JOEL GEHRINGER / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Saturday, September 17, 2005 7:00 pm
When the Lincoln Arts Council holds its fifth annual Lincoln Arts Festival this coming weekend, more than 100 artists will fill the SouthPointe Pavilions at 27th Street and Pine Lake Road to show and sell carefully and skillfully crafted paintings, jewelry, sculpture, pottery and more.
For many artists at the festival, art is life. They’ve devoted years to their medium and used it to earn a living.
But for two Lincoln artists, art started as a hobby, not a career. These men fine-tuned their craft in their spare time, finding a creative outlet from more traditional careers.
They spent weekdays at work and weekends at shows, managing their day jobs while watching their hobbies blossom into new opportunities on Lincoln’s art scene.
At this year’s festival, they are living proof that one doesn’t have to quit his or her day job to find success in the creative world.
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In the day, Larry Pelter is an energy services manager with Lincoln Electric System. He’s been with the company 34 years, continuing an interest in electrical engineering since his days as an anti-submarine warfare specialist in the U.S. Navy.
At nights, Pelter is a ceramic artist with Lincoln Clay Studio Cooperative, 2722 N. 48th St. On three or four nights every week, he shapes, glazes and fires his creations — which he described as “mostly nonfunctional pottery.”
It’s not that Pelter is dissatisfied with either electrical engineering or ceramics. He likes them both.
“Everybody has their right-brain interests and their left-brain interests,” he said.
Pelter shows off the products of his artistic, right-brained side Saturday in his second year at the Lincoln Arts Festival. His pieces cost between $10 and $80. He’ll join his wife, Peg, a full-time china painter for 20 years.
“She kind of pulled me over to the dark side,” he said.
While Pelter’s second career in ceramics is fairly new, his interest in art isn’t.
He’s been into into clay ever since he was a small child. “Some of my earliest memories are of my mother setting me up under the big tree with some modeling clay,” he said.
As a child, Pelter used clay to illustrate childhood fantasies and tell stories.
“When you’re a little kid, you don’t do art to make things pretty,” he said. “You do it because you’re engaged and you’re telling a story, whether it’s to yourself or whoever. I did that with clay.”
Despite his love for the medium, Pelter chose to follow other interests.
“I never pursued it as a profession,” he said, “but I’ve always been interested in it.”
Five years ago, Pelter started playing with clay again, having traded his modeling clay for raku, a rapid, delicate, Japanese-influenced form of pottery.
But he’s still telling stories. Every creation tells a tale, Pelter said.
“When I’m throwing a pot, I’m engaged in a story of some sort,” he said.
Ideas for stories can come from anywhere, Pelter said, including Chinese culture, fruit and ostrich eggs — which influenced one of his African-themed pieces.
“With that one, I was trekking across the Kalahari, psychologically,” he said. “I’ve also done some primitive, Paleolithic motifs. When you do that, you become a cave artist in France or Spain. The piece is a record of the journey.”
Pelter admitted the stories behind his art might not always be obvious.
“But that’s what I’m at the shows for,” he said, “to tell the story.”
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Richard Austin likes to tell stories, too.
But the tales behind his artwork are fact, not fiction.
Every piece of jewelry Austin creates contains a stone, and if asked where any given stone originated, Austin can explain every color or design, whether it came from extreme pressure or fossilized sea creatures.
“People love to hear the stories behind their stones,” he said.
Austin, a retired University of Nebraska-Lincoln landscape architecture professor, found his artistic outlet in stonecutting and metalwork, creating jewelry, clocks, sundials and sculptures from his small-but-comfortable workshop behind his house.
At the festival Saturday, he’ll show and sell earrings, necklaces, rings and bracelets in his fifth year at the festival. His pieces, which he described as duller and more organic than typical jewelry, start at about $20.
For Austin, lapidary, the art of stonecutting, came naturally. Both his grandfather and father were stonecutters in Texas. Austin dabbled in stonecutting when he was younger, but he also found a job at a Texas nursery, where he decided to become a landscape architect.
In 1973, he accepted a position as a professor with Kansas State University, and by 1980 he had found his way to UNL. Through the years he continued to practice lapidary, but only a few years ago, he started to explore metalwork in his basement.
“I tinkered as a hobby, not really creating anything,” he said. “It wasn’t very intense, just noisy.”
After a few classes in silversmithing, Austin started creating earrings and entering art shows.
“I really started to do well with the jewelry, and that gave me the catalyst to gear up,” he said.
When Austin’s work became more serious, he moved his projects out of the basement and into a side room of his garage. He started finding the necessary lapidary and metalworking tools, including diamond-bladed saws, metal shearers and rollers. The tools he couldn’t buy he made from scratch.
Using stones, such as obsidian, malachite and coral, and metals, including gold, copper and steel, Austin began to experiment with his jewelry and expand into sculpture and art clocks. He’s even been commissioned to create furniture, something Austin said he’s never attempted before.
But he said he likes a challenge.
“I enjoy the creative process more than I do the product,” he said. “If I get halfway through a piece and it’s not working for me, I’ll stop and melt it down. I’m my own worst enemy, my wife says.”
After retiring two years ago, Austin said he’s been experimenting with his work and entering more art shows across the region, but he’s excited to still be a part of the Lincoln Arts Festival.
“It’s really coming on to be a premier show,” he said. “I want to support them as much as I can.”
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Whenever they can find the time, Austin and Pelter plan to collaborate on a few projects.
“We’re trying to find a way where we could put together his work and my work,” Pelter said.
Austin said he’s intrigued by raku pottery, and he wants to use Pelter’s pieces as his central stone to move metal around.
“We’ve both been pretty busy,” Austin said. “But we’ll keep trying to find a way to make it work, like old guys do.”
Because of Pelter’s job at LES and Austin’s busy show schedule, the delays in a joint project are understandable. These guys are used to being busy.
But if and when the two artists create a joint piece, it will serve as an example to both artists and traditional workers alike that it’s never too late to start expressing one’s creativity.
Reach Joel Gehringer at 473-7254 or jgehringer@journalstar.com.
Festival starts Saturday
The fifth annual Lincoln Arts Festival, sponsored by the Lincoln Arts Council, starts Saturday at SouthPointe Pavilions, 27th Street and Pine Lake Road.
Here’s a look at the weekend, including the festival’s art demonstrations and musical performances:
Demonstrations:
* Saturday
10 a.m. — Peg Pelter, china painting
Noon — Marc Kornbluh, glass
2 p.m. — Keith Anderson, handmade paper pulp painting
* Sunday
10 a.m. — Julia Noyes, abstraction in painting
Noon — Keith Anderson, handmade paper pulp painting
2 p.m. — Juanita Williamson, hand-built pottery
Music:
* Saturday
11 a.m. — Baby Needs Shoes
1 p.m. — Les Trois Jive
3 p.m. — Stefan Gaspar Trio
* Sunday
11 a.m. — Baby Needs Shoes
1 p.m. — Stefan Gaspar Trio
3 p.m. —Lightning Bugs
For more information about the festival, call 434-2787 or visit www.artscene.org.