Goshen Area artists

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“My medium is watercolor, almost exclusively, th

“My medium is watercolor, almost exclusively, though I also do some drawing. I say that my style is not hyper-realism, but realism. It’s definitely not abstract. I love colors, so I’m always pushing the colors and pushing contrasts.

I'm very proud of being where I am today in capability. I started late in life as far as being a watercolorist. I didn’t seriously even consider the fact that I might enjoy doing art until I was in my 50s. I was well into my 50s when I said, ‘If I want to get better, it’s going to take time and it’s going to take diligence and I’ve got to get serious about it.’ I never really went to school for it. I bought every DVD - or VHS at the time - and read everything I could get on it. I talked to people and I went to art fairs and shows. I’m self-taught.

In the past 10 years that I’ve been serious about this, I’ve won numerous awards. Granted, they’re all at a regional or local level, for the most part. I’ve won a couple of honorable mentions in international contests. I haven’t gone big time, but I’m very happy with where I’m at.

The experience of being a creative in Goshen has been a good one, overall. I’m pretty much a loner; I’m not so much a joiner. I’ve talked to and met with members of both the Elkhart Art League and the Goshen Art Guild. I think they’re lovely people, and they certainly have extended themselves on my behalf.

When I first moved here to Goshen, it was without knowing anybody. No one. I found that literally within days, the community was reaching out to me. I had posted on Facebook; people were following me. I wasn’t even aware that people knew me, but people knew me here in Goshen. That was a really good feeling.

I’d like to do more shows now that I’m more established and more settled in. I’ve only been here four years. I’m looking forward to it this coming year, for sure.”

Name: Kathleen Ward
Medium: Watercolor

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“My medium is InterPlay. InterPlay is a system d

“My medium is InterPlay. InterPlay is a system developed in California by Cynthia Winton-Henry and Phil Porter. It’s an active, creative way to access the wisdom of your body. It uses movement, dance, storytelling, poetry, stillness. You can make up songs. It’s all in the context of bringing forth your body wisdom. It’s being in the present and making stuff up as you go.

Quite frequently I get these insights when I’m doing InterPlay because I integrate my whole body through the various forms that we do, that we play with in our community. I get these insights about myself. As you’re dancing them or as you’re telling a story about something, you have these ‘A-ha!’ moments - ‘Oh, I didn’t know about that in myself.’ And then you can explore that.

The good thing is, you do it in the community of the tribe that you’re with, so you’ve got this back and forth and you’ve got someone who’s witnessing you.

We have a functioning, very active InterPlay community right here in Goshen. We have a variety of people who can teach it, so I don’t have to lead it. I’m really proud of having developed these other leaders who are better than me at teaching this stuff, to be honest. I really like playing, with other people leading the session.”

Name: Linda Miller
Medium: InterPlay
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InterPlayGoshen/

“My creative medium is flowers, growing and arra

“My creative medium is flowers, growing and arranging.

Being at Flowers By Phoebe with Phoebe Brubaker was really formative. She taught me so much about floral design and the logistics of how to actually work with flowers. It kind of sparked my interest in arranging and not just growing.

I think the building block to that is just spending a ton of time in nature. Going on walks and going to parks and things and just naturally observing color and line and seeing the art of how things grow.

Goshen is a really fertile spot for two reasons. First of all, there’s a small farm community, thanks in part to the Amish. There are so many resources here just logistically for how to get started and how to get growing. Also, there are so many people who are excited about supporting local and engaging in art of all different kinds, whether it’s music or 2D visual art or floral art. A lot of people are willing to invest money or time or energy into making sure the community has that. ”

Name: Kate Friesen
Medium: Flowers
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SingletreeFlowers
Website: www.singletree.farm
Instagram: www.instagram.com/singletree_farm

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“My main medium is drum set and percussion. My s

“My main medium is drum set and percussion. My style is ‘a listener’: You have to listen first. Listening is so important, especially as a drummer.

