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Artisan Alley expands cultural offerings for holiday shoppers
In Viroqua
Artisan Alley check out
THE CHECK OUT counter at Artisan Alley will more than likely be peopled by the artists themselves, giving shoppers an extra chance to connect with the makers who produced the beautiful items in the gallery. Here, John Craig runs the cash register while Harriet Behar chats with shoppers.

DRIFTLESS - Expanding Viroqua’s growing reputation as a cultural center and shopping destination, Artisan Alley is back for the 2022 holiday shopping season. The association of 17 artists is housed this season in a storefront next to the Temple Theatre on Viroqua’s Main Street.

“Viroqua has had VIVA Gallery for years, and so people know that the city is an arts and culture shopping destination,” Artisan Alley artist Harriet Behar said. “Artisan Alley expands these offerings, and we have a ‘co-gallery’ relationship with VIVA. Both galleries share information about the other in our stores.”

Behar recruited artists at the recent Driftless Area Art Festival, and observes the studio is like a miniature of that event.

“If you come to do your holiday shopping in Viroqua, you can take a piece of the Driftless home with you,” Behar said. “All of our artists live and work in the Driftless Region, all within one hour of Viroqua.”

Meet the artisans

This year, the number of artisans participating in the pop-up holiday gallery has increased to 17. Of those, 10 are returning and seven are new.

John Craig
John Craig

John Craig

John Craig was recently awarded ‘Best of Show’ recognition at the 2022 Driftless Area Art Festival.

“I was fortunate to realize in the third grade that I wanted to be an artist,” Craig explained. “My enthusiasm for expression has not changed much since then and I have referred to myself as a ‘see-it-all,’ with a need to continue to explore and experience art at all levels.”

Craig focuses on a series of limited edition giclée prints, but most of his pieces are collage. Another style is a mechanical drawing approach to some illustrations, that have a drafted line art look.

Kathy Fairchild
Kathy Fairchild

Kathy Fairchild

Kathy Fairchild has worked for many years in various settings as a photographer. Her watercolors seem to be an on-going process of adapting her photographic vision into works of pleasing composition and successful execution.

“Having painted with the Viroqua Painters group for some years now, I feel the input of fellow artists has been a great benefit,” Fairchild explained. “Watercolor presents its own realm of challenges and I continue to work towards better meeting those.”

Fairchild said she particularly enjoys images of nature, and for some reason is also very drawn to forgotten buildings and their testimony of times gone by.

Harriet Behar
Harriet Behar

Harriet Behar

“I have been a weaver and knitter since the mid-1970s, inspired by numerous trips to Central and South America, as well as the beauty of our landscape here in Southwestern Wisconsin,” Behar said.  “I create hats, sweaters, shirts, bags and items for the home using natural fibers including wool, cotton, and Tencel (made from pine trees).”

Her garments are tailored to hang well on the body, and hold up to everyday use, while highlighting the unique nature of hand woven fabric.  In many of her works, she uses tapestry techniques to weave in birds, flowers, landscapes or abstract designs. Natural dyes obtained from plants growing in our area are also used in some of her work.

Joseph Schwarte
Joseph Schwarte

Joseph Schwarte

A Chicago native, Joe Schwarte has lived in the Driftless Area since 1994.

After his discharge from the Army in 1968, he worked as a laborer for a while, before using some GI Bill benefits to go to  the American Academy of Art for one year. Schwarte said he saw his future when he went to the Art Institute of Chicago to see an exhibit called ‘The Arts and Crafts Movement in America 1876-1916’ in the spring of 1973. He discovered there that furniture was functional, practical, and could be beautiful.

“I have recently refined my design for a High Chair, and revisited an old design from 30 years ago,” Schwarte said. “I’ve also made some cutting boards, which are getting good reviews in Crain's Chicago Business."

Elin Haessly
Elin Haessly

Elin Haessly

Fiber artist Elin Haessly and her husband Bob own Viewpoint Farm, where Elin operates her Viewpoint Farm Fibers and Handwovens business. She was born and raised in Denmark, and has lived in the U.S. since 1983.

