Chagrin Falls Eclectic Talent!

Meet Annette Brag from Just Soap...

I have always like to make crafts and enjoy making soaps as a hobby. I have been making soaps for about a year now. 

This is my first Avant-Garde show and I am looking forward to it! I like learning new things - it challenges me and I enjoy the unlimited blending of colors, scents and shapes when it comes to making soap. 

For some reason I have always wanted to learn to make soap. I have made my own laundry detergent for years and thought it would be fun to make my own hand soap as well.

I'm a Libra - apparently it's a requirement to be artistic and creative for your entire life! lol. 

You can view more of my work at - https://www.facebook.com/annettebragg2016/

Meet Cindy Bloyd from Percy Homestead...

We didn’t foresee our love for honeybees and beekeeping. A few years ago, our son recommended we get some bees. After some long thought and a garden that was suffering from lack of pollination, we decided to give it a try. This opened a world of fascination, learning and challenge! We also have learned that there is a wonderful fellowship of beekeepers that meet regularly and seriously strive to help each other be successful. In addition, we have discovered an amazing excitement and appreciation in the public for honeybees and the products they produce. We love our bees, and love seeing people smile just talking about them and how much they love honey!

Our apiary at Percy Homestead continues to grow as we endeavor to raise healthy and productive colonies that can explore the fruitful landscape around us in Geauga County, Ohio. Honeybees are nothing short of amazing! We love to talk about them and spend time with them. Is it weird that we have two lawn chairs in the bee yard where we sit and sip some honey wine (mead) and just watch our bees work, while we talk about bees? If so, we are weird!

We have been in the business for seven years, but this is actually our first year participating in Avant-Garde Art & Craft Shows. 

So often, a comment from a customer sends me on a journey of creating the product they are looking for. Our son had a hive and we were fascinated and decided to start our own 2 colony apiary.  We now have 25 hives and are looking to expand again this year.

Meet Lynne Provance from Provances Pieces...

Lynne Provance, from Bristolville, Ohio, has been an international stained-glass artist since 2005. She has working studios in both Ohio (USA) and Prince Edward Island (Canada) [PEI] and employs exclusively the foiling method (Tiffany style). Window paneled stained glass art became a favorite art medium in which to express

one of her artistic abilities. 

She is fascinated by how the light is reflected through the different colors, textures, and opacities of the glass. Light is her canvas. She enjoys both designing and constructing original art pieces & she finds “painting” with the colored glass interesting and challenging.

She provides collaborations in both designing and constructing specialized orders, repair/restoration work, stained glass art classes and "hands on" workshops, offers her patterns for purchase, and showcases her art for sale in select art shows, galleries & festivals in the USA and PEI. 

Her work can be viewed on her Facebook Page: Lynne Badger Provance.

Meet Gayle Hammer from Whimsical Wire Gifts...

I have always been creative myself and have loved to purchase colorful artsy products. I just recently decided this past September to become an entrepreneur out of my own need. 

As a high school physics teacher, I was always putting my glasses down somewhere, or placing them on top of my head, and the kids in my class were always helping to find them for me. I hunted online for something colorful, handmade and fun to use as an eyeglass strap but found nothing out there. 

After recently retiring, I decided to be creative and design my own whimsical, one-of-a-kind, colorful aluminum wire eyeglass chains so that I never misplace my reading glasses or sunglasses again! 

Based on suggestions of customers at my first Avant-Garde show in December, I have also created lanyard chains, necklaces, and earrings to match the colors and designs of many of the eyeglass chains that you see at my booth and on my Etsy site(etsy.com/shop/WhimsicalWireGifts). 

I really look forward to watching my business grow and to expand my products based on the needs of my customers. 

I hope you find a design that represents your personality and enjoy wearing your purchase as much as I loved making it for you.

Meet Marianne Carroll from M|C Pottery Studio...

I am a ceramic artist in Chagrin Falls inspired by Nature and its beauty. I've been in the business for 5 years. This is my first time participating in the Avant-Garde Art & Craft Shows. 

I create art to connect to a deeper purpose, I connect with creativity as a joyful experience and appreciate the form and function of nature in ceramic art. I graduated from CCAD with a degree in fine art oil painting, but always wanted to explore ceramics.

As a child,  I would always turn to art as an important process in my life. I love the act of playing with clay. I write down a lot of ideas, set goals for production and just go for it.

I recently built a ceramic studio on my property in Chagrin Falls to have a better space to create. I look forward to launching a website where I can focus on shipping my work all over the county.

The message behind my work is that beauty is everywhere!

Meet Jen Ertle from Honeybee Hobby...

My name is Jen and I am a nurse by trade; I currently work part time as a nurse educator and I also have two little ones at home! My husband recognized that I needed a little get away/a hobby so he got me a Cricut a little over a year ago and I have been creating ever since! 