If I may, I’m going to give you my theory on drummers. We go through three phases. Phase One is when you get a little bit of experience. You’ve got a little bit of technique. You get a call, you get a gig - and then you overplay. You blow it. No dynamics, no touch, no sensitivity, no finesse. You’re just a brute. If there’s another drummer in the audience, you want to let them know that you’re the best drummer in the house. That’s Phase One. You just overdo it. Then you’re pulled aside, they talk to you and say, ‘Hey, man, you’re doing too much.’ Then you go to Phase Two.

Phase Two is when you become selfish and you say, ‘Well, forget it. I’m going to play for me.’ You’re still not listening to the others when you’re listening to yourself.

Then you finally get to Phase Three, which is when you listen to the music. Nine times out of 10, the music will tell you what to play. I think that’s one of the reasons why I’ve been busy since I’ve moved to Goshe: It’s because I listen first. What does the music want me to do? What does the artist want me to do? And that’s what I do.

When we first moved to Goshen, I didn’t know a soul except for my in-laws. So I went to the Goshen College Music Department and gave them my contact info. I said, ‘If you need a timpanist, a bongo player, whatever, let me know.’ A few months later, I got a call - ‘This is the Goshen College big band director, and we need a Latin drummer. We’re doing a couple of Latin pieces. We’ve got two guys who play drum set, but they can’t play Latin.’ So that’s how my intro to the Goshen College scene opened up. That led to me being offered the job of directing Lavender Jazz. We sort of revitalized the big band program at Goshen College, and I’m pretty happy about that.

Being a drummer in Goshen, it’s been wonderful. I’m still in The Dean’s List, a jazz band. I’m still freelancing. I’m just very happy anytime anybody calls me for work.”

Name: Sonny Carreno
Medium: Music
Instagram: sonnycarrtunes

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“All of the things that I’m interested in, tha

“All of the things that I’m interested in, that I do, can be traced back to creative communication or creative marketing. That’s anything from video to social media management to photography. Even different areas like music, theatre, and pottery is communication. There are a lot of ways that you can speak to many different people. I feel like all of those avenues are what I do.

My most favorite time was putting together my senior show. I did a show that was me performing and me selling art at the same time. Obviously, someone was selling my art for me, but it was there and it was surrounded by a lot of other people’s art.

Basically, I made a list of who I wanted to perform and I got those groups together - people from the college, people from my life who are close. I invited high school friends whom I hadn’t seen for a while, and we resurrected old songs that we did together for performances. I scheduled all those rehearsals and made all of the marketing for that event. I contacted local artists in the area and asked if they would be willing to put their art with my art to make it a more communal experience. They were all super excited and willing. Whether it was their first show or they’ve done it multiple times, I wanted them to be a part of it if they wanted to be.

It was a lot of work, but it was my favorite thing. I feel like it was really, truly everything I try to be.

Goshen is a place where there’s a lot of people who want to do things, which I don’t think is always the case in some areas. I do think that we have a lot of room to grow yet, and there’s a lot of art or mediums or folks that we don’t know yet who are going to be really cool for us as a town. They will also maybe push us or maybe make us a little uncomfortable, but I feel like our town is pretty open to that. Goshen is open to different people and different art. I’ve appreciated that.”

Name: Olivia Copsey
Medium: Creative Marketing
Instagram: https://instagram.com/copseymediacollective
Website: https://www.copseymediaco.com/

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“Music is what I do. I’m a recording artist, s

“Music is what I do. I’m a recording artist, singer/songwriter. My space is in the world music space, and the sub-genre is Afrofusion.

I’ve been working with artists in the Elkhart County area, mostly people in the Christian rap music space. In my space, in the Afrofusion space, a few years ago I had an opportunity to go back to Nigeria, where I found a producer in that music space. We were able to put together one of my best albums yet, ‘Afrofusion Vol. 3.’ I’m so proud of that.

When I came back to the United States from Nigeria, there was a Hollywood producer who was back in town with his parents. We collaborated and made the ‘Father’ music video. That was entered in the River Bend Film Festival in Goshen. I’m so proud of that project.

