Interview with artists from NY

Drew and Cole get ahead of me!

On our recent trip to the High Peaks Arts and Antiques show, I not only looked into every booth but took a moment to interview some artists I especially liked.
My page interview with an artist was to be video stories on artists in other fields than quilting, but I haven't figured out the whole video thing yet. It came to me, that since I always ask artists the same questions I would just put some of these on the page for now! Here goes...

The artist's company is  Twisted little Things

She made jewelry with wire and beads. She was willing to elongate a bracelet for my, ahem, goddess like frame, but couldn't seem to figure out how to do it. While trying, she told me she gets ideas from watching videos on the internet about technique, which then lead her to come up with designs of her own. Her studio is a mess but she recently invested in lots of compartmentalized boxes and did a total reorganization of her tools/materials.
She said it went against her messy inclinations but she is happy she did it as she can find stuff now.
I just knew with enough plastic boxes one could become organized!!
The real secret seems to be putting things back in their home when done with them, right? 

I usually ask questions like, how do you get your ideas, what gets in your "creative" way, what state is your studio in... when I asked this artist at Taylor Studios what state her studio was in...

she said, New York.          Of course I meant what condition was her studio in!
She said it's usually a mess but more so just before a show.

Most of us feel at least an inkling of discomfort in admitting how messy our workspace stays, but I think it's supposed to be a mess. If it was tidy you wouldn't be engrossed in your creative process! But then I know a person who puts stuff away as she uses it... That would suck the fun out of it for me.

Ms Taylor didn't want her picture taken but allowed me to shoot the little houses that caught my eyes.Please click on the photo to see details.  She makes and sells other art as well. She said ideas come all the time, usually from materials she finds. She got a wood burning tool, which led to making houses.
 We found my husbands woodburning kit from his childhood and it hasn't led to a thing, but then we are all different. Luckily.

The artist from TopoTees always had a love of topography maps and collected them. It was when she discovered a way to digitally copy them, and print them directly onto the shirts that she started this endeavor. They are very unusual and for a map lover like my husband, a cool discovery. It is so much better than a plain old picture of a cartoon moose on a t-shirt.

                                                      
Jonathon Esper, photographer link to website was so open and happy to chat about his travels as he is from the Adirondaks but lives half the time in Iceland. I didn't ask the usual questions, but asked what his favorite photos were, and instead of a droll, "I like them all", his eyes lit up and he went into detail about three of them, the reasons he shot them, and what the area was like. It made him so relate-able.

I think a lot of craft show artists might love to have someone to talk about with their work. What would you like to know about an artist?

 The last artist I interviewed was a stone worker. He doesn't have to worry about a studio as he works outside. He said ideas come to him and he then looks for stone to best implement them. His stone receptacles  were lovely, simple, curvy, smooth, almost Japanese simple in design. The stone itself made such an impact on the whole, the color and texture. All highly polished and almost glowing. He was kind of a silent man type who didn't enjoy discussing his process, more's the pity.
LeeAnna