Our Tile Vacation

This past weekend, DRU and I made the drive down to Cincinnati to see artTILE 2010 at indigenous gallery. What a fantastic show! There is an amazing diversity of styles. My art tiles were included, along with many many others. I bought a tile made by Parran Collery of "Eartha Handmade Tile."

Here are some of my tiles, along with those of other artists, hanging on a magnetic display system:

Our beautiful and brilliant friend Kate was kind enough to let us stay at her apartment and drive us to the show.
Her parents, my honorary Aunt and Uncle, live just up the road from the gallery. They installed a bunch of my tiles over a year ago, and I was thrilled to finally see them. Here I am in front of their hearth:
Notice the fire in the wood stove. It was pretty chilly for mid May. Unfortunately, most of the pictures I took came out blurred or glared, and really don't do the installation justice. I will just have to go back down and take more. Below is the one close up that came out ok. It is a 4"x8" Cypress tile in Leaf Green Glaze, set among reclaimed tiles from a swimming pool. They are black slate, almost an inch thick, so Uncle Bill had to add extra backer board behind my tiles to bring them out to the right level.


Next we headed to Essex Studios Artist Group for open studio night, to see the talented Lisa Molyneux's new paintings. She and I talked about trading tiles for a painting, and I really hope it works out because I would love to have one of these:


I didn't see tiles in any of the studios, but the giant sign out front was decorated with hundreds of handmade tiles.


Speaking of signs, right next to Essex Studios is the American Sign Museum. It doesn't really have anything to do with tiles, but is worth mentioning. It is a neon dream.

It is only open a few hours a week. I think that is because turning on all those old signs uses a lot of power.


Me and Kate, enjoying some vintage Americana:


All in all, it was a fantastic inexpensive 36 hour vacation. In between Kent and Cincinnati, we stopped in the Village of Yellow Springs where we saw several handmade art tile installations. That may be the subject of another post.