Marsha Pippenger

About Marsha Pippenger

Marsha is a practicing visual artist, teacher, and arts integration specialist. She teaches art history at Wright State University, studio classes at Kettering College of Medical Arts, and is the Gallery Director for the Diane Kidd Gallery of Art at Tiffin University.
Marsha presents workshops and demonstrations showcasing her unique style of painting with paper on canvas. Her most recent one person exhibition, titled “Dinner in the City”, imagined the meeting of the fifteenth-century novelist Christine de Pisan and the twentieth-century artist Judy Chicago. In addition to regularly exhibiting her work, she has written a column on the visual arts, and is one of the former owners of Conversation Pieces Art Gallery.
Marsha received her Bachelor of Fine Arts and K-12 teaching certificate from Ohio Northern University, studied with nationally known artist Willis “Bing” Davis, and earned a Master of Humanities degree from Wright State University.
She is currently represented by The Cannery Art and Design Center in Dayton, Ohio. To learn more about Marsha visit her website.

Historical, musical, inspiring: Bernstein’s Mass

May 13, 2011 By Marsha Pippenger Leave a Comment

Just a quick note. I had the privilege of attending the dress rehearsal Thursday of Bernstein’s Mass, a theatre piece of musicians, singers, dancers. I have just one word: GO. If you possibly can, and you can get a ticket, GO.

From Dayton Philharmonic’s Website:

Using orchestra, chorus, children’s chorus, rock and blues bands, marching band, singers, dancers, and actors, Bernstein tells the powerful story of a group of disillusioned street people who join a visionary leader for a moving voyage of discovery and faith. This groundbreaking creative collaboration between the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra and the Wright State University Theatre, Dance and Music Departments promises to be the regional performance event of the season, if not the decade.

It’s Alive! Downtown Storefronts In Action

May 3, 2011 By Marsha Pippenger 1 Comment

Pictured below is artist Carol Stoops at work on her Activated Space on North Main Street – next to Flying Pizza – one of many original works of art that will “come alive” on Friday May 6th.
Her work, “Celebrating Dayton” is part of the Activated Spaces projects sponsored by the Downtown Dayton Partnership as part of May’s First Friday festivities. Look for more of these lively works all over downtown this Friday. There’s fun in the hunt!
Enjoy Stoop’s contribution at 223 North Main next to Flying Pizza. More of Stoop’s vibrant paintings are available for sale at the Cannery Art and Design Center, 434 East Third Street. Downtown galleries, restaurants and activated spaces will be celebrating First Friday on May 6 from 5-10 pm.

Sticks work.

April 11, 2011 By Marsha Pippenger Leave a Comment

I had a “Christo” moment today. It may have been even better than Christo. As you may or may not know, Christo and his partner and wife, Jeanne-Claude, who died in 2009, are perhaps the best known environmental artists in the world.
Today I had the honor and thrill of assisting another talented environmental artist at Wegerzyn Metro Park. His name is Patrick Dougherty and he is best known for his Stickworks: large site-specific sculptural installations made of natural materials. He will be working at Wegerzyn for the next three weeks creating a truly willowy – it’s built of willow – snake inspired by the Serpent Mound in Adams County. When it’s done, visitors will be able to walk through its curvy body, go inside it and peer through its doors and windows, and walk around it. The willow snake sculpture will be allowed to decay naturally.
Volunteers can sign up to help, as I did, and work alongside the artist as he creates this local masterpiece. I had a great time, and I’m going back for another day!
To volunteer, and I highly recommend it as this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, contact Bob Butts, Assistant Volunteer Manager at Five Rivers Metro Park. He’ll put you in the right place in the snake.
For more information on the artist Patrick Dougherty and his work, check out his website at: www.stickwork.net/
Before I left today, I took some pictures of the work in progress.

Just Go

January 20, 2011 By Marsha Pippenger 3 Comments

Marking the Past/Shaping the Present: The Art of Willis "Bing" Davis (at DAI)

I want to thank Mary McCarty for her DDN column of Sunday, January 16. She made note of something we all do in regards to the arts. We talk and talk and talk about how we need to go more, see more, do more, and do it all more often, and then one day, when we do go, it’s gone, and just like the song, we realize we don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone.

That’s what could happen to our arts – all of them – if we don’t change our attitudes.

Back in the early 80s, my husband and I lived in the Washington DC area, a region rich with art – the many museums of the Smithsonian, the Phillips Collection, the galleries, free stuff on the Mall, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walters Art Gallery – and to this day I regret not going more often to these wonderful places while I lived so close and it was so easy. Some of them I never got to (shame on you Marsha!). I had the same problem we all have in our lives; I had a finite number of hours in a day, a week, a month, and I still had to do laundry, run errands, clean the house, go to work, so how could I possibly set aside those “have tos” for an “I‘d really like to”?

