Contributed by Holly Knott / Skaneateles Artisans

Artist Opening: Skaneateles Artisans, 11 Fennell St., Skaneateles. First Friday, 8/1, 6:00 – 9:00pm. Skaneateles Artisans is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibit featuring artists Holly Knott (contemporary art quilts) and Liz and Rich Micho (stained glass). Eclectic acoustic music by Bone and Doolittle; refreshments. Through 8/31. The gallery offers off-street parking and accepts major credit cards. Visit their website at www.skaneatelesartisans.com. For more information, call 315-685-8580.

Liz and Rich Micho
Stained glass

Liz and Rich Micho of Marietta specialize in a wide variety of stained glass artwork, ranging from large, intricate window panels with a traditional feel, to smaller suncatchers of all subject matter. One of their specialties that they are well-known for is their colorful stained glass “garden art.”

Garden art is created by selecting special pieces of stained glass, including round nuggets, agates (sliced stones), bevels, and even antique depression glass, placed in a mosaic fashion surrounded by a wrought iron garden stake. Each piece of glass for ‘garden art’ is hand cut, and then hand foiled and hand soldered. The solder is then coated with a black patina. You’ll find very abstract, free-form colorful designs in these outdoor ornaments, as well as more refined styles.

Liz and Rich take great pride that they can offer a piece of art that is truly one of a kind. They feel they are best presented in natural surroundings, such as a garden, where they are winter hardy and will add a burst of color to our very white and gray snowy upstate NY winters, but they have also found that many of their patrons choose an indoor or patio setting. Anywhere the light shines through them is a perfect location. Each piece has a unique name which adds to their enjoyment while creating them.

Free-standing stained glass used as an element of garden design is a novel idea which they have not encountered elsewhere. Liz and Rich’s hope is that they bring beauty and a touch of whimsy to your home or garden!

Holly Knott
Contemporary art quilts, handbags and scarves

Holly Knott’s contemporary art quilts, handbags and scarves are featured at Skaneateles Artisans this month. Holly works in a wide variety of media, including fabric, photography, watercolors, acrylics, hand-painted furniture and website design. Inspiration for her artwork comes from her surroundings, including her love of colonial and victorian architecture, cityscapes, rural landscapes, historical sites, cottage gardens, nature, and the enchantment of nearby riverside and lakeside towns.

Many of her pieces are inspired by the Finger Lakes – small framed sunset scenes and landscapes using hand-dyed fabric are a specialty of hers, as well as larger designs that highlight the beauty of our rural farmland. Her art allows her to record some spectacular part of life, such as a stunning sunset, the curvy lines of a closeup of a leaf, the dappled light in tree leaves, lavender-blue shadows on snow, peeling paint on a rusty red barn, architectural ornaments on old city buildings, colorful reflections in glass, or the pattern created by ripples of water lapping at a shoreline. She considers art quilting to be a method of “creating paintings with a fabric palette.” The wide variety of “painterly” fabrics available, such as the batiks and hand-dyed, provides her with a wonderful palette. You can create layers of color and add sparks of light just as you would with paint. There’s a challenge in creating a piece of art with only commercially available fabrics, but if she can’t find fabric to fit her needs, she will paint or dye her own. After the initial design is completed, she incorporates thread work using a variety of colored threads to add another layer of color, texture and design.

Holly’s contemporary art quilts have won awards, and her work is exhibited in juried art shows, quilt shows and galleries nationwide. Her work has appeared in several publications, including on the cover of the internationally distributed Quilting Arts magazine (Summer 2005), and with two articles that she wrote for Quilting Arts magazine (Summer 2005 and Spring 2007), in the 2007 Syracuse Cultural Workers Women Artist’s Datebook, in the International Quilt Festival’s 2004 Chicago show brochure, and on the cover of St. John’s University alumni brochure, Conversatio, 2003. Central New York’s very own Summer 2007 issue of Life in the Finger Lakes magazine featured her artwork in their “Off the Easel” section.

Holly is also the author of “Quilted Garden Delights,” published by C&T Publishing in Spring 2008. Co-authored with her mother Diane Knott, a watercolor painter, 8 of Diane’s paintings have been recreated as quilts by Holly.

She is a member of Studio Art Quilt Associates, and lives with her husband, Paul, and their cats on a small “farmette” in rural Marcellus, NY, complete with pond and wildlife to inspire.

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