In the Goshen area, my sub-genre of music is kind of…I wouldn’t say strange, but it’s kind of new to this environment. I’ve always felt that to be able to do that, I had to go out. After a while, I discovered that there are ways that I could still do what I do and collaborate with artists here and still get the same result. I am at the moment more focused on finding ways to express my vision in the Goshen area. I think that has been working well. The art scene here is awesome. You just have to find collaborators who work well with your genre or with your medium.”

Name: Idris Busari
Medium: Music
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/omogoreloaded/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/omogoreloaded/?hl=en
Website: http://bit.ly/omogoreload

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“The medium that I use is acrylic on canvas. I l

“The medium that I use is acrylic on canvas. I like to create figures, mostly women’s. I work on some landscapes and abstracts too but mostly women is what I like to do. I like to work with colors. I use the palette knives to create texture and move colors on top of each other and create some dimension there. I like to keep it really clean and balanced.

I express myself, how I’m feeling in the moment. I put a lot of feelings into when I paint. Maybe I’m painting for someone specific. Sometimes, when people see one of my paintings, they can see and know what I was putting there and feel connected and decide to buy it. It’s a good feeling. When people know that it reflects a specific feeling and they see the title of the painting and realize they got it right. That kind of thing touches me a lot.

I moved here because my husband passed away and I wanted to be close to my daughter who lives in Goshen. I didn’t know what to expect. But I like it here. I have a great community here. There is really great support for the arts in Goshen and I can see that.”

Name: Mildred Orama
Medium: Acrylic Painting
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studioartbym
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtsbyM/

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“I recently mostly have done acrylic. If I do an

“I recently mostly have done acrylic. If I do another art form, it would be more like creative essay writing, but that’s kind of a new thing. I have described my style as representational, impressionism, and conceptual.

The full immersion studio time at the end of my college career, a studio art class, I basically treated it a little bit like a half-time job. Go in in the morning, work, have lunch there, keep painting. I haven’t gone back to that level of painting since. Out of that came a large, 90-by-40-inch piece that ended up being shown at a festival. A few weeks later, people contacted me and wanted to buy it, and I shipped it out to Oregon. It was a really interesting experience of feeling very accomplished, spending lots of time on that, feeling like I nailed what I was trying to do, and someone else out of state appreciating it and buying it.

I was exploring melding some of my concepts. I had done some koi imagery and some space imagery, and then I’ve started putting the koi in space, sort of in this ambiguous space of water and space, with bubbles being planets - or not. We don’t know. I love that. I did one that was taking me into this culmination kind of piece. It was sort of like, ‘How can I creatively take things from my past pieces and do some convergences?’ I feel like that kind of thing is a stepping stone to some other work that might be needing to come out.

I have been here since 1998. I’ve witnessed the growth of the art community, and I’ve been part of some of those early attempts at putting art out in the public. I have been encouraged and met lifelong artist friends here. It excites me to hear other people catch vision and run with it. There have been lots of ways to bring artists together and cross-pollinate and give them space, and the downtown spaces. I feel like there’s been this continuous growth and expansion, and it’s even expanding more with this idea of an arts district. I just feel like the support has been exponentially growing, and it’s really creating a good, fertile ground.”

Name: Megan Fleming
Medium: Painting
Instagram: meganfleming_art
Website: meganelainefleming.com

“I’m a musician. It’s more like modern folk

“I’m a musician. It’s more like modern folk music, I guess. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s storytelling, along those lines. Right now, I also work in fiber art.

When I think about music, I just think of Ignition Music Garage. I love playing Ignition. It’s such a great listening room. I think that was probably the biggest venue I’ve played in terms of being able to play there, if that makes sense. It’s a small venue, but it’s on a big scale.
When I first moved back to Goshen, I got connected with The Tumbleweed Jumpers and played with them for several years. Then I kind of stepped out of that group to do solo stuff, just because I felt like I could grow a little more doing that.

Goshen is so supportive of creatives, and I’m so thankful to be a part of that. It’s definitely helped me gain my confidence and my growth in music. Having a community that shows up for you speaks volumes, I feel like.”

Name: Faybrianne Simpson
Medium: Music and Fiber Arts
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/faybrianne/
Website: https://www.faybrianne.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/faybrianne

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