Nationally acclaimed artist Michelle Stitzlein will be at Logan Branch at 10 am and the Laurelville Branch at 1 pm for Summer Reading Program #2 this Wednesday, June 11th to show and tell how she turns recycled materials into art! She was born and raised in the small town of Coshocton, Ohio, and maintains a studio in a re-purposed, former grange hall in the rural community of Baltimore, Ohio. With family ties to the now mostly-defunct, manufacturing history of her hometown, a teenage life spent in a culture of 1980’s wastefulness, and memories of a thrifty, fabric-scrap-reusing grandmother, Stitzlein creates sculpture with found items that resonate with fortune and abundance but that also address ideas of economic stress and natural depletion. Utilizing materials she scavenges and collects, her work is mindful of the resourcefulness and bootstrap mentality of farmers, homemakers and the depression era, as well as folk artists and craftsmen in developing countries. Her work and imagery venerates imperfections found in the handmade, the patched/mended and secondhand and pays deference to nature and habitat enduring continual loss and destruction due to the industrial pursuit of new and raw resources.
Stitzlein holds a BFA from the Columbus College of Art & Design, in Columbus, OH. Her work has been exhibited at the International Museum of Art & Science, McAllen, TX; Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, PA; Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, Auburn, NY; Appleton Museum of Art, Ocala, FL; Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, Mt. Vernon, IL; Mulvane Art Museum, Topeka, KS; Carnegie Mellon University / Miller Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA; Ohio Craft Museum, Columbus, OH; COSI, Columbus, OH; Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, OH; Franklin Park Conservatory, Columbus, OH; and the Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix, AZ. She has been an artist-in-residence (Headlands Center for the Arts, CA; Millay Colony of Arts, NY; Shenandoah & Denali National Parks) and was awarded Individual Excellence Grants from the Ohio Arts Council in 2008 and 2017.