Celebrating Columbus Creatives

Local artists shine in the 2023 Columbus Arts Festival

By Katie Giffin

Artists

THE 61ST COLUMBUS Arts Festival features artists from across the nation and across disciplines, highlighting their work and giving them a platform to expand their audience. The Emerging Artists category features local artists, both new and experienced in their crafts, who have never participated in a festival. Here are a few of the Emerging Artists visitors will get the chance to meet.

Evan Williams

Evan Williams, inspired by the work of old masters after living in Belgium as a child, pursued art in high school before attending the Columbus College of Art and Design.

After graduating, Williams fell out of love with art because of the inherent financial instability. It wasn’t until his children began to notice his old work that he began to dive back in.

“It’s kind of hard to tell your kid to go to school, listen and work hard and (say), ‘You can be whatever you want to be’ and then, you know, their dad is not doing that,” Williams says. “So I started drawing and painting and sketching for them.”

Williams’ work features larger-than-life caricatures in bold colors. His art encourages his audience to slow down and appreciate the happier times, he says.

“I try to reach back and reflect on … feelgood moments from my childhood or other people’s childhoods that I know that most people can definitely connect with,” he says.

Williams’ work can be seen at Marlow’s Cheesesteaks, Esco Columbus, Black Art Plus and Shadowbox Live, as well as barbershops, salons and bars in and around Columbus. His work is also in the Springfield Art Museum and the Richmond Museum in Indiana. He has a pop-up shop at Alley Burger where he sells pieces weekly.

Glenn Gustafson

As a Buddhist priest, Glenn Gustafson uses his work with ceramics as a practice of meditation. Gustafson’s work, influenced by the Japanese philosophy “Wabi-sabi,” focuses on finding perfection in imperfection, he says.

“Much of my work has a look of being melted or slumped, because the whole aesthetic is built around the aging of a piece,” Gustafson says.

In his 10 years making ceramic art, Gustafson has developed his own artistic style, Kinwaru, as an offshoot of the Japanese style Kintsugi. In Kinwaru, Gustafson intentionally breaks his pieces and then highlights that breakage with gold. His philosophy is, “What others see as broken is what makes us beautiful.”

Gustafson draws on his practice of meditation to inform how he creates a piece. He finds inspiration for his art through desired shapes and, sometimes, from dreams.

“The focus in meditation is to stop trying to force reality into the mold that we want it to fit and instead simply recognize reality as it is,” Gustafson says. “Ceramic art is probably the best expression of that. You can only force clay so much before it says ‘no more.’”

Gustafson has participated in the Worthington Arts Festival and the Berea Arts Festival. His work is not currently on display, but he plans to take his pieces to galleries this summer.

Amanda McGee

Westerville artist Amanda McGee found painting six years ago after working as a surface pattern designer for 30 years.

McGee’s pieces focus on nostalgic items and places, such as rotary telephones and banana seat bikes, to evoke happy memories. Her work features vibrant and bold colors with pattern designs that reflect the era of the painting’s subject.

“It’s not so much about me or my connection to that object, but I love hearing the viewer’s point of view and their mem- ories and what brings about their nostalgia to these items,” McGee says.

One of the key elements to McGee’s creative process is interaction with her community. She paints in an open studio with six other women. In this community space, they are able to discuss, compare and push each other as creatives.

“The personal interaction I enjoyed with my studio mates, as well as being able to have shows in our gallery space … has really also helped me evolve with the connection of their stories to my paintings,” she says.

McGee co-founded the Daylight Artists Collective, where she now paints with other studio members. Her art can be seen at Bryn Du Arts Center, and she has participated in the Hit the Hop exhibition at Studios on High Gallery for the past three years, winning second place in the exhibition in 2022. CS

Katie Giffin is a contributing writer at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.