I have been working on my items for a little over a year. I started out making ornaments and now I don’t make those at all! I have transitioned to wooden gift tags (which I love creating and making!), wooden wine charms for all four seasons, and now small felt flower pots to go with little memory jars and journals- the perfect gift for anyone!

This will be my first Avant-Garde show! When I feel stressed, I work on this hobby. It helps me calm my mind and focus on something. It also gives me a quick getaway from the busy hustle and bustle of family life.

I got into this because I needed a hobby/something to do :)

I worked through many different phases of what I wanted to create! I actually found the gift tags by accident when trying to create ornaments and decided it would be cool to create these gift tags. The best part about them is that you can write on the back- no need for searching endlessly for a card anymore and they are perfect for any occasion.

I tend to have ideas here and there; I look up inspiration and images and work to create things I would use and what I think others can use. I also love that the things I make are different from what most people make. 

In five years, I hope I'm continuing to create crafts and enjoy this hobby. I would love to continue sharing my craft with others!

I love using my crafting/creating to work through stressful situations. I feel that mental health is incredibly important yet often stigmatized in the world today. That is one of the reasons I created my gift baskets- a great little gift idea which includes a handmade journal with fun stickers to help people keep track of whatever they want (gratitude, vacations, baby’s milestones, new home ideas, etc.) while having a little flower pot to brighten their day, and the tiny memory jars can be used to write down memories and pull them back out during stressful times. I like to think of it as a mood booster pack! Nothing beats paper and pen and a little fun color :) 

2025 Chagrin Falls Spring Avant-Garde Art & Craft Show

Saturday, April 12, 2025

10:00am-4:00pm

Sun Valley

10000 Edwards Lane

Chagrin Falls, OH 44023

For more information, contact Becki Silverstein, Event Coordinator at Becki@ag-shows.com

Visit us on:

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Spring into Chagrin Falls Next Weekend!

Meet Chelsey Farnum from Studiowurk...

I’m an art educator and interdisciplinary artist who loves to experiment and transform materials, as well as find the humor in things. I’m a massive goofball and love to laugh and spend time with friends. I’m also a major animal lover. Part of my art business is painting custom pet portraits. My husband and I moved to Cleveland last September from Denver, Colorado.

My journey as an artist has been a bit of a balancing act. During my last three years of teaching art in public school, I taught half-time and built my business half-time. Now, in year four, it’s my first full-time year, and it feels both energizing and overwhelming. The mysteries of running a business still befuddle me!

This will be my first Avant-Garde show, and I couldn’t be more excited to share my work with the community. Observing the world around me or experimenting usually inspires me to create. An idea for a new piece often comes from either something I’ve seen or just messing around with materials. I’ve found that having a loose idea of what something should look like really works for me—it’s a play between my idea and the limitations of the materials I’m using, and I really like that balance.

I’ve always loved making things—drawing, sculpting, and more. I guess I was lucky enough to go to art school and learn a wide range of methods and techniques. My drawing ability actually got me some (rare) positive attention from my peers at school. There was somewhat of a blackmarket trade of goods in elementary school, and drawings of Garfield in the '90s served as valuable currency!

When I get an idea I really like, I try to make at least three of it, exploring the different possibilities within the idea. Sometimes that will lead me off on a tangent if I discover something unique. When I don’t have commissions in the queue or anything to work on, I love experimenting with the random things I hoard in my studio—an elementary art teacher habit! I really love trying to make my own tools or using materials in an unconventional way.

In five years, I’d love to see myself expanding my commission work to some bigger projects, like art installations or mural painting. I’d also love to expand the portrait portion of my business into people, not just pets.

Often, there’s something a bit irreverent or cheeky under the surface—or right in your face—about my work. My art is so varied in terms of medium and method that if there’s any unifying thread, that would be the one.

Meet Antoinette from Ace N Spades...

Ace N Spades is a mother and daughter owned company that makes and sells hard candy edibles. We have been in operation since April 2023.

This will be our first Avant-Garde show, and we are so excited to share our creations with the community. Giving back to the community by providing candy that can help with pain, sleep, and anxiety as well as tastes good is our inspiration to continue to make more.

The journey started when my mom was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, which caused her to have trouble sleeping and pain. She took medications, but nothing helped her. I was tired of seeing her suffer, so I started making candy for her. I discovered my talent by diving right in and making candy over and over again until we got it right.

Our creative process is pretty straightforward. We mix everything together, let it boil, then put it in trays for it to sit for 30 minutes. After that, we break them out, bag, and label.

In five years, I see us having our own kitchen and warehouse to make the candy and ship it out. Our message is that edibles are not just gummies, and hard candy tastes and works so much better.

