11-27-2024 Primetime Living - Flipbook - Page 8
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A Special Advertising Section of Baltimore Sun Media Group | Wednesday, November 27, 2024
ART
Art as we age
Creativity knows no limits
By Margit B. Weisgal, Contributing Writer
M
any of us do a variety of forms of art at different times in our lives. biggest, and every aspect of decorating
Others stick with one. I remember taking art classes at the Baltimore
Museum of Art when I was very young. When my mother bought a
new sewing machine, it came with lessons – that I attended, not my mom. My
grandmother taught me to knit, a skill I’ve never lost and one that raises its head
periodically. In my forties, I learned to crochet in order to provide baby blanket
gifts. Then, something I wanted to do for years became a reality when I started
taking pottery classes.
What follows are stories of two older
women who found new ways to bring art
into their lives.
Watch It
Janet Yellowitz teaches special care
and geriatric dentistry at the University
of Maryland School of Dentistry. “I’ve
always worked with my hands,” she
relates. “Knitting, crocheting, beads,
and then I started crocheting gemstones
with wire to make jewelry. However, it
was a memory I had that precipitated
this latest art form. I remembered a
pig covered in watchband pieces and
All artwork shown in this article is by Janet Yellowitz.
I said to myself, ‘I’m going to do that
one day.’”
Yellowitz and two friends often frequented flea markets and estate sales.
Even though none of them ever needed
a thing, they’d return from their forays
with bags full of “stuff.”
“Over time, I started buying pigshaped piggy banks and watch bands.
Then I had to figure out how to encase
the piggy banks in the watch bands,
what glue to use, how to cut apart the
bands to mesh them together or fill in
blank spaces.
“The first one was, of course, the
it was an experiment. I had a specific
vision as to how it would look when I
was done. For instance, I wanted it to
remain functional, which meant working
around the slot for coins, and I wanted
it to have a face, a personality.
“After many trials, I discovered that
welding glue worked the best. To incorporate the watchbands, I found out I
would have to clean them first and then
cut them up, so there are multiple steps
for the preparation. I’m still debating
whether or not to use some kind of glaze
to keep them shiny.”
Last year, Yellowitz exhibited at
the American Visionary Art Museum’s
Bazaart-Annual Holiday Craft Market
(www.avam.org/bazaart) and found an
audience for her wares.
Now she’s busy decorating more
pigs and visiting more flea markets,
this time with a purpose. And she’s
expanding her repertoire: new pieces
include a couple old fashioned rotary
candlestick telephones, an airplane,
a head, mirrors, a rubber duck, and
something that resembles a car from
Cars, a newer VW Bug. Reach her at
janet.watchit@gmail.com.
Broken Glass
Gail Rosen and her wife took at oneday workshop on mosaics at AVAM and
fell in love with mosaics. Her wife wanted a place to create their art, so they
redid the basement to be their art studio. Then her wife wanted to decorate
the concrete foundation of their house
in mosaics, so they did. Next was the
mailbox, then the light posts, and then
the planter in the back. Her wife loves
BIG mosaics. Gail does smaller ones,
much smaller, to hang on walls.
“I found that moving bits of glass and
stone around to make a mosaic to be
meditative, calming, even healing. All I
wanted to do was go down to the basement,” says Gail, “and figure out a way
to express what I was feeling. We went
to a mosaic conference and met some
women from Virginia, so we started getting together once a month. Then they
then found studio space for artists in
Maryland, and I would drive down once
a week.”
Rosen was so loving creating mosaics, that as time passed, she was filling
up spaces on all the walls of the house.
Art as we age,
continued on page 16
