Wishing You A Wonderful Holiday Season

By Janet Dodrill

Have a Safe and Happy Holiday and New Year!

Vintage Christmas Postcard

Vintage New Year’s Postcard

Photos: Olddesignshop.com

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Little Italy Holiday Art Walk

Little Italy Holiday Art Walk
Saturday December, 1, 2018
Noon-9pm

Murray Hill Schoolhouse, second floor
2026 Murray Hill Road, Cleveland, OH 44106

Visit my table in the second floor hallway!

– Note Cards – Prints – Magnets – Necklaces –

Cleveland Necklaces by Janet Dodrill

Cleveland Note Cards, Magnets & Prints by Janet Dodrill

Murray Hill Schoolhouse

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Inktober 2018

Inktober is an art challenge created by artist Jake Parker that focuses on improving inking skills. Anyone participating in the Inktober challenge creates an ink drawing everyday in October and posts it online, using the hash tags #inktober and #inktober2018. The Inktober website has the rules, how to ink videos, and merchandise.

I am participating this year (and also did last year in 2017) to help develop my skills in drawing with ink. I am following the daily prompt words set for by Jake Parker. This is a great opportunity for me as an artist, and provides a sense of community online.

Inktober rules:
1) Make a drawing in ink (you can do a pencil under-drawing if you want).
2) Post it
3) Hashtag it with #inktober and #inktober2018
4) Repeat

Feel free to participate anytime during October. You don’t have to follow the rules. As Jake says, “Now go make something beautiful.”

Official Inktober 2018 Prompt List

Inktober Resources:

Inktober website www.inktober.com

Twitter www.twitter.com/inktober

Instagram www.instagram.com/inktober

Facebook www.facebook.com/groups/208139582937200

Update: I have included a selection of my Inktober 2018 drawings.

Inktober 2018: Day 2, October 2, 2018, Prompt word: Tranquil

Inktober 2018: Day 13, October 13, 2018, Prompt word: Guarded

Inktober 2018: Day 19, October 2, 2018, Prompt word: Scorched

Inktober 2018: Day 24, October 2, 2018, Prompt word: Chop

Inktober 2018: Day 29, October 2, 2018, Prompt word: Double

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Cleveland Area Sketch Groups

By Janet Dodrill

There are many good sketching groups in the Cleveland area, that I’ve found recently in my quest to start sketching again to brush up on my artistic skills with other artists! My search for groups started on Facebook and then by word of mouth. I started with a commitment of going to monthly sketch outings with Urban Sketchers Cleveland (see http://urbansketchers-cleveland.blogspot.com or http://www.facebook.com/groups/urbansketcherscleveland). It is a local chapter of the international organization Urban Sketchers. We sketch on location at different areas in the greater Cleveland area.

Recent sketch locations include:

• Giant Hand Sculpture at MOCA
• Voinovich Bicentennial Park at E. 9th St. Pier
• Cleveland Botanical Garden
• Grand Pacific Junction in Olmsted Falls
• West Side Market
• Renaissance Hotel
• The Coffee House
• Old Arcade
• 5th Street Arcades
• Cavottas Garden Center
• Chagrin Falls
• Cleveland Flats Heritage Park
• Cleveland Museum of Art
• Dunham Tavern Museum
• Lake View Cemetery
• Merwins Wharf
• Old Arcade
• Renaissance Cleveland Hotel
• Rockefeller Park Greenhouse & Gardens
• Spaces Gallery

Drawn To The Valley offers an adult open studio for figurative life drawing. The group has structured guidelines to agree to before joining the group.

Murray Hill Sketch Group has been meeting together for 25 years which offers a figure model for life drawing.

BAYArts Open Studio is a portrait sketch group from a portrait model. They also have a figurative life drawing sessions that meet on selected Tuesdays.

The Pretentious Cleveland Portrait Artists is popular in the area for portrait sketching. At the end of the evening, the artists give their art piece to the model in leu of a fee. They meet at different east or west side locations.

Fees vary from $10 to $15 per session.

I have posted some of my recent drawings and paintings.

Selected Cleveland Area Sketch Groups:

Urban Sketchers Cleveland
http://urbansketchers-cleveland.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/groups/urbansketcherscleveland
http://www.instagram.com/urbansketcherscleveland @urbansketcherscleveland
Meets monthly each 3rd or 4th Sunday, 1:30-4:00 p.m.

Drawn To The Valley
Valley Arts Center, 155 Bell Street, Chagrin Falls, OH 44022
Meets Tuesdays, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
https://www.valleyartcenter.org/workshops.html
Fee

BAYArts Open Studio
BAYarts, Huntington Playhouse Dr., Bay Village, OH 44140
Portrait, Meets Fridays, 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Figure, Meets Tuesdays (9/11, 9/25, 10/9, 10/23, 11/6, and 11/20/18), 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
http://bayarts.net/43-classes/adults/adults-classes-4/408-open-studio-sessions-portraits-figure.html
Fee

Cleveland Institute of Art, Pay-As-You-Go
11610 Euclid Ave., Room 302
Cleveland, OH 44106
Meets Wednesdays, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. (current session 8/29/18 – 11/14/18)
https://www.cia.edu/continuing-education/life-drawing-classes
Fee

Murray Hill Sketch Group
Murray Hill School, 2026 Murray Hill Road, Cleveland, OH 44106
Meets Wednesdays, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/65156305856
Fee

The Pretentious Cleveland Portrait Artists
Meets Fridays, 7:30 – 10:30 p.m.
Locations include the following, but check their Facebook page before every Friday:
Artful, 2843 Washington Boulevard, 2nd Floor, Cleveland Heights, OH 44118
OR
Waterloo Arts, 15605 Waterloo Rd, Cleveland, OH 44110
https://www.facebook.com/groups/347696515301192

Copyright article and images. All rights reserved. Not to be used without permission.

