply added. “Our show today is mostly art that hangs on the wall or sits on the table; but we also want to support music, drama, theater, writing, any of those different culinary arts. There’s all different kinds of arts and so many artists work at home by themselves and nobody knows that they’re an artist. We want people to know.”
Though there are big advantages to living in a small town, one of the disadvantages was the lack of an artistic community.
“We want to bring as much of it as we can here and we want people to know that there’s a lot of culture right here, they just have to look for it,” Laipply said.
Tori Robinson, a local tattoo artist at The Tattoo Factory, had a piece of her work on display. Her piece, “Assimilate,” seemed to make a statement surrounded by watercolors and acrylics. Robinson said she took inspiration from the ability of the borgs on Star Trek to assimilate.
“But, honestly, I hate putting a whole bunch of meaning into anything because art is subjective and it can mean so much to so many different people,” Robinson said. “I don’t want to ruin it. It could be pretty; it could have meaning. . . you never know.”
Robinson had taken a stockyard skull given to her by a friend and “assimilated” it with various other castoff pieces like leather, nuts and bolts, old machine parts, gold leaf paint, copper flashing from roofing, and deer vertebrae. She said that everything came from collected materials she has found over time.
“It’s really nice to have people appreciate different things,” said Robinson, who grew up in Bucyrus and moved back after living in Columbus for a time. “It’s nice to have a whole bunch of different stuff to show people. Art’s not just one thing.”
Robinson doesn’t just focus her artistic abilities in bones and metals, either. She said she jumps around in the types of mediums she wants to work with at any given time.
“It comes in waves,” Robinson said. “I love oil paints. I can be crazy with oil paints for a year, couple of months, something like that, then all of a sudden I want to work with my bones and metal again and then I’ll go crazy on that. Right now I’m on this stint where I’m doing Prisma colored pencil pictures and I want to work with pencils all the time. It changes, it varies. It depends on what idea pops in my head. Artists are flighty.”
Robinson also works as a tattoo artist at The Tattoo Factory on South Sandusky Avenue in Bucyrus.
“We’re just nerdy art people. We just put pictures on skin,” Robinson said about being a tattoo artist. “I’ve done any kind of art you can possibly think of and it (tattooing) is the most stressful form of art that I’ve ever tried. There is no going back, there is no throwing it away and trying it later.”
The art show will at the Bucyrus Public Library will run through Dec. 13 during library hours. Laipply said anyone wishing to see the artwork will have to check in at the desk in the main level of the library as meeting room A/B will be locked.
Monday evening’s reception was sponsored by the Friends of the Library.
The Galion Community Theatre will also be sponsoring an art show featuring works by Crawford County Arts Council members. A variety of mediums will be on display and for sale on Nov. 14, 15, 21, and 22 at 8 p.m. and on Nov. 23 at 2 p.m. during the presentation of A Bad Year for Tomatoes.