Artisans share handmade works at Westmoreland museum Holiday Mart

Visitors to the Westmoreland Museum of American Art found themselves surrounded by handmade handiwork at the annual Holiday Mart.

The event, Dec. 7-9, , brought together more than 20 local artisans from around Western Pennsylvania to sell their crafts on the first floor of the museum. The first day coincided with the museum’s Winter Lights Late Night and the city of Greensburg’s Luminary Night.

Museumgoers shacked on holiday cookies and enjoyed a cash bar, and families participated in craft activities at stations around the museum after shopping at the festive market.

For local writers, artists and crafters, the event represented a chance to get out in the community and show off their work while also checking out the skills of their peers.

Some were new to the event, while others had participated in the museum’s summer craft market, like Laura Gavin and her mother Alexandria Gavin, with Mars Design Studio. The studio creates wooden products ranging from ornaments to cutting boards and other decorative kitchenware and home décor.

Still others, such as textiles artist Martin Meyer, have some of their work featured in the museum’s gift shop year-round.

Sheila Hawthorne Klotz, of Blue Hues Art Studio, only started painting fairly recently, in 2019. A resident of the Hampton area, she is one artist who returned to the market from the summer.

“I started with watercolor, and I do a lot of acrylics now,” said Hawthorne Klotz. She showed off a collage she had created by piecing together pages of National Geographic magazines and running the ink together with cleaner liquid.

“It’s a nice venue for people to come,” she said of the museum.

Artist Keira Meyer was also enthusiastic about the event.

“The museum is just so good to us, to all the artisans that are here,” said Meyer, whose shop “Beaded This” offers handmade bead artwork and crafts made from recycled fabrics.

A highlight of her stand was her upcycled denim angel ornaments, made from jeans fabric that could otherwise be discarded.

Sarah Kuchma and her husband Bill, of Ligonier, had a stand to sell and sign their whimsical children’s books about dogs. Her book, “If Puppies had Pockets,” was inspired by her own family dog.

“We have an 115-pound yellow lab, and one day, we were in the living room, and a loud noise happened, and he jumped up and didn’t know which toy to grab, because he likes to hoard his toys,” she said. “So I said to my husband, ‘What if that puppy had pockets?’ ”

The book includes a place at the end for families to put a picture of their child, she said.

Both Kuchma and her husband are glad to attend the fair — and support the museum.

“You see everybody at these events,” Bill said. “The people are what make it happen. How many people would you see being out on a Thursday night?” he said.

“We just love being able to help support the museum in and of itself,” Kuchma added. “We’re in the gift shop as well, so just to help the community in that way, because of the free membership that the museum offers, it’s a great opportunity.”