Meet Nicole Anderson from Cole's Candles...

My name is Nicole, and I was born and raised in Cleveland with my mom, my dad, my grandma, and my two sisters. We were a very active household, bouncing around from swim practices to dance classes, basketball, softball, tennis, and so much more. I graduated from Kent State University with a Bachelor's Degree in Early Childhood Education. Aside from Cole's Candles, I work at the Cleveland Clinic downtown full time within Imaging.

What I enjoy doing in my downtime, aside from candle making, would be that I love to bake and cook new recipes, take nature walks, have movie nights with the family, and go to trivia nights weekly with my friends.

I started candle making back in the Summer of 2023 when I took a single class with my cousins. I really had a great time during the session, and what I had learned in that class stuck with me, and I quickly fell in love with it! A few months went by, and I decided to take what I had learned to make homemade gifts for my friends, my family, and my co-workers for the holidays. I had different holiday scents that I thought would work well for making candles, but based on a questionnaire I created and the answers that I received, I was able to create a scented blend for that specific individual so their gift was custom made and truly designed just for them.

After the holidays in January 2024, I received a lot of positive feedback from the people that I had gifted my candles to. I was so proud that I was able to create something homemade that really made people happy. One month later, I decided to take a leap of faith and create my own individual candle-making business and have worked at a few farmer's markets and craft fairs in the Summer and Winter of 2024.

This will actually be my first Avant-Garde Art and Craft Show, so I feel truly honored to be able to participate with so many talented crafters! I hope that this show will be the first of many that I will be able to participate in the future.

What inspires me the most is having the creative freedom to bring scents together into beautiful blends that bring people joy. Another unique thing about candle making is that there is not just one candle scent that I have made that people tend to favor more than the other scents. Everybody's sense of smell is different, and so it is nice to see that there truly is a scent out there for everyone!

Funny enough, I usually find my inspiration for making new scents in two ways. The first way is by walking through the grocery store and seeing items that I think would mix well into my candles. Another way I get inspired is from dreams that I have each night. I will dream about different ingredients, get the scent profile in my dreams, then I will wake up and immediately write it down in my journal so that I don't forget.

In the next five years, I see my business expanding, whether across the country or across the globe. I would love to be able to have Cole's Candles become my full-time work and to be able to share with the world. I would like for anyone to have a chance to find the right candles for themselves.

At Cole's Candles, our mission is to spread a little kindness. It is my wish that my candles help to send a little faith, hope, and love to you and to the ones you cherish. I genuinely believe that all we need to bring positivity to the world is to spread a little kindness.

Meet Keisha Berkley from F.O.C.U.S... 

My name is Keisha Berkley. I was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. I graduated from Cleveland State University, and I currently have my own online business, which consists of me helping consumers reach their health, beauty, and fitness goals. One of my many passions is art. I love to create different paintings and drawings based off real-life people, situations, and sceneries.

I have been creating art since I was a child. As a child, I would read a lot of books, mostly comic books. I started to draw cartoons that I saw in the comic books and tried to recreate them until I got it right. I grew up in a rough household, dealing with fighting parents, police being at my house almost every night, and living in a rough neighborhood. It was hard growing up, always feeling alone and unseen. The only thing I had was a pencil and some paper. I started drawing stick figures and cartoons, then soon started to create bigger images over the years.

This will be my first Avant-Garde Art & Craft Show, and I am so excited to be a part of it! Things that I’ve been through in the past are my inspiration to create art. Also, living life, going outside, looking at nature—things such as trees, the sky, and the sunset—inspire me as well.

My creative process is simple. I typically would put on an audio or turn on my TV, then clear my mind. Sometimes I think of different persons, places, things, or nature to paint or draw. I search different things up for ideas or paint an object that might be in my household.

In 5 years, I see my business thriving. I see myself having a large fan base and customer base for my art. I also believe I will be able to have paintings in art galleries, and some will be able to be auctioned off for large amounts of money.

The messages that I want others to understand about my work are that anyone can start or create art. Also, that they can do anything they set their mind to.

2025 Chagrin Falls Spring Avant-Garde Art & Craft Show

Saturday, April 12, 2025

10:00am-4:00pm

Sun Valley

10000 Edwards Lane

Chagrin Falls, OH 44023

For more information, contact Becki Silverstein, Event Coordinator at Becki@ag-shows.com

Visit us on:

FACEBOOK

TWITTER

PINTEREST

LINKEDIN

It's Show Week!

Meet Maddie Burland from Noodle Works...

I am currently a sophomore at Bowling Green State University studying art education. I grew up in Ohio, just outside of Cleveland, with my mom, dad, younger brother, younger sister, and our dogs, Olive, Bob, and Kaiser. My favorite art medium is ceramics, but I also enjoy drawing and photography. Some of my hobbies are reading, writing, and more recently, knitting.