Murray Hill Sketch Group sketch.

Murray Hill Sketch Group sketch.

BAYArts Open Studio portrait.

Sketch from Wandering Sketchers.

Sketch from Wandering Sketchers.

Personal nature sketch.

Personal nature sketch.

Murray Hill Sketch Group special event sketch.

Urban Sketchers Cleveland sketch.

Urban Sketchers Cleveland sketch.

Sketch from The Pretentious Cleveland Portrait Artists.

Sketch from Wandering Sketchers.

Sketch from Wandering Sketchers.

Urban Sketchers Cleveland sketch.

Drawn To The Valley study.

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90,000 Pipes at Keens Steakhouse

By Janet Dodrill

Did you know that there is a popular restaurant in New York CIty with a collection of thousands of pipes? Keens Steakhouse (formerly Keens Chophouse), founded in 1885 in Herald Square Theatre District (now the Garment District), houses more than 90,000 smoking pipes.

How did I learn about this? In documentation written by my late mother about my great-grandfather, Hugo Max Schmitz. I have been researching him and his art career as well as the company he co-founded in 1905 and ran, the Schmitz-Horning Company of Cleveland, Ohio. According to her statement, Hugo was one of the first Greenwich Village artists in the last 1800s. In New York, he had a prize-winning portrait painting exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He also had a pipe hanging at Keens Steakhouse!

Hard clay churchwarden pipes were checked-in and returned to patrons from storage by a pipe warden. Their pipe club included such names as Teddy Roosevelt, Babe Ruth, Will Rogers, General Douglas MacArthur, Robert F. Kennedy, and Buffalo Bill Cody. More recently, online photos show that celebrities have left behind autographed pipes.

Keens Steakhouse.

Pipes on the ceiling at Keens Steakhouse.

Pipe collection at Keens Steakhouse.

John F. Kennedy’s pipe at Keens Steakhouse.

Autographed pipes at Keens Steakhouse.

Photos Credits:

Keens Steakhouse www.keens.com

1000 Things NYC www.1000thingsnyc.com

Trip Advisor www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g60763-d425330-i100087466-Keens_Steakhouse-New_York_City_New_York.html

Copyright article and images. All rights reserved. Not to be used without permission.

Archibald Willard Painting Exhibit at The Spirit of ’76 Museum

By Janet Dodrill

Visit The Spirit of ’76 Museum in Wellington, Ohio to see the special exhibit of 22 of Archibald Willard’s paintings, from Dan Zivko’s collection, in honor of town’s bicentennial and 100 years since the artist’s death, through October 2018.

Resources:

The Spirit of ’76 Museum Thespiritof76museum.org

Copyright article and images. All rights reserved. Not to be used without permission.

The Spirit of ’76 Museum in Wellington, Ohio.

Exhibit of 22 of Archibald Willard’s paintings at The Spirit of ’76 Museum through October 2018.

Spirit of ’76 Statue at The Spirit of ’76 Museum.

Archibald M. Willard in his early 40s.

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The Spirit of ’76 Statue

By Janet Dodrill

Statue of Spirit of ’76 by Archibald Willard (Schmitz family archives).

An unusual object has been passed down in the family – a “Spirit of ’76” statue. I had know little about it, even after showing it to three local auction houses, until one day a couple months ago. I believed it had been given to my great-grandfather, Hugo M. Schmitz, by Archibald Willard, the Ohio artist who painted the Spirit of ’76. The two met in the late 1800s and both attended and exhibited at Cleveland’s Art Club, of which Willard was president.

The porcelain statue measures approximately 11″ W x 12″ H and is hand-painted.

Because of my mention of it in my 2/27/2017 blog post, my image of the statue shows up in a Google search for “spirit of 76 statue,” which may be how a woman in Texas came to contact me regarding her similar statue. What are the odds?

The Spirit of ’76 statue owned by the Texas woman, who contacted me in April, 2018.

The woman sent photos and provided a link to the Bedford Historical Society, in Bedford, Ohio (Archibald Willard’s birthplace), who apparently also owns a statue and has a web page about the manufacturer. The page states that the statue was manufactured by the Bailey-Walker China company in 1926 (which became the Walker China company in 1942) of Bedford, Ohio. Her statue was almost identical to ours. And after a trip to the Bedford museum I was able to confirm that theirs was also the same. (I learned at the museum that Willard’s own father was the model for the center drummer figure.)

The Bedford Historical Society, in the historic former town hall building, Bedford, Ohio.

Additional information had been passed down to the Texas woman by her grandmother regarding her statue in a note which she shared with me. It said that Bailey-Walker China produced a limited edition of 100 of these statues, made of fine china, which sold for $40 a piece at the time, and some retailers offered them for $120. Some of the statues went to Europe.

However, now the idea that our statue had been given to my great-grandfather is in question because Archibald Willard died in 1918, eight years before the statue is known to have been produced. Was ours a prototype made years in advance of production? it is signed on the bottom, and the other two aren’t. That would explain things. Or was it given to my grandfather, Warren R. Schmitz, maybe by Mr. Willard’s family? Who acquired it from where, and when? These are questions from the past that are fun to unravel, as I continue to learn about it.

Spirit of ’76 statue manufactured by the Bailey-Walker China company, owned and on display at the Bedford Historical Society, which I visited in April, 2018.

The grandmother’s note also said that when those who possess the statue are known to each other it is hoped to cement a very warm and lasting friendship.

So far we know there are two in Ohio and one in Texas! Are there any more out there?

 

 

 

 

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