Wes Thorn used sandpaper as he talked about his wood art demonstration Saturday at the inaugural Sand+Steel Art Fest in downtown Valparaiso.
Thorn, of Portage, was using true grit – 120 grit, in this case – as he quickly sanded the edges of the wooden pieces he planned to paint and assemble in a wooden frame.
“It’s cheaper than therapy,” he said. “I sip whiskey and try not to cut off a finger.”
Thorn, a welder and fabricator by trade, said he is a self-taught carpenter. “I’m not really good at listening to people tell me things,” he said.
Gesturing toward large paintings he had brought to display, Thorn discussed the effort that went into them. “Those paintings take me days and days of sanding,” he said.
After Valparaiso Creative Council Executive Director Jessica Corral talked him into doing a four-hour afternoon demonstration, he had to speed up the process and produce a smaller painting.
Thorn cuts the pieces for his puzzle-style artworks, sands them, paints them, then glues them into a frame.
How he chooses colors is itself a puzzle.
Sometimes, he said, “I do what I call a color lottery that makes it random.” He’ll number the pieces, then assign one of 15 or 16 colors to each piece. “Sometimes when it’s a complex painting, believe it or not, it’s better to leave it to the universe.”
A visit to the Art Institute of Chicago was inspiring for Thorn. Piet Mondrian’s geometric paintings made Thorn realize, “I can do this. I can do my own version of that.”
Thorn went home afterward and got started. “I don’t think my first 50 or 60 paintings were very good,” he said, but he got better with practice.
Jackson Pollock opened the doors to abstract paintings like Thorn’s. “I do do some drippers,” Thorn said, when the paint is running low and he’s in the mood.
Beth Vottero, of Valparaiso, invited passersby to contribute to the painting she was working on. People would dip the paintbrush into the cardboard box lid she used as a palette, then add a swirl, heart or other touch to the painting.
“I have little kids coming up drawing hearts. I don’t want them to be afraid of it,” she said. “You can’t ruin it. You really can’t.”
How that painting would emerge, no one knew. But then, that’s not uncommon for her.
“I’ll sit at a canvas, and I want to paint. I don’t know what to paint, so it tells me what to do,” she said.
Voterro, a Purdue University Northwest nursing professor and director of the Indiana Center for Evidence-Based Nursing Practices, picked up painting two years ago. “Everything I research is all about the experience of that person,” she said.
Her own experience is important, too. “I don’t want to die thinking of anything I didn’t try,” she said, so she began painting two years ago and exhibiting her works at events.
Leah Romano McMeen, of LaPorte, a graphic artist, uses that skill to market her paintings in various forms, like selling posters and postcards, as well as prints.
“I’ve been drawing my whole childhood,” she said. She took a 20-year break to raise her kids. “A couple of years ago, I got the itch to paint again.”
Customers who might not normally buy art have been drawn to some of her paintings, especially the railroad coal tower in Michigan City that was razed not long ago and a picturesque tree that stood on U.S. 12. “They have a memory of that specific scene,” Romano McKeen said, and nostalgia drives them to purchase a print.
Romano McKeen is inspired by the Dunes and nature. “We have really cool ecology here in Northwest Indiana.”
“I’m seemingly drawn to birds,” she said as she scanned the paintings she had on display.
Deb Weiss, of Gary, creates birds.
Weiss, a retired art teacher, teaches watercolors and painting for adult education.
Paintings weren’t as marketable as she had hoped. “Sculptures, people want,” she said.
“I’m trying to reform and not be a hoarder,” Weiss said, so she creates birds and adorns them with things she finds around the house – killing two birds with one stone.
Each bird is different, but most have hearts on them. “I just thought it was kind of fun, like we have our heart on our sleeve.”
“It’s really fun, finding the different things on them,” Weiss said.
Weiss works on five to 10 birds at a time. They can take months to complete.
“I’m having a really good day. They’re selling like crazy,” she said Saturday. “I have to go raid my workshop table and bring more tomorrow.”
“I’ve done so well today that I might be working all night.”
The body of her birds is usually covered in some type of road map. She paid $10 at an estate sale for a box of maps, which seemed a bit pricey at the time. When she was loading up the box, the seller asked if she wanted the rest of the boxes. It was 10 boxes.
Friends clean out junk drawers and drop off the unwanted items on her porch. “I love broken stuff,” she said.
One project involved using a mother’s costume jewelry for her birds, with each of the mother’s daughters getting a bird with the keepsakes incorporated.
Another was made with a friend’s husband’s items. She showed the result to her friend, “and then we both cried,” Weiss said.
Jennifer Hernandez-McDuell, of Valparaiso, oversaw sand-based activities for the Porter County Children’s Museum, one of the nearly one-year-old museum’s traveling exhibits.
Hernandez-McDuell, a former educator, said playing and creating with sand develops gross and fine motor skills.
She had sandboxes, hyperkinetic sand for sand sculptures that don’t fall apart when the sand dries, and colored sand for sand art.
Evalina Moreno, of Valparaiso, volunteers with the Art Barn, which took over the Valpo Creates Center on Indiana Avenue for a project that helped kids make pocket sketchbooks, a craft that involves gluing a decorative card to an envelope flap so the envelope could hold treasures.
“It’s something fun for little kids to do, making crafts,” she said. Moreno enjoyed watching the kids decorate their sketchbooks, cleaning the rubber stamps when they were finished.
Marin Arizzi, of Valparaiso, helped the kids assemble the sketchbooks. “I think every kid has the ability and desire to do art in their own way,” she said.
“I think that really helps them realize their creativity,” Arizzi said.
“Not everybody is a Van Gogh. We all had to learn somewhere.”
It was good publicity for the Art Barn, which offers classes for kids and adults.
Ray Beliveau, of Valparaiso, watched as his 3-year-old son decorated his sketchbook. “He loves crafts. He loves building anything,” Beliveau said.
Catrina De Rivera, of Valparaiso, brought her three young kids. “It’s been fun for us,” she said.
The kids enjoyed making sand art, decorating bubble wands and seeing butterflies and bugs preserved in frames.
“We’ve really made a full day of it.” Even better, De Rivera said, “we’re not at our house wrecking things.”
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
