Maggie Nolan displays her paintings for the first time ever at the Ocean Breeze Arts & Crafts Show, held in Ventnor Sunday, July 14, 2024.
By NANETTE LoBIONDO GALLOWAY
VENTNOR – Following a postponement due to the rainy weather, the Ventnor Cultural Arts Center celebrated the 50
th anniversary of the Ocean Breeze Arts & Crafts Show, Sunday amid sunny but sultry weather.
Twenty-eight arts and crafts vendors showed their creations along the sidewalk around the Cultural Arts Center and inside the lobby of the library building.
“We normally have 32 vendors, but due to the postponement, a few couldn’t make it today because they had prior commitments,” Cultural Arts Director Susan Van Duyne Hunter said.
She, along with her husband Clint Hunter, is a potter who not only teaches at the arts center but make her own pottery. She has been a vendor at the show for 15 years and has been organizing the show for the last seven years.
The show has been a July mainstay for all these years because people are looking for fun things to do while they enjoy their vacation at the Jersey shore, but also because the locals like to support the arts, she said.
“People like the appeal of not only supporting local artists, but the artwork they create reflects the local culture of Ventnor and the shore,” she said.
There were paintings of seascapes, painted seashells, and upcycled arts and crafts that put things one might toss aside into the creative arts.
Bill Futer's glass pendants start out as a glass rod of Pyrex.
Bill Futer’s art is created in his home studio in Pittsgrove Township and at the Wheaton Arts center in Bridgeton where glassmakers learn the fine art of blowing glass and other techniques. As people stopped by to browse the oversized “marbles” he created, he encouraged them to hold them up to the sun to get a view of the spectacular colors buried inside the inclusion-free glass.
“Most of the marbles start out as a glass rod,” he said holding up the crystal clear rod of Pyrex. “I turn this piece of glass into a disc to press-in the design and then heat it to expand the glass.”
He said it takes between 90 minutes to two hours to make each marble.
Next to Futer’s tent was Shelly Greene who makes what she calls, “Junk Journals.” The books contain little pieces of decorative papers, labels and tags that can be used to journal a theme – either traveling or to commemorate a life event.
Parts of the book are made from recycled boxes from Amazon deliveries or frozen food boxes, which she covers with specialty papers that reflect a theme. Each is tied with a ribbon to keep the contents inside.
“I can personalize them for weddings or pregnant moms to journal their experiences being pregnant,” she said. “I also like to make them for cancer patients undergoing treatment that I use adult coloring book papers and included colored pencils so they can keep busy and journal while they are getting infused,” she said.
A first-timer at showing her work, fine artist Maggie Nolan did not even have a business card to share.
“This is my first show ever,” she said.
She lives in Media, Pa., in a small apartment where she paints her canvases, but is staying with her aunt who lives in Ventnor.
“My aunt told me about this show and I thought, why not?” she said.
Asked to describe her artwork, Nolan said, “Fun, nostalgic and personal,” pointing to a painting of her grandfather Roy Nolan, who in his straw topper resembled Elton John.
The next arts and crafts show will be the wintertime holiday version, which takes place indoors at the arts center in December.
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