Artists endure wind, rain and long drives to showcase art in the Heights

First Saturday Arts Market returns April 2, from 11 a.m – 6 p.m. as it does every first Saturday of the month. The seven year anniversary show in March was met with what market manager Mitch Cohen described as, “Every weather event we’ve experience in 7 years rolled into one day.” Cohen says that he warned artists it would be a “character building” day with 20-40 mile per hour wind gusts, heavy rain, cold, heat and finally afternoon sun.  Cohen adds, “It turned out to be a great day by the time the sun came out, the artists did well and the patrons just poured in as if they’d been waiting on cue!”

Artist Profiles

The Bachers Family, New Boston, Texas.

Gary Bachers’ work is created with Prismacolor pencil on Duralar film. The result of his intricate layering is a vibrant work resembling paint. The full moon is usually present in his work as well as other signature features.

Christopher Bachers started painting with acrylics in grad school to take a break from the reading and writing, his “doodles” quickly evolved to include musical instruments with a vibrant color palette. Doodles begin as quick pencil sketches exploring motion, tension, and asymmetrical balance. Their organic interlocking forms express both wholeness and fragmentation, and the vivid colors of the final compositions create designs both of harmony (in their balance) and of dissonance (in their shifting optical illusions). Such musical terms are appropriate to his current work, which integrates musical instruments into the doodle designs.

David Vollmer – Wired Antiks, Sugar Land, Texas

“My artwork is all created by hand using ordinary knitting needles and various pliers. I have developed my own technique of knitting with wire, which I call “knitting off the needle.” With my technique I use only one needle at a time for the purposes of pulling the stitch and controlling the stitch size.”

Pettus Touré Mitchell – Memphis, Tennessee

For nearly a decade, artist Pettus Mitchell has traveled around the United States gleaning inspiration for his future works as well as displaying his art at local festivals and art galleries. His paintings run the gamut from historical portraits of the African Americans migration north in the 1940s to their current return to the modern south. Some of his pieces are inspired by cultural phenomena specific to the late 20th century, such as the popularity of video games and the rise of the digital era. Pettus himself is an accomplished graphic artist; he is also a CGI animator. His work is prominently featured at the Center for Southern Folklore and he is a mainstay at the Center’s annual Memphis Music & Heritage Festival.  Mitchell made his first appearance at First Saturday Arts Market in March of this year.