Family Heirlooms: Art from the Westhues family

November 5 – December 20, 2009

This special exhibit for the holiday season features handmade crafts and functional art from Artpost owner Kay Westhues’ family, many whom are craftspersons and artists living in the Bloomington Indiana area. Artists who will be exhibiting include:

Betty Westhues lives near Bloomington IN, and has been weaving since 1975, first making colorful rag rugs and moving to tapestry rugs in 1985. Recently she acquired a turn-of-the-century ‘Legare’ sock-knitting machine, which she uses to create handmade socks, knitted dolls and sock monkeys.

Sock monkey
Sock monkey

Baby-safe dolls
Child-safe dolls
Walt Schmidt is best known as a potter who creates functional stoneware ceramics, but also makes handcrafted wood furniture and forged ironwork at his studio located in the hills near Bloomington. Each piece of pottery is handcrafted of indigenous Indiana stoneware clay, and all wood is local.

Square Vase
Square vase

Chair (walnut, hickory and beaver wood)
Sue Westhues, also from the Bloomington area, creates art and utilitarian pieces from gourds. Her work has been featured on the Carol Duval Show on the Home Gardening Channel, and has been included in two books on gourd art: Making Gourd Musical Instruments and Making Gourd Dolls & Spirit Figures, by Jim Widess and Ginger Summit (Sterling Publishing). Sue also teaches gourd drum making through the Indiana Gourd Society.

Gourd bird
Gourd bird

Gourd drum
Gourd drum
Sarah Westhues-Owen is a musician, mom, and crafter who lives near Marshall, North Carolina. Her beautiful handmade dolls and toys are one-of-a-kind and completely safe for babies and small children.

Flannel dog
Flannel dog

6 inch doll
6 ” doll
Tansy Troup is a seamstress and quilter who owns A Stitch In Time, an alterations shop in Bloomington. She will be showing her newest creations: vintage-look aprons.
Ruby Troup recently graduated from Herron School of Design with a major in Furniture Design. Her unique furniture pieces are hand-carved or molded organic forms that can stand alone as a piece of art, or used functionally.
Table Table (bent laminated plywood, poplar, milk paint, Danish oil)

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