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'Hidden Gem' Craft Show Highlights Local Artists

By Leslie Albrecht | December 9, 2011 4:41pm

UPPER WEST SIDE — Thousands of shoppers will cram into stores this weekend on the hunt for holiday gifts, but at one Upper West Side apartment building, consumers can find a more intimate buying experience.

Five local artists will sell their work at a three-day craft show on the second floor of Columbus Park Tower at 100 W. 94th Street. Organizer Susan Beecher, a potter, calls the show the Upper West Side's "hidden gem."

Once a year, Beecher and a handful of other artists take over Columbus Park Tower's community room, where a nursery school operates during the week. This year's show kicks off Friday Dec. 9, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., then continues on Saturday Dec. 10 and Sunday Dec. 11 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The show is now in its 20th year, and though there's no website and it's never been advertised beyond the artists' personal mailing lists, the annual craft sale attracts a few hundred customers.

"It fits in with our movement today of buying local and buying smart," Beecher said. "My aim has always been to keep the specialness of handmade objects in people's minds."

Beecher, 66, spent 20 years working as a marketing executive in publishing before becoming a professional potter and ceramics teacher in 1990. Now she sells her work at national shows and teaches ceramics workshops across the northeast and in Florida.

She spends most of the summer in East Jewett, N.Y. where she built her own wood-burning kiln, and lives the rest of the year in Columbus Park Tower, a former Mitchell Lama building that converted to market-rate coops a couple of years ago.

Tenants like Beecher, who's lived in the building for 45 years, can rent the building's community room for a moderate fee. Beecher splits the rental cost with the other artists, who also chip in money for snacks and wine.

The venue offers a cheap way for the artists to show their work to the public, Beecher said. Galleries usually take about half of a work's sale price, and participating in large craft fairs can cost artists a few thousand dollars.

For shoppers, the show offers the unique experience of meeting the person who made the object they're buying — a rarity in today's world, Beecher said.

"It's important because it's our link to our history, and what went before us," Beecher said. "In ancient times, we made everything we used. I just like to keep people aware of that."

Aside from Beecher, this year's show features New Jersey artist Susan Bogen, who works in porcelain and stoneware; jeweler Marsha Davis, ceramicist Carol Grocki Lewis, and candlemaker Jean Bromage, an Upper West Sider who also sells her work at the Greenflea Market on Columbus Avenue and West 77th Street.

Bromage says the craft show harkens back to the days when community and commerce were more intertwined.

"People used to go to the village and they knew their baker and their butcher," Bromage said. "By going to something small and intimate, there's more of a relationship than you would get if you go to a big box store."