Westerville certainly has its share of visual artists, and if you know where to look, you can see their work adorning walls and halls at a number of locations throughout town.
That number may grow as the Westerville Art League seeks new sites for the display of its members’ work. Its members make a low-key effort to find more places, especially businesses, to add to their venue list.
Though they’d love to have more such venues, the members are enthused that they have places to show their
work and occasionally sell it.
One obvious public place on the list is the Westerville Community Center. League members periodically exhibit their work in the hallway in the public meeting and activity wing.
The Westerville Electric Division office also welcomes periodic exhibits, which normally run two or three months. A league exhibit in the clubhouse at Little Turtle Golf Club on Westerville’s fringes ended in February, but another is expected to go up later in the year.
One of the most prominent sites for local artwork is Java Central in Uptown. The coffee shop’s gallery, which hosts work by league members and nonmembers alike, sells art and charges a commission. It draws on its status as a gathering place in an atmosphere that promotes various art forms in a relaxing atmosphere – it also hosts live music each Saturday – to bring in an audience for artists’ work.
Another location with walls covered in local artwork is Crimson & Clover Hair Salon at the edge of Uptown. The owners have displayed and sold art for several years without charging a fee.
“I’ve sold 52 pieces in eight years, and I haven’t made a dime,” says co-owner Cindy Ayotte.
Ayotte has readily agreed to free a wall space specifically for art in the salon’s long-standing effort to promote local artists. The salon’s rotating exhibits have become popular among its customers and some who just want to look.
League President John Cameron has exhibited in the salon and sold three of his watercolors before he was even a league member. Ayotte has been very generous about helping local artists, says Cameron, who started painting in retirement and joined the organization “as a nice extension of (his) personal interest.”
Steve Hill – like Came
ron, a newcomer to the league – heads the public places effort. He says he’s always on the lookout for businesses that might have a legitimate spot for art displays, but he doesn’t aggressively solicit participation. He doesn’t broach the exhibit idea with an owner or manager unless he sees the business has a place that conceivably would work.
“Chances for an impulse purchase (from a business display) are not great,” he says. “But artists want exposure. … (The League’s exhibits) are more of a public service and a chance for us to display our work.”
Hill is a self-employed writer and creative director who bases his oil paintings on photographs he has taken of people and real-life scenes, many in the New York City area where he once lived and often visits.
The members do five or six public places showings a year, he says, each featuring a few artists, such as Lynn Carty, a landscaping artist who started painting after she retired a decade ago.
The league’s most noticeable current showing is at the Westerville Public Library, which hosts a month-long league exhibition each May. Cameron, Hill and Carty are among the 25 to 30 members who will each display several paintings, all for sale.
Duane St. Clair is a contributing editor. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
Lab Work
By Garth Bishop
Among the artists with paintings on display at Crimson & Clover is a Westerville resident whose work might look familiar to fans of Marley & Me.
Richard Cowdrey, a painter who works almost entirely with acrylics, has also done the illustrations for several books by John Grogan, author of Marley & Me and a string of children’s books about and inspired by the yellow Labrador retriever.
“HarperCollins, when they bought the rights to Marley from John Grogan, … went in search of the perfect illustrator for the series,” Cowdrey says. “They chose me and a couple of other people based on our styles, but when they talked to me and found out that I have a yellow Lab – his name’s Murphy – it was just perfect synergy.”
The artist has been painting for about 30 years, including 12 in an illustration studio Uptown. His interest in art goes all the way back to his childhood.
“I was always the kid getting in trouble in school for drawing,” Cowdrey says.
Cowdrey is now illustrating the Legend series, put out by Christian book publisher Zondervan.
The Cincinnati native and Columbus College of Art and Design graduate has lived in Westerville about 30 years. He and his wife, Cindy, have four grown children.
Garth Bishop is editor of Westerville Magazine. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
Visit http://www.cityscenecolumbus.com/Work-in-Progress/ to read about another Westerville artist, Steven Walker, who is providing paintings for the winners of the 2014 Governor's Awards for the Arts in Ohio.
