Culture & Community | Guilford | Arts & Culture | Youth Arts Journalism Initiative
Top: Denise Mangano. Bottom: Vendor Lynne Puhalla's work. Ruby Szekeres Photos.
As Denise Mangano fingered through brightly colored crochet hats, purses and bags from The Chic Bohemian, she found what she had been looking for all day—an embellished blue, green crochet purse with flowers climbing up the sides and top.
“This is me,” she exclaimed.
In late July, Managano was one of thousands who attended the Guilford Art Center’s 64th Annual Craft Expo, held every year on the Guilford Green. In addition to over 170 artists and vendors, the expo included food and live music, as well as activities for families.
As the organization’s biggest fundraiser, it brought in roughly 7,800 attendees over three days. GAC Executive Director Maureen Belden later nodded to it as an exciting success in an email to the Arts Paper. "This is GAC’s biggest fundraiser, crucial to our operations, so it’s fantastic it turned out so successfully this year," she wrote.
Every stand had something a little bit different, from jewelry to woodworking to clay to glass. Like their crafts, each vendor also had a unique story about how they got into crafting and chose their respective mediums.
One of those artists was Alisa Langille, who was managing a booth for the family business, Mr. Willies Lighting. Using pipes and working with her son, daughter and niece, she creates lamps with colored filaments inside.
At her table, there were gold lights, multi-colored lights, red lights, yellow lights, and purple lights, a small testament to the breadth of lighting work that the business does. In fact, Langille’s purple tank top matched the color of some of her merchandise.
“The first lamp we made, we sold in a garage sale. We were really surprised and that was how we started our business,” Langille said. “Eight years later, we are standing here with a successful business.”
Meanwhile, New Jersey-based Five Dogs Art literally brightened up the expo with the business’ combination of woodworking and electricity. Using 15,000 volts of electricity, co-owner Lydia Menio puts a special solution on untreated wood and burns marks into a table or a bench, creating channels in the wood that resemble trees.
Since 2016, she and her husband, Chris Menio, have worked to build their business, visiting art and craft expos across the tri-state region. When asked, they explained that they use a lot of cedar, but can use any kind of wood as long as it's untreated. They sell wooden swords, mirrors, canes, and walking sticks among many other items.
“It started out when I was a high school teacher and the kids were showing me a video of someone using electricity,” Menio said.
“Don’t try this at home,” she added, before explaining how dangerous woodworking could become with a little electricity. “My husband builds the stuff and gives it to me to burn."
At a table nearby, Haviland Justice of Made Cozy had chairs, pillows, towels, beeswax candles, and stuffed animals for sale. A lifelong art lover, Justice started her career with woodworking, attending Hampshire College for furniture. She opened her business five years ago.
“I just love making things with my hands,” Justice said while hand sewing a mouse made from velvet dyed with avocado. “Also I want something that creates a relationship between person and item.”
Made Cozy is also meant to be sustainable: she uses all-natural materials, including linen, cotton and wool for furniture upholstery, pillows and other cloth items. For wood items, she uses cherry, which cuts and sands easily but is still durable.
A few booths down from Justice was Lynne Puhalla of Lynne Puhalla Studios. While she was in the expo’s “clay” category, her baskets are both woven and ceramic, with hand-built clay bottoms and vibrant woven wicker patterns that integrate “leather, copper, glass beads, feathers or other unusual findings,” according to her website.
“First I start with a clay base, fire it and then I start weaving,” she explained when asked about the process of making a basket. Puhalla orders weaving reeds and then dyes them whatever color is needed.
A veteran artist at the expo, Puhalla said is glad that she decided to “dabble” in something different. Before, she had only done pottery and other ceramics. After getting tired of that (she still sells pieces that are purely ceramic, for customers who want them), she started making her signature baskets, which are all different.
“For the weaving, it takes two days, but while adding in the dying and the base, it is a lot of work,” she said. Although it is so time consuming, “it is worth it all in the end.”
This article comes from the 2024 Cohort of the Youth Arts Journalism Initiative. Ruby Szekeres is a rising sophomore at the Sound School.