‘Garden of Artful Delights’ opens at Rumriver

Applicants selected one medium they wanted to focus on during their mentorship experience, and they were paired with a local artist who is very skilled and experienced with their selected medium.

The mentors and mentees met together multiple times a month at or outside the art center over a nine-month period. Mentors helped their mentee develop as an artist through assessing their strengths and weaknesses, as well as through collaboration, the implementation of strategies and evaluation along the way.

Mentees worked with their mentors to set goals for themselves and for their work.

Phillippi, a mentee in the Rumriver Art Center Mentor Program, has worked with Hyde, her mentor, to develop new skills in ceramic sculpture. Hyde is an instructor at Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, working with advanced students in hand-built ceramic sculptures.

After a 28-year career in art education, the 2018 Middle School Art Educator of the Year Phillippi is emerging with a fountain of ideas for sculpting large scale animals in clay. With a passion for digging up stories and working in the clay earth, Phillippi has created a body of sculptural work loosely based on the animals of the Chinese Zodiac Calendar.

Her animals are ready to take their place in the garden setting.

With the 12 Chinese zodiac animals planting the seeds of inspiration and the landscape of ideas, Phillippi invites lively conversation of how these animals turn up in all world cultures in the form of fables, idioms, creation stories, myths and legends.

Her intent, in giving human traits, characteristics and accessories to sentient creatures, is to see them as mirrors of ourselves and remind us all to toil daily to live peaceably with them.

Hyde adds sculptures of a mermaid, Pandora and replicas of ancient Persian horses to enhance how these myths and legends were developed in the Western and Middle Eastern worlds.

“Garden of Artful Delights” combines Phillippi’s favorite artistic endeavors: planting, pottery, photography and parables.

“Without the RRAC mentorship program, I am quite certain that I would not have had the opportunity to work with Franny Hyde, my mentor over the past 10 months, to harvest a bountiful new crop of ceramic sculptures. Many thanks to RRAC for the fertile soil to cultivate new artistic processes and ideas.”

For more information about Rumriver Art Center, their Emerging 55-plus Artist Mentorship Program, other classes for all ages, and their support of local artists, contact Angie Renee at the Rumriver Art Center at angie.renee@rumriverart.com or 763-323-8830.

Rumriver is located at 2665 Fourth Ave. in Anoka.