Canvasworks Holds Grand Re-opening Reception and Open House
Submitted by VT Journal on Mon, 11/19/2012 – 2:29pm
Lisa Curry Mair
By BY NANCY SILLIMAN The News Review
WEATHERSFIELD, VT -On Friday, November 17, artist Lisa Curry Mair, owner of Canvasworks at 326 Henry Gould Rd. in Weathersfield, Vermont held a grand re-opening reception and a series of events that continued throughout the weekend to celebrate her new studio and gallery. The festivities included a tour of the 200-year old farmhouse, studios, gallery and several workshops. The demonstrations included “How to Stencil on Canvas” and “How to Stamp a Design on Canvas.” There were workshops on “Learn How to Cut Your Own Stencils” where you could use the stencil design at home to create your own floorcloths, placemats or table runners fashioned from canvas; John Carwitham Designs- “Geometric Patterns from 1739” and “Learn to Marbleize Paint on Canvas”
Mair who has been in business nineteen years is originally from Groton, Massachusetts and grew up in Nova Scotia. She was a mathematics major and minored in art at Acadia University, in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. She then illustrated children’s books which led “to research in historical aspects of early American life,” according to her website. She “started doing floor cloths and branched out into murals,” she stated. There are beautiful murals, including a landscape of Weathersfield, Vermont and painted floorcloths everywhere in Mair’s creative new space. There is a depiction of a Mount Ascutney landscape on the stairway leading upstairs to the location where Mair’s bright and airy new office, library, worktable and sitting area are.
The style is Rufus Porter. “He was an 1830s itinerant mural painter,” she said. “He’s my third cousin five times removed, which is five generations back. Rufus traveled all over New England,” she explained.
Mair who is also an author wrote “Floorcloth Magic” in 2001, published by Storey Books, Inc, in North Adams, Massachusetts. “I was inspired by her book, five years ago and finally I’m going to make time to first take a class, then either purchase or make a large floorcloth for my dining room”, said Laurie Cobb, a Weathersfield, VT resident.
Mair has had several commissions, venues of which include Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Schuyler Mansion Estate in Albany, New York, the Museum of the City of New York and the Melrose Plantation in Natchez, Mississippi.
When asked how she began making floorcloths, Mair replied that when her husband of twenty-six years, Bart Mair built a kayak out of canvas, he had left over canvas and that became her first floorcloth and the rest is history!