Over the years, she has been weaving dozens and dozens of rag rugs the Swedish way as she was taught in Denmark and Sweden. Her discovery of all the beautiful colors the cotton knit comes in was her outlet for a lot of rugs in the COVID years.

“I can weave a cotton rug in any color that will match your kitchen, bath, bedroom and children’s rooms or any other room you can think of,” Haessly said. “In the summertime, I spend most of my time dyeing the wool from my sheep in my summer studio surrounded by more than 45-acres of restored prairie, and with two other looms in the studio.”

Christine Myhr
Christine Myhr

Christine Myhr

Christine Myhr graduated in 1987 with a B.A. in Art and studied abroad at The Marchutz School of Drawing and Painting in Aix-en-Provence, France. There she learned to paint with oils and watercolors, working from still life, model, and landscape, and spending a year immersed in the light, color and beauty of Provence.

Christine has lived in rural Gays Mills for many years and continues learning and growing as an artist by taking workshops, and showing work at galleries and art fairs. She finds the beauty of the natural world inspires her to paint directly from life, hoping to capture the play of light and color by rendering what she sees.

Michael Koppa
Michael Koppa

Michael Koppa

Michael Koppa is a visual artist working in multiple mediums, including collage, letterpress printing, and book arts. His journey as an artist began on Milwaukee’s East Side in 1993 when he became the manager of his family’s neighborhood grocery store. There, he published 20 issues of a grocery fanzine (The Sphere), which included his first collages, and helped turn the store into a must-see Milwaukee institution.

With the acquisition of a 1912 printing press in 1995, he began designing, printing, and binding small edition books. Michael is a self-employed stone cutter, adding roughly 1,200 final dates to grave stones throughout Driftless. He continues to practice collage in his basement laboratory and on hotel room desks, and prints with hand-set metal type in his letterpress studio in Liberty, Wisconsin.

Amy Arnold and

Kelsey Sauber-Olds

These two are a husband and wife team, whose collaboration in the wood shop relies upon balance between their sensibilities, personalities and skills, as do their finished pieces.

The rough shaping of Basswood bodies and body parts is done with a bandsaw, chainsaw, grinders and large chisels, while the finer work of carving faces, hands, feet and texturing surfaces is done with smaller chisels, gouges and knives.  The pieces are finished with layers of milk paint.

“We are interested in exploring a balance between human and animal, wild and tame, crude and refined: movement and stability, humor and seriousness, adult and child and toy and art object,” Kelsey said.
Zoe Craig
Zoe Craig

Zoe Craig

Zoe Craig is a printmaker, painter and ceramicist working in Viroqua. In her artistic practice, she aims to explore and communicate themes of place and landscape, including the smaller and larger ways that we all interact with, and relate to the natural world and the things in it.

She is interested in the processes and intricacies linking sight and light – the ways we see or don’t see the world around us, as well as the ways we interpret and tell stories about our worlds.

Zoe enjoys the element of repetition that characterizes the medium of printmaking. She is interested in how the repetition of printmaking can mimic, inform, or speak to, the repetitions within our lives and the stories we tell about them.

Joan Bailey
Joan Bailey

Joan Bailey

Joan Bailey has been creating jewelry for 24 years or so, and is self-taught, starting out using primarily beads, and more recently, metals.

“I mainly use sterling silver, along with copper, brass and gold-filled metals,” Bailey said.  “I also like to re-purpose jewelry, as a way to re-create something into a useful piece.”

Another medium she has started in the area of fiber arts, is Eco-printing on silk fabric and paper. 

 “I make one of a kind silk scarves with this process,” Bailey said.  “Being able to create a piece by hand, that someone else appreciates enough to wear, gives me the encouragement to keep creating.”

Toby Skov
Toby Skov

Toby Skov

Initially, the camera served Toby Skov as a simple way to preserve memories of time spent outdoors, mainly during wilderness adventures. However, he soon realized that the process of making images resulted in a heightened awareness of his surroundings.

“Photography provided a greater personal connection to nature,” Skov explained. “The world we live in, and the creatures we share it with, are truly magical. For me, nature photography opens the door to fully experiencing our world and all its beauty.”

Creating nature inspired art is Skov’s passion. He says it makes him feel more alive, and grateful for the experience of living.

