Regional artists offer their work for sale

By Denise Dick

Artwork ranged from pottery and paintings to jewelry, photography and beyond.

YOUNGSTOWN — Christopher Leeper of Canfield took brush to canvas as people filed through the Artists of the Mahoning Commons holiday open studio and art sale.

The event, which began Saturday, continues from noon to 5 p.m. today and next Saturday at the Ward Bakery Building, Mahoning Avenue.

Artists from throughout the region had their work on display and for sale, from handcrafted jewelry to paintings, photography, ceramics, pottery and wood-framed mirrors.

Leeper, who says he’s best known for his watercolor pieces, was painting a fall woodscape in acrylic. He worked from a photograph he took in Mill Creek Park.

He mostly works from his own photos although he occasionally paints on site. “I have a camera in my car all the time,” he said.

Sometimes scenes strike him, and he stops to take a photograph.

Or, when Mother Nature affords a beautiful day, Leeper takes a half-day off and goes driving in search of a scene.

Though he’s been painting his whole life, he started working at it full time about four years ago.

Leeper’s work ranges from watercolor and acrylic to oil painting.

“I work using the light, morning and evening,” he said.

Some paintings are of area neighborhoods — the West Side, Lowellville, Salem — but most are wood scenes.

Jim Cliff, also of Canfield, paints with acrylic on wood. Several 6-inch-by-6-inch pieces hung together on a wall inside the Mahoning Commons building. He works on larger pieces, too.

Cliff, who also is an art teacher at Boardman High School, began painting on canvas but chose to move to wood panels, in part, because of the three-dimensional opportunities they afford.

Pat Crowe of Youngstown makes mirrors framed in all varieties of local hardwoods that he buys as cutoffs from Amish sawmills.

He works in oak, beech, sycamore, elm, cherry, maple, bass wood, ash, hickory and big tooth aspen, though he lists sycamore and oak as his favorites.

Some pieces are square, some rectangle, some straight up and down, some off-center, but each is one of a kind. Crowe selects each wood section deliberately and directs its cutting to achieve a particular look.

He graduated from Youngstown State University with a bachelor of fine arts degree in sculpture and worked in cabinet making before developing his latest art skill about four or five years ago.

A friend asked for his help in loading firewood near Pulaski, Pa. As he was loading the logs, he noticed their beauty.

“I wanted to know more about it, to do something with it,” Crowe said. “I thought it could be something more valuable that firewood.”

Nea Bristol of the city’s North Side specializes in two types of photography. One is made up of art shots influenced by her dreams, and she characterizes them as very dark: a doll’s head, painted animal skull.

She says she’s not trying to convey a particular message in her art photography.

She hopes her work makes people think.

Her other artwork includes portraits of alternative models such as those with a Gothic look.

Sometimes the subjects of those portraits tell Bristol how they want the photo to look. Other times, she uses her own imagination and creativity.

denise_dick@vindy.com