Featuring:

Michelle Walker – Michelle Walker is a Salida, Colorado-based fiber artist and educator focused on the exploration and disruption of the socially constructed barrier between fine art and craft – in practice, observation, and collection.

Michelle’s education in the creative fields began at a young age with painting and sewing, followed by study under award-winning coastal and landscape artist, Rick Delanty, and, post-university, continued experimentation in as many fields as possible, including printmaking, graphic design, woodworking, fashion design, ceramics, and most recently, macrame and weaving.

Life has always been a hands-on experience met with a vivid imagination for Michelle, and she hopes to make the same access to the greater Arkansas Valley community through workshops and other future events, including a three-month residency at The Sherman Workspace beginning in September 2022.

Jenny Werner – Jenny has dedicated the last 23 years to teaching children the visual arts in Denver Public Schools. She also is an adult and children’s yoga instructor. Currently, she teaches art and yoga at Asbury Elementary where she has been for the last 19 years. When she is not teaching art or yoga she is in her studio creating. Mixed media is her passion and she is currently creating works in fused glass, mosaics, and encaustics. Her artwork is often a combination of all three of these mediums. She describes her artwork as expressions of released energy. Many of her pieces are expressions of joy she experiences in nature. She believes that her creativity and art are the unique movements of spirit.

Janine Frazee

Artist’s Biography

I have been creating art since my childhood and come from a family where the arts have always been valued. A few years after graduating from high school I decided to pursue an art education degree from the University of Northern Colorado. In 1994 I worked at McGinnis Middle School in Buena Vista and after six years of teaching moved overseas to Indonesia where I taught the Visual Arts at North Jakarta International School in Jakarta. Upon completing my contract in Indonesia I returned to the United States to accept the high school art position at Salida High School, in Salida, Colorado and have been teaching at Salida High School since.

Artist’s Statement

My college emphasis is in clay. As an art educator, I have been fortunate enough to work with various art media for the past 27 years. As an artist, my passion tends to lie in being able to mix art media together in an aesthetically pleasing way. Over the years my clay work has evolved from being organic in nature to colorful, ornate, and texturally decorative though the aspect of creating a meditative focal point within each piece still remains. Given the state of the world, it is important to me to create artwork that visually soothes the soul. Each piece of my work has a central meditative theme that focuses on my love of nature, biking, music, boating etc. Each piece uses clay as the canvas where stains, acrylics, crystals, wire, and gold metallic embellishments are applied. Some works are embedded with handmade doilies my grandmother made so in essence some of my pieces honor her as well becoming a combination of both of our creativity.

Shows/Awards

I have shown my work locally, regionally, and internationally, (while living overseas) in many gallery venues. I was chosen as one of the top 10 artists to represent Chaffee County and have won Best of Show in the Chaffee County Open Awards Show. My work has also been accepted numerous times to the Salida Riverside Fine Arts Festival, a juried arts festival and I have shown my work at Artwalk.