I’ve always loved making art and doing art projects, so I’d say I’ve been an artist pretty much forever, but I got really into ceramics and photography in high school, and I really only started drawing a lot this past summer. I’ve also only just started attending art shows, though I’ve participated in school art shows before. This will be my 2nd Avant-Garde Craft Show. I decided to start applying to and selling art at these shows because I already make a ton of art on my own and for my classes, and since I am a poor college student, I thought it might be nice to make some extra money and get some exposure as a new artist. 

I wouldn’t say that I discovered a talent for art, I’ve just always known that I like art and that I’m good at it. I took art classes all throughout high school and decided to pursue a career in art education because of how much art and creating mean to me. That being said, I also wouldn’t say that any one thing inspires me to create because the things I create are inspired by many things. If anything, I would say that I create because I simply can’t not make art. Even when I find myself in a bit of a rut I always have some ideas floating around, and can always find something to draw or make. 

I think haphazard is a good word to describe my creative process. I’m never quite sure when I’ll have ideas for drawings, or when I’ll have the time and energy to actually draw them since I’m usually pretty busy with classes. When I do have time and ideas, the process for my drawings usually goes through the steps of having the idea, drawing sketches or a sketch with notes and possible adjustments, drawing the final copy on larger paper in pencil, and then adding color to the final copy, usually with markers. When I do ceramics, the process is even more involved, because many ceramics pieces require multiple sketches, since ceramics is a 3D medium, and I don’t make many coffee mugs. 

In 5 years, I hope to be an art teacher, in whatever school and district that will take me. But in terms of selling my art, the plan is pretty much to keep doing what I’ve started doing this past year, drawing and making art as much as I can, and applying to and attending shows whenever I can. I wouldn’t say there’s any real message in my work, like “stop pollution” or that sort of thing. The things I create are simply a reflection of me and how I see the world, and my attempt to capture what I see in some physical form

Meet Karyl Lee from One Row to Hoe...

I am a retired former vegetarian chef from Charleston, SC who lives in Oberlin, OH. I moved here in 2008, and since have fallen for the local art scene and opportunities for visual representation. I work in water media and with beads and ceramics, and have illustrated a children's book. I have been a working artist for more than 50 years, and a beaded jewelry maker for a decade and this will be my first Avant-Garde Show!

I discovered my talent when I was encouraged as a child by my father to explore color and media and have never stopped. Then, living in Oberlin where there is a great bead supply store, I saw a lot of nifty stuff and wanted to make my own. I love colors, textures, and shapes, and enjoy making unusual things happen in different media. Usually, I sit with a tiny pen or pencil sketch and consider what I want the ultimate illustration to look like, or else I pick up a ceramic piece and just apply color! sometimes I find a focal bead that makes me want to string things with it that will showcase just that one piece.

As for the future, I think I might be retired for good as a business but who knows, maybe the second book I am working on illustrating might lead to other related work. My main message is that art should be accessible and enjoyable in a multitude of ways. Everyone can find something creative to express themselves with or through and I hope my multi-medium approach stimulates that.

Meet Lynn Pelka of Lynn Patricia Designs…

Creating my handbags and accessories brings me much joy.  I love working with the fabrics and textures making a classy looking handbag that may be just right for you. We, as women, look for a handbag that is specific to our needs whether it has pockets, zipper closer a certain kind of strap/handle. I create my handbags with a full front pocket to hold all your important items at your fingertips with soft webbing handled for a comfortable fit. I also offer handmade zipper pouches, mini wallets, and lip balm totes as well as special character handbags for the little girl in your life.

Even though I’ve been sewing since childhood, my business began when I launched an Etsy store 2011 listing, at that time, my very colorful handbags, tea bag wallets, and water bottle totes. With experience over the years, my design has settled down to a more classic handbag style in neutral colors.  Things have blossomed and I am now established both at indoor and outdoor shows. It is always a pleasure meeting and chatting with those who stop at my booth.

The future looks bright with the hopes to one day retire from my day job as an office manager at a dental practice and participate in as many shows as possible. I’ve found the Avant-Garde shows to be expertly done with vendors who produce beautiful and interesting items making for an enjoyable shopping experience. So hope you enjoy your day at the show and be sure to stop by and introduce yourself as one who has read this blog.

                                              

2019 West Geauga Spring Avant-Garde Art & Craft Show

Date: Sunday, March 17, 2019

 Time: 8:00am-3:00pm

West Geauga High School

13401 Chillicothe Road

Chesterland, OH 44026

For more information, contact Becki Silverstein, Event Coordinator at Becki@ag-shows.com

Visit us on:

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