Fun, funky, and always very unique, Fred Conlon’s award-winning metal art has appeared in art festivals from Marin County to Cherry Creek to Houston’s Bayou City, as well as shows in Philadelphia and New York City. His pieces can also be found in art galleries across the country and are available for purchase directly from Sugar Post. In addition to the pieces listed in our catalog, Fred also creates one-of-a-kind custom metal art for interested individuals.

http://www.sugarpost.com

Q3 Art Inc. Has been creating unique, original, and affordable products in the Chicago Illinois area for over 20 years! The company was founded in 1988 by Marvin Shafer (BFA 1968, University of Illinois, Champaign), a goldsmith and sculptor with 30 years of working experience as a commission artist and teacher. He was on the faculty of Roosevelt University (Chicago, IL) and the Evanston Art Center (Evanston, IL) 1972-1976.

As a freelance artist he has created thousands of one-of-a-kind pieces of art for corporations and individuals. A few of the recipients include Carson Pirie Scott & Co., Jim Beam Corp, Illinois Masonic hospital, Morristown Memorial Hospital (NJ), UMass Memorial Hospital, Hugh Hefner, George Carlin, the Upjohn family and Christian MacArther.

Q3 was developed to create quality, handmade jewelry that was artistic yet affordable. Anodized aluminum was chosen as the primary medium because of its ability to display saturated color, availability of recycled aluminum and the low ecological damage which occurs in the process.

In 1991, Michelle Shafer, with a background in metal smithing, jewelry and design, began streamlining the look, adding niobium accents and broadening the color palette from 10 shades to 36. She does a tremendous amount of the designing as well as the color work.

Q3 Art has become a real fusion of two artists creating unique and innovative work to be enjoyed!

We are members of the American Craft Council displaying our work at many of their shows across the country as well as the Illinois Artisans Program. We also participate in many art fairs in the mid-west as well as selling to many top galleries and museum shops through out the United States.

http://www.q3art.com

My jewelry is inspired by successful graphic, product, and furniture design, as well as architecture. Contemporary European and American design and design movements from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries have had a profound effect on me, and my design aesthetic. Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Philippe Starck, and Vasily Kandinsky and Marimekko are among the architects, designers, and artists that influence me. Growing up in Chicago gave me an appreciation of architecture. Attending Parsons School of Design in New York City exposed me to the exciting world of design. I try to convey my passion for innovative design and architecture through my jewelry.
Since developing my first metal line of jewelry in 1994, I have wanted to incorporate color into my work. The challenge was developing a line of color in an alternative material. I had no desire to set stones or work with resin. Enameling was not an option either. After much trial and error, felted wool became the solution to my color dilemma. It had the rich, saturated color I was looking for as well as a great texture. As I played with the material, I began to realize how much I loved the richness of the felt set against the oxidized sterling.
Essentially I am making and setting little felt stones and tassels into my jewelry. The jewelry is primarily made of oxidized sterling. Some pieces contain 18k Bi-Metal and gold plated screws. All jewelry is hand fabricated by myself. As I play and try to push the envelope of this new technique, I am trying to incorporate more metalsmithing into the pieces. I am enjoying the challenges and rewards that these two materials present. There is no doubt in my mind that my early days contemplating my career in fashion design at Parsons have met with my actual career as a metalsmith.

http://micheleafriedman.com

Stan Megdall’s contemporary art glass wall sculptures and art glass flowers with glass wall art sculptures and contemporary  glass wall sculptures flowers with metal  are unique to any glass artist. After over twenty years of working with the hot glass I am constantly amazed at the new forms I can create. The glass moves fast, its hard to control and shows color like no other medium. I push glass beyond its conventional limits. Creating glass wall flowers with a unique flower pattern in the glass. The work I create is always evolving. My current work is flower fascination and nature inspired using leaves and roots throughout the glass. I am doing multi part blown compositions with a layering of color and forms the glass colors are  vivid and bright. Sculptured glass flowers designed for wall pieces to hang individually or to be displayed in groupings I am fascinated by nature and bring it into each piece.  Stan is a perfectionist and will create each piece multiple times till it suits him.

