Gallery Special Events

February Featured Artist:

Mari Loehrlein

Mosaic Pictures and Mirrors

Mari Loehrlein

Marietta, who also goes by Mari, was born in southern Indiana, attended college and worked in Tucson, California, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. She taught Horticulture at Western Illinois University before retiring and devoting her time to traveling and in creative pursuits.

About two years into retirement she re-discovered mosaic, having been inspired by a mosaic mirror during her travels, and recalling the technique she had learned in a high school art class. Friends contributed leftover stained glass from their projects, she made her first mosaic (a birdbath), and has never looked back!

Mari joined the Society of American Mosaic Artists and attended a conference, taking workshops and meeting other mosaic artists. She also enrolled in numerous helpful online classes through Mosaic Arts Online and began mastering several different mosaic styles and techniques. In Tucson, she learned how to make her own ceramic mosaic elements at Santa Theresa Tile Works. She attended workshops at the Chicago Mosaic School and learned the hammer and hardie technique of Italian smalti cutting, stained glass cutting and designing and working with Italian smalti.

Mari’s range of mosaic technique includes the use of broken pottery known as picasiette; cutting both precise and random shapes from stained glass; cutting ceramic tile, Italian smalti, marble floor tiles; making ceramic elements; and designing and making fused glass elements for use in mosaics. She has used all of these techniques and sold various pieces incorporating many of them.

Her most challenging piece has been the “Garden Throne” made from an original design using Styrofoam insulation board and cement as a substrate, then covered with tiles she made in her class at Santa Theresa Tile Works.

Her substrates run the gamut from glass to wood to concrete, and she has made outdoor pieces that can be left outside year-round in a snowy, cold-weather climate, as well as indoor pieces. She particularly enjoys creating pendants for necklaces.

Artists Visiting at the Gallery During Festival

February 7 - 11, 2024

Ashley Coll India ink paintings
Mari Loehrlein Stained Glass Mosaic Pictures, Wind Chimes & Mirrors
Madonna Lane Endearing Water colors
Art by these Patron Favorites is available in the gallery everyday.
Pat Aguilar
Sandy Applegate
Gretchen LimaWood
Peg Wilmore
Brenda Peo
Arlene Zaloznik
Roxanne Beckman
Sherry Darrah
Donna Wahl

Stop in the Gallery and sign up for our E-newsletter and be included in our monthly RAFFLE to win an original piece of art. Even if you are already on our mailing list, you are eligible to come in each month to place a new ticket in the vase. February's prize will be TV King by Peg Wilmore.

--TV king

You could be the Raffle Prize Winner for February

March Featured Artist:

Lori Johnson

Very Classy Fused Glass Jewelry

Lori Johnson

Lori's love of working with dichroic glass started with a class in Green Valley, Arizona and continues today. The class was taught by another artist in the Feminine Mystique Art Gallery, Nancy Klapak. She studied architecture, art and cartography in Portland, Oregon and spent time as a graphic design intern before graduating and moving into the computer programming field. She is also a Reiki II practitioner. Now retired from the computer field, she has been enthusiastically embracing her art again.

Lori grew up in a military family and lived around the world. She lived on Okinawa for several years and traveled with her family to Bangkok, Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines. Later in life she traveled to France and Spain and was delighted to visit some of the works by her favorite architects: Le Corbusier's Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France and many buildings by Gaudi in Barcelona, Spain. She is inspired by their unconventional use of design and color and continues to experiment to test the limits of dichroic glass and the combining of other media with the glass.

One of her current projects is creating an adorable family of dichroic glass owls. The owls can be worn as brooches, pendants or hat pins. Each owl has its own unique personality. Lori’s process involves several steps – choosing the glass for the eyes, wings and beak and then forming the wire for the “hairdo” and feet. After firing in the glass kiln, the hair and feet are colored and decorated.

Meet these wonderful artists at Feminine Mystique Art Gallery
in March

Gretchen LimnaWood

Fabric images of empowered women

Visiting during "Open Studio Tours" March 8 - 10

Tina Levy

Exceptional wrapped jewelry

Spring Art Walk, March 23 & 24

Diane Delaney

Building art in clay

Spring Art Walk, March 22 - 24

Lori Johnson

Bright and beautiful fused glass jewelry

Spring Art Walk, March 22 - 24

Stop in the Gallery and sign up for our E-newsletter and be included in our monthly RAFFLE to win an original piece of art. Even if you are already on our mailing list, you are eligible to come in each month to place a new ticket in the vase. March's prize will be Zebra and Giraffe by Vicki Johnson.

--Zebra and Giraffe

You could be the Raffle Prize Winner for March

April Featured Artist:

Pat Aguilar

Hand Built Clay Sculptures

Pat Aguilar

(Patricia Jean Druener) was born in New York City in 1949. Her father came as a boy from Germany and her mother was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. Growing up in the military exposed Pat to different cultures, both in the United States and Germany.

Being a child in the 1950’s was very confusing for a girl. We were told we didn’t need higher education (think about a career), “You’ll just get married anyway.” Also, it was so very important to be attractive, “How else will you get a man?” Being yourself didn’t do it.

By the time she was forming her own opinion, Pat had strong feelings against inequality, whether it was Black/White, Jew/Gentile, Male/Female.

Betty Friedan made a big difference in Pat’s life. She knew by reading The Feminine Mystique, she could do anything she wanted to do, career-wise, family, etc. Ms. Friedan had a gentle and educative touch, a more sensible approach at being all, as a woman.

Pat tried to help other women by becoming active in NOW and other less known women’s conscience raising groups.

While attending college for accounting, Pat was encouraged to use the other half of her brain, so she took up pottery. Ms. Aguilar has been a potter for over 35 years now, specializing in miniature houses, masks, boxes, etc. (slab work mostly). In 1973, Pat married Ed Aguilar and moved west. They now have three children and seven grandchildren.

Meet these wonderful artists at Feminine Mystique Art Gallery 
 during Bonanza Days

Joyce Chaney

Silk tie artist

Visiting during "Bonanza Days" April 27

Annette Lowery

Southwest watercolor images

Visiting during "Bonanza Days" April 27

Sophia Bedoni

Budding new artist

Visiting during "Bonanza Days" April 27

Chris Arpad

Established steel drummer

Visiting during "Bonanza Days" April 28

Vicki Arpad

Intuitive painter

Visiting during "Bonanza Days" April 28

Stop in the Gallery and sign up for our E-newsletter and be included in our monthly RAFFLE to win an original piece of art. Even if you are already on our mailing list, you are eligible to come in each month to place a new ticket in the vase. April's prize will be Set of Three Journals by Ann Ramsey.

--Setof 3 Journals

You could be the Raffle Prize Winner for April