Because, as Mary so rightly points out, those “like tos” have to become “must dos” or those things in life that enrich us will disappear. Some already have, sadly. It’s tough to change our actions; it’s a decision to be intentional; to set time aside to nurture ourselves. And, as we all know, the laundry still has to get done.

How do we do it? Am I making a case for a 12 step program in saving the arts? Do we need to form a support group of arts lovers who drag us to the museum, to the theatre, to those wonderful galleries full of interesting, thought-provoking local art?

I don’t think so. But I do think it’s time to make a promise: to honor that part of us that gains health and nourishment from creation, visual thought, and imagination. Otherwise we will surely starve.
When you go to the Dayton Art Institute: Enjoy the permanent collection, then visit these:

100 Years of African-American Art: The Arthur Primas Collection
On view through January 30

Marking the Past/Shaping the Present: The Art of Willis “Bing” Davis
On view through January 30

Folk Art from the Collection of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP
January 21 – March 27 in the Lower Level Galleries

Investigation Destination: Science and Math in Art
On view through April 3 in the Experiencenter

Art Is Life-Giving.

January 8, 2011 By Marsha Pippenger Leave a Comment

DMM welcomes our newest columnist Marsha Pippenger who will blog about art in our region.

Some New Year’s Thoughts 2011

Art is life-giving.

It’s an intangible. How can you explain to someone who has never experienced the power of

Medusa-a-Tangled-Web by Marsha Pippenger

a piece of work, something that has sprung from the thought of one human being, brought into existence due to that person’s trials and errors, sweat, mental anguish, trying to get it right, to make physical that which he or she sees in the mind’s eye? Art adds life – to the walls of your home, your cubicle at work, your city parks, the very roadways you travel – breath and thought and feeling and connection, a communication offered from the artist to you.

It was a difficult year, 2010. Many of us felt the negatives of an economy sliding downhill, jobs moving in not equal to the companies moving out, the broad sweep of cuts to the arts because funds are stretched to the nth degree just to cover the most basic of services. Hard decisions have had to be made. We all want to live in a community with plenty of recreational opportunities and cultural offerings. Most of us realize that in our current world we must get creative to provide those amenities when our cities are pushing to fill empty buildings, entice new enterprise, appeal to and keep our young adult residents.

Daniel and the lions den mosaic by K12 Gallery students

This is why we need the life sustaining power of art more than ever, and it is also why it is time for those of us who live and breathe and work in the arts to do more – I know, I know, we all are always being asked to do more – but small things can truly add up to big accomplishments. There is strength in numbers, and while competition is healthy, there really is great power in collaboration.

Dayton is remarkable in its offerings in the arts; it has more than most cities its size (a provable statistic by the way). We have more talented professional artists than most, we have fine galleries that could use more traffic and support, and we have an art institute that rivals those of many larger metropolitan areas. Dayton has been blessed by the philanthropy of past citizens who loved this city and its people; we are still enjoying the fruits of that generosity today. Moreover, we are charged with living up to that legacy. We need to, now more than ever before.

NOW, what is that next step? Patronizing art spaces of course. Listed below (in random order so keep reading) are some fine commercial galleries, museums and art centers where you will find quality original art in a range of prices. It is by no means a definitive list; if you know of others, please add them!

Cannery Art and Design Center, 434 East Third St, Dayton, (937) 313-9883

Visceral Gallery, 65 W. Franklin St,Centerville, (937) 409-0069

Willis Bing Davis Art Studio, 1135 W 3rd St, Dayton, (937) 223-2290

Zig Zag Gallery, 101 E Alex Bell Rd, Dayton, (937) 434-3565

Town & Country Fine Arts Gallery, 300 E Stroop Rd, Dayton, (937) 293-5381

Dayton Visual Arts Center, 118 N Jefferson St, Dayton, (937) 224-3822

High Street Gallery, 48 High St, Dayton, (937) 228-4532

Gallery 510, 510 E 5th St, Dayton, (937) 222-5151

Hotel Gallery, 109 E Main St, Tipp City, (937) 667-3696

Village Artisans Gallery, 100 Corry St, Yellow Springs, (937) 767-1209

Gallery St John, 4400 Shakertown Rd, Dayton, (937) 320-5405

Alley Fine Art & Framing, 269 W Central Ave, Springboro, (937) 748-0822