Paul Bick
Paul Bick

Paul Bick

Paul Bick is a potter with studios in Chicago and Viroqua.  He is primarily interested in wheel-thrown utilitarian objects, and in exploring the beauty of simple, organic form and color. 

As both a photographer and ceramicist, Bick sees simple objects as important and intentional constituents of the spaces they occupy. His work is always on display at Jarvis Square Pottery in the Roger's Park neighborhood of Chicago, where Bick and his wife host regular concerts and community gatherings, and have built a decorative kitchen garden and edible landscape.

Ken Garden
Ken Garden

Ken Garden

I grew up in a house with a wood shop in the basement, and no television. From the time that I was five or six years old, I was in the basement most nights sawing wood and hammering nails.

“I was always handy with wood, but not until I retired from 35 years in the graphic arts field did I set up a dedicated woodworking shop,” Garden explained. “I especially enjoy working with my lathe, and turning a scrap or a piece of firewood into something useful.”

Garden says there are endless possibilities that he has yet to explore. Instead of gathering wood for a project, he says he often finds a particular piece of wood that inspires him to create something special.

Nancy Garden
Nancy Garden

Nancy Garden

Nancy Garden creates one-of-a-kind handwoven, functional pieces such as tea towels, scarves, shawls, rugs, and table linen.

“I began to explore weaving in a summer course at UW-Whitewater in the early 1970s where my very first project was a full-length, hooded, wool plaid poncho - it was the 70s after all,” Garden remembers. “Whether it’s a rug or shawl or bag or blanket or tea towel, I love trying new colors, patterns and yarns.” 

She says that as she is weaving one project,  the next one comes to life in her mind, and she can’t wait to see it develop.

Michael Croatt
Michael Croatt

Michael Croatt

In late July of 2020 the northern hemisphere had a surprise visitor, Comet Neowise. Even when one knew exactly where to find it in the night sky, it was difficult to see.

“When a neighbor sent me a picture that she had taken clearly showing it, I decided I should give it a try,” Croatt remembered. “That night I went out and lined up the comet with a neighbor’s farm, and the resulting image is named ‘CometNeoWise.’

“A couple weeks later, during the Perseid meteor showers, is when serendipity struck a second time, and I remembered a photographic technique that I had not seen done in decades - painting with light,” Croatt said.

Back in the day, a popular technique with studio photographers was to use the ‘Hose master’ to light a product. The technique involved fiber optic light at the end of a pliable hose to light product in a completely dark room so the photographer could do multiple exposures on a single piece of film, lighting the pertinent parts.

Croatt’s next innovation was to put his pictures on an aluminum base, producing stunning prints.

“They come alive in a way that I did not think possible,” Croatt said. “They are truly unique in the way they shine when well lighted.”

Ashley Neary
Ashley Neary

Ashley Neary

Using traditional leather working methods, Ashley Neary creates hand-crafted belts, custom sized while you wait. Customers watch as their belt is finished with a solid brass buckle, leaving with both an experience and a lifelong wardrobe piece.

“I also design leather, suede and sterling silver earrings, tooled leather cuffs, adjustable bridle leather guitar straps, and woven leather wall art,” Neary said.

Neary will be doing in-person custom belt-making at Artisan Alley on Saturdays, Dec 10 and 7; and Tuesday, Dec. 20.

Delores Heiden
Delores Heiden

Delores and

Darryl Heiden

Delores and Darry Heiden began their handcrafted jewelry business, D & D’s Rock and Wire, in 2009.  Darryl is a lapidary, cutting shapes and hand-polishing rough rock into beautiful gemstones.  He also does silversmithing, and particularly enjoys forging pieces from pure copper to create settings for the cabochons (polished stones) that he has finished. 

Delores began as a wire artist, and expanded into silversmithing. She loves the art of hand fabricating delicate silver filigree. 

“We have always loved rock hounding,” Delores explained.  “From picking up rocks on the beach on our honeymoon 50-plus years ago, to digging rough rock in various locations across the country, we are always amazed at the colorful, beautiful treasures that are found in God’s creation.”

Their rock hunts have taken them from Midwestern states to North Carolina, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.