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Art Blast on the Mon returns for one-day festival

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GREENSBORO – This year’s Art Blast on the Mon festival has been shortened to one day, but it’s still more than enough time for people to explore the old river towns of Glassworks and Greensboro, once the pottery capital of Greene County.

The event is back for its 12th year of free workshops with professional jewelers, potters, weavers and crafters, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at the Ice Plant Pavilion in Glassworks. People can enjoy live music and great regional food while creating their own art and shopping local artists.

Having a festival that offers people a chance to try their hands at art while giving local artists a place to demonstrate and sell their wares is a project of the Nathanael Greene Community Development Corporation. “Nat Greene” is a volunteer driven, non-profit organization that works with other regional groups to preserve the history and culture of the area.

Last year festivalgoers learned to use drop spindles made by Washington Spinners and Weavers guild member Cody Edgar of Brownsville and kids got to make woolly sheep cards to take home. Cody and his mother Kelly will be back with crafts for kids, wool to card and spin and a loom to demonstrate how cloth is made, one shuttle-throw at a time.

Gemologist Linda Metzer is an Art Blast regular, with a worldwide variety of crystals, quartz and gemstones to choose from, each with its own molecular, perhaps even spiritual story to tell. Metzer has researched the therapeutic qualities of the stones and metals that she has been fashioning into custom jewelry for more than 30 years.

This year she is bringing petrified sharks teeth, small gemstones and beads from her collection to make pendants and pins mounted on leather and strung on leather cord to take home.

Teaching artist Leah Lavrinc from Pittsburgh Filmmakers/Pittsburgh Center for the Arts will lead an all-day workshop making embossed aluminum pendants using foil, tape, markers and embossing tools. Lavrinc, a senior at Indiana University of Pennsylvania has been working with PF/PCA since 2013 and is passionate about showing students of all ages how to bring their own creativity to life. PF/PCA partners with the PA Council on the Arts to bring teaching artists to schools non-profits and community groups in Allegheny, Beaver, Greene and Washington counties.

The festival kids corner offers everything from free face painting to balloon tying and arts and crafts, including using Prismacolor pencils to make refrigerator art to take home.

Other sessions include Steve Belovich letting people take a spin on the potter’s wheel, glass artist Annette Johnson and Dana Bell, who will help guests create a key chain out of recycled bottle caps. Michele Sloan will demonstrate candle making and how to turn recycled books into birdhouses.

And what Art Blast experience would be complete without making Hillbilly Spin Art with a washing machine?

Saturday’s lineup of music is Eighteen Wheels and a Crowbar at 10 a.m., Red Turtle String Snappers at 11 a.m., Bourbon Street Band from noon until 3 p.m. and Vibrations Band until the festival closes at 6 p.m.

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