Stan is a leader in the glass field he is a top designer and coordinates color combinations like no other. He earned his degree from “The Center for Creative Studies ” in Detroit attending on a scholarship for ceramics. He was introduced to glass and never went back to ceramics. He has built his own furnace and kiln three times at each location. His studio is now located in Ypsilanti MI. He has taught others to blow glass . Over the years he has won several awards and has received national recognition for his glass. He primarily work alone however he has trained his father to assist him with some of his work. His fascination is now with abstract glass flower forms and contemporary  glass wall  sculptures and glass wall art.

http://www.stanmegdall.com

BARBARA RUBRIGHT

w e a r a b l e s

Barbara Rubright Wearables designs and hand-weaves contemporary fashion for women. This unique line of interchangeable clothing is designed using the highest grade of natural fibers including silk, bamboo, merino wool, rayon, and Egyptian cotton. These fine, luxury fibers offer season spanning wearability and travel easily, while filling a variety of roles.

The signature piece of Barbara Rubright Wearables is the Puzzle Coat, which includes tapestry piecing woven on the loom and painted silk swatches often hand-dyed. Expertly chosen buttons from across the world complete the piece. Barbara Rubright Wearables hopes you enjoy wearing your unique piece for many seasons to come!

www.barbararubright.com

John Gutoskey’s “Magic Theater”

John Gutoskey’s art boxes embody the interior worlds of an extrovert; meticulously organized in overlays of “found” imagery, color-wheel fancy and fractured multiples that include Renaissance portraiture, sacred heart iconography and lives of the saints, the circus, Buddhism, and the body Gutoskey’s assemblages proclaim miniature universes. Flea market and cathedral reliquary collide. Shrine and game board vie for attention; enigmatic messages lurk beneath happy coincidences and bizarre juxtapositions in an attempt to make some sense out of all the chaos from the detritus of the world.

John Gutoskey was born and raised in Wickliffe, Ohio, the seventh of eight children. Tamed of his hyperactivity with a constant feed of “craft abuse,” he gravitated towards a career in costume design, earning a BFA in Theater Design with a minor in sculpture from Webster University. As a design assistant in New York City and on movie shoots and at regional theaters around the country, he haunted fabric stores, flea markets, thrift stores, and every store in Manhattan from Bloomingdale’s to Canal Street for period-perfect items. Along the way he continued to amass an eclectic stash of collectibles, a habit begun in his teen years. Moving to Chicago to pursue his own line of clothing and hat design, labeled “Head-On Collision”– he was then courted by the University of Michigan Department of Theater and Drama to run their costume shop. Coming to Ann Arbor in 1987, he designed costumes for numerous university and local dance and theater productions and for the dance works of his partner, Peter Sparling.

Pursuing an interest in the healing arts and spirituality, he began to apprentice with Linda Diane Feldt, a local holistic body worker and to study meditation and Buddhism under Barbara Brodsky. Eventually, he left his position at the university to devote himself full-time to a therapeutic bodywork practice. Frustrated with the limitations of free-lance costume design, he gave it up and began working alone in his basement studio on his own art.

Whereas the collaborative demands of costume design had left him feeling the desire to speak more in his own personal voice, Gutoskey’s newfound interest in making art on his own terms resulted in an outpouring of new work. Exploring the media of assemblages, “found” objects and shadow boxes, he was inspired by the works of Joseph Cornell, Betye Saar, and other assemblage artists as well as Pop Art, ancient art, Mexican, Brazilian, African, and Italian art, outsider art, sideshow graphics, Art Brut, the Surrealists and religious art to evolve his own unmistakable style: a perfect mirror for his gregarious, highly animated personality. The obsessive collector in Gutoskey met the trained visual artist half-way. In a short time, the home he shares with Sparling, his partner, was filled with a dazzling collection of “art boxes.”

Although no longer involved in the world of the stage, John Gutoskey continues to play in that rarified universe of illusion and fragmented narrative, presenting his own vision of a personal “magic theater” that speaks to the imagination and the spirit with wit, humor and a multiform but coherent sense of courage.

http://www.johngutoskeystudio.com

Tracy Reid’s painting vibrate with an exuberance that is her own. She uses her mastery of the medium to share her joy in the beauty she sees everywhere around her. Reid’s works are coveted in extensive private and public collections throughout the world

http://www.camillebenjamin.com

“A Colorado native, I studied sculpture at the Art Students League of Denver and the Loveland Academy of Fine Arts, as well as participating in ISC (International Sculpture Center) workshops at the Art Institute of Chicago.”

“I sculpt in clay on maquette size works and cast in bronze via the lost wax method. On life size and monumental works I prefer to sculpt in low density foam with a hot-knife, applying clay to the surface before casting in bronze via the lost wax method.”

http://www.jimbudish.com