the studio at ombody: 3rd art collective

Carrie Attaway is a hobby potter who loves to just make stuff happen! While performance-based art will always be her passion, she finds peace on the potter’s wheel. The need to center, breath and find balance is a challenge that translates into life. Each vessel has a story and a life that is hidden in some way to onlookers. 

“Smoke and Mirrors” began with a small, flopped teacup. As the top of the cup buckled, I found a Cheshire cat like smile staring back at me. Amused at the way she mocked me, I kept her. From formation to the kiln fire, I was creatively blocked as to what glazes should go on these “failed cups,” so there they sat for months mocking me. 

The glaze kiln fire can be an exuberant and equally devastating experience. As fate would have it for the failed teacups, the glazes fused them to the kiln shelf. “I don’t despise failure. I embrace the challenge of the overcoming the fear of failing again.” I thought maybe I could fuse three vessels together to form a stem vase “sculpture-like-thingy.” Through photographing various arrangements of vessels, I was invited into a world, a hidden life of glazes and color behind the mirrored finish. 

I found my self inside the art I was making of the art I made that technically failed. What do you know! I thought she mocked me, but it was just an invitation to submerse in the idea of tabula rasa. Thank you OmBody! 

  What do you do when you don’t do what you used to do? That question faces many was they move into retirement and are no longer identified by their “profession.” Retired attorney, Mary Lenora Hajduk, (Mary Lenora, Marylen) wants to pursue her passion for Art and Travel. Calling herself a Jill-of-all Arts, Mary Len has her hand in many different types of art media. This past year of isolation from COVD has allowed her to narrow down those inquisitive pursuits. Her passion is stained glass and she enjoys working with PMC (precious metal clay), polymer clay and enameling on copper. 

The New Renaissance for Mary Len is her bringing forward of her creative nature. This is her new beginning…  

 Jennifer Honaker has lived here and there but currently resides in Scottdale, PA. She is a self-taught artist who enjoys playing mad scientist with acrylics and mixed media. She started painting in early 2019 after a long hiatus from her former favorite style of pen and ink. She turned to abstract, experimentation, and a more relaxed approach to her creations as a way to decompress after long days at a high-stress job. Her works are emotions and energy made visible and tangible. Whenever someone is affected emotionally by something she creates, she is absolutely elated.

 My name is Gina Jenkins  Art is everything in life I believe  As we create each day in our own unique ways. ..moving as living art. I live in Uniontown pa and have been an artist since childhood. My artist name is imaGination . 

Jeff Jenkins II (aka Yerffej) was born in Uniontown, PA in 1993. Drawing, sketching, critically thinking, inquiring, expressing, wandering(mentally) and exploring(physically) has always been a part of his creative repertoire. In 2011, while a high school senior he was reintroduced to his passion, one he had stored away since kindergarten. In that same year his grandfather passed, James “Jinx” Jenkins, with left Yerffej with the need to pick up his brushes; and with both a heavy heart and hand create as a means of coping. That day reunited him with his craft, calmness and connection; one of which will never be taken for granted. Since that time he has been honing his craft and applying a greater appreciation for the activity of “art therapy.”   

Additionally, Yerffej has reignited his interest in art in his community by participating in and hosting the first Art Shows in decades which aim to bring artistic recognition back to the areas most endeared by us all. He is influenced by and greatly admires artists such as: Jean-Michelle Basquiat, Jackson Pollock, Jean-Dubuffet, Salvador Dali as well as Pablo Picasso. Yerffej gives thanks and best wishes to everyone everywhere. 

Kat Jones (aka Kathryn "Kathy" Gadd) started painting in 2015 after the death of her partner, Tim, as a way to work through some of the intense emotions of that time. With no training or idea of what she was doing she started randomly tossing acrylic paints onto canvases and other surfaces. Experimenting with texture and color while keeping her sharp and often cynical sense of humor, Kat Jones has had fun with this particular creative outlet for about 6 years.

After the death of her oldest and dearest friend, Jodie, Kat Jones entered into a frenzy of painting in a new style and with an intensity not experienced before. The paintings that will be shown at the Tabula Rasa exhibit represent one woman's transformation through grief, self-exploration, and renewal. Never before embracing a style or school of painting, Kat Jones discovered her affinity for abstract expressionism and the freedom it allows to literally throw one's feelings onto canvas after the death of her dearest friend. Collectively called "The Jodies," these works are a blank state onto which the artist's deepest and most difficult emotions are painted. 

Paula Johnston dabbles in the Arts mostly when the Muse insists.

Paula's work is mainly of amusing animated characters she paints on tiny canvases in acrylics. 

For the New Renaissance show, Paula carries on with the "nothing new under the sun" idea and continues painting from animation with the theme of Renaissance twists culled from her favorite shows.

Christopher Omiros is a Uniontown-based artist, Nitwittany Players actor, and self-styled artist-of-many-trades at OmBody Massage & Wellness. The events of 2020-2021 have reshaped us all in some way. For Christopher, his passion for art was reignited by the loss of his Aunt Chrissa Omiros Piwowar in 2019 when he bought a set of wooden birdhouses to paint and grieve with his friends and his family.  Later that year he unexpectedly lost his friend David, and in the spring of the 2020 pandemic he lost his beloved Yiayia Helen.  Amidst this personal loss is the backdrop of unprecedented social upheaval in the nation.  These great paradigm shifts in "how life is" rather shook some things loose for Christopher.  He leaned-in to the unpleasant aspects of life to learn that everything is impermanent. Through the pain of loss comes growth personally, inter-personally, professionally, and creatively. 

Creatively he admires illustrators like Eyvind Earle, Richard Scarry, Edward Gorey and Jan Brett to classic Impressionist masters Claude Monet and Van Gogh. To the awesome and the strange, the quirky and the fantastical, the surrealist Salvador Dali, and the weirder still, Hieronymus Bosch have wandered in the background of Christopher's imagination to influence his work. Christopher's creative reemergence signals a new hope for a reinvigorated imagination to allow for bolder choices in his art. His works are meant to be enjoyed slowly, meandering through valleys, or are they tree branches.... or the arms of an alien monster?  

 Derek C. F. Pegritz started drawing monsters at the age of six months and never stopped, only growing weirder as time passed and the vicissitudes of life wrought their mutagenic worst on him. Though greatly indebted to the Dadaist/Surrealist movements of the early 20th Century, the infernal grotesquery of Hieronymous Bosch, and the bio mechanical horror of H. R. Giger and  Zdzisław Beksiński, Pegritz’s artistic style derives from the intricate woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer and the etchings of Gustave Doré. He is best known for his black-and-white works but has begun adding color to his art. Though somewhat reclusive in reality, Pegritz maintains an active presence online via social media and his own website, The Meat Chamber—just Google “Pegritz.”