Dish-Houston

Houston's nationally ranked Bayou City Art Festival Downtown is THIS weekend and it's a DO NOT MISS!  For any out-of-town DISHIES considering coming to Houston this weekend for the Festival, the Doubletree Hotel Downtown and Hotel ICON are offering special rates with tickets for Festival-goers!  Make sure to ask for it! As always, there are many outstanding artists who juried into Bayou City Art Festival Downtown who create wearable art that you will want to check out at the Festival. LOCAL Wearable Art Artists include:

Lisa Crowder  - jewelry artist. www.lisacrowder.com     Featured in Jewelry Artist Magazine this summer. She won "Best in Medium" at 2009 Art City Austin show.  Lisa uses sterling and oxidized silver, 22K bi-metal; riveted, formed, pierced and soldered. Lisa is based in Austin.

Amanda Jeffrey - fabric artist from Friendswood.  Amanda hails from Bogota, Colombia and moved to the U.S. 18 years ago.  She studied pre-law in her native country, then changed to textile design school at age 19.  After graduation, she taught textile design at Unitec University there and then worked for a fashion design company in Bogota. Amanda started her own fashion design company when she was 25 years old.  Now married and living in Friendswood, she has two daughters who attend Friendswood High School, Angela, 17 and Cecilia, 16.  She was a full-time stay-at-home mom until eight years ago, when she started making scarves for family and friends.  She has two looms at home and creates her pieces in silk.  She now works every day at home on the loom.  She can make 4-5 scarves/day. In addition to her art, Amanda is a professional translator and Spanish teacher.  

Courtney Payne - www.courtneymariejewelry.com - Jewelry artist who hand-fabricates sterling silver jewelry and accents it with semi-precious stones.  Courtney lives and works in the Houston metro area -- on five acres between Magnolia and Waller.   Cufflinks, cuff bracelets and pendants.  Her husband, Cody, is a metal sculptor who designed her booth.  

Lori Storey, a former international fashion model (she favors Julianne Moore, in a way), is now a jewelry artist who creates her art in Greece.  Earlier in her career, Lori was represented by Wilhelmina Models and modeled for Versace, among other high fashion lines. She says Bayou City Art Festival Downtown is her favorite show to do.  "I love Houston!  The VIPs really shop."  Lori has translated her fashion sense into creating magnificent jewelry made from Greek nature.  She uses flowers, leaves and fruit collected from nature and after special treatment she covers them with copper, silver and 24K gold, in order to be transformed into jewels and decorative items.  As you'll see on her website, www.thallousa.com, her pieces capture the beauty of the Greek nature forever!  

Several artists this year have celebrity connections, including:

Featured Artist Kimber Fiebiger - Kimber learned bronze sculpting in college -- she broke the rules by jumping into the foundry in a class of all males.  She said she wasn't treated well at the time -- it was definitely an 'all boys club.'  After earning her BFA, she made a living making pottery, eventually gaining the confidence to do the foundry work she really loved. She says she comes up with the names of her Humpty Dumpty characters first, then creates them.  Titles include: “My Egg Benedict,” “Bad Egg” and “Over Easy.”   Her pieces range from figurines that perch with legs crossed on coffee tables to  250-pound violin-playing eggs fit for a pedestal.  Her works are displayed throughout the David Burke Restaurant at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.  Her Humpty Dumpty sculptures inspired a Humpty Dumpty cake created by the "Ace of Cakes" on the Food Network.

NOTE: DISH WANTS ONE OF HER HUMPTIES! =)

Cathi Borthwick

Breaking through the male barrier in art, is Cathi Borthwick who hand forges mild steel in 2000 degrees F.  In other words, she's a blacksmith.  Her steel tables, lamps, mirrors and fireplace sets have graced the pages of Metropolitan Home, Bon Appetit, The New York Times Magazine and San Francisco Magazine.  Her work has been purchased by such luminaries as James Taylor, Dwight Yoakam, and Julian Lennon, among others.  Before getting into blacksmithing, Cathi, who lives in Flagstaff, AZ, worked in finance and accounting doing computer programming and analysis for budgeting and forecasting.  She left that behind back in 1982 and has been a full-time artist blacksmith since then.  She has been an invited guest demonstrator at the 1986, 1996, and 1998 Artist Blacksmith Assn. of North America.  She will be making her Bayou City Art Festival Downtown debut.

Ron Anderson 

Ron Anderson did a project with Disney, creating a painting called "Mickey on the Road to Hana" as well as a limited edition sculpture for them that was sold through Disney Galleries; he designed a cover for the Beach Boys CD "Symphonic Sounds of the Beach Boys"; he was commissioned by the city of Santa Barbara (CA) to do an animated sculpture which became the greeter of the city; he did work for a top  Disney executive that was showcased in Architectural Digest; has done custom artwork for six restaurants, among many of his commissions.  Anderson donates a percentage of sales of his art to non-profit organizations.  Five percent of his gallery sales go to a pre-determined non-profit organization.  He is a member of Artists for Human Rights, founded by actress Anne Archer.  In 2006, Ron created a piece entitled, "Escape from Suppression" for a fine art show Archer was doing in NYC in conjunction with the United Nations, promoting the UN Universal Declaration of Human rights.  She has brought together actors, musicians, fine artists and writers to help promote this 1948 document that promises 30 basic human rights.  Ron has continued to work with her on this by participating in fine art shows in Europe and the U.S.

Malen Pierson

Malen also uses recycled materials -- found objects and discarded metal -- to create one-of-a-kind sculptures, such as large horse sculptures that "graze."  A full-time artist for 14 years, he has designed the awards for the Sundance Film Festival.   He was recently published in Sculptural Pursuit magazine and Niche magazine.  Pierson has some celebrity clients, including Queen Latifah, who proudly possesses an owl that he created and sold to her at the Affaire in the Gardens festival in Beverly Hills. 

Tickets at $10! CLICK HERE for the Green online program!

See you there DISHIES!