Milton Arts Guild artists featured in garden tour July 13
The Milton Arts Guild will participate again this year in the Milton Garden Club's Annual Gardens and Homes Tour, scheduled from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday, July 13. The MAG is an active and growing organization of local artists and art lovers, from students to professionals, working in a variety of media, styles and techniques both traditional and innovative.
Artists of the MAG will be sharing their passions and talents in the gardens, demonstrating their work and discussing it with visitors on the tour. Each artist will be creating a piece inspired by the garden and will later display that piece, whether complete or still in progress, in the garden of the Milton Historical Society at the artists' reception beginning at 3 p.m.
The artists themselves are as varied as their work and the gardens they'll be working in. All actively participate in shows and have their work exhibited in various galleries and other venues. Many teach classes or give lessons to individual students, from beginners to advanced, and some take commission work.
Anne M. Buck works primarily in watercolor, focusing on portraits, landscapes and florals. She loves the luminosity and translucence of watercolor and works to create pieces with vibrant color in a somewhat impressionistic style. Her secondary media of choice is pastel.
Jean Bowers is continuing art studies begun in the 1980s. Her work expresses the moodiness of nature. Bowers likes to capture the sky, which ultimately affects the way the landscape looks. She also likes to paint people into her landscapes.
Patsy Cicala Jr., with his master's in oceanography and limnology, has been in the field of science and education for more than 31 years. Since his first published photography in 1964, capturing the world around him has been his main artistic format.
Gerilyn Gaskil likes to paint the here and now, capturing the passing of time and changes in landscapes, old cars and barns soon to be gone.
Valerie Helgesen, now a resident of Milton, is originally from Brooklyn, N.Y., where she began painting in early childhood. Helgesen studied at Art Students League, Brooklyn College and New School in New York City. She has traveled extensively throughout the U.S., Great Britain, Europe and the Caribbean, where her paintings hang in private collections.
Lou Ann Miller is a watercolorist now, after years of painting traditional Pennsylvania German folk art, document boxes and blanket chests. The fun of watercolor is that the same picture can be painted with colors deeply intense or very subtle and subdued.
Bill Patterson is an artist well-known for working in oils. His work is somewhat impressionistic, with just enough detail to convey his pictorial story.
As a fine art photographer, Janet Terner uses the camera to tease out the beauty that lies hidden in the ordinary objects seen or passed by in daily life. She describe her body of work as sightings – her unique take on the world that reflects her passionate concern to preserve the soul-satisfying beauty of the natural environment and rural landscapes of this area.
Libby Zando, owner of Zando Designs, has been designing homes and gardens for decades. Now she paints them too, in a loose but realistic style.
Closing the garden tour will be the Milton Arts Guild's reception and exhibit, About the Garden, at the Milton Historical Society at the corner of Union and Magnolia streets in downtown Milton. The show will be open throughout the tour and will continue during museum hours through August.
From 3 to 6 p.m. the Milton Arts Guild will host a reception open to all. Guests are invited to relax and enjoy a glass of wine or a soft drink, with light hors d'oeuvres while seeing the progress made on the garden art and chatting with the artists about the work and the day's experience.
