Olde Mistick Village show lets visitors get up close, personal with artworks, artists

Mystic ― Ann Torey said she was happy that visitors to her booth at Sunday’s Olde Mistick Village Art Show could relate to her three-dimensional art, which is made from crushed eggshells and acrylic paint.

“They love it. Because there’s so many people with chickens,” Torey said. “So they look at this, and it’s inspiring people. ‘I’m going to do that with the kids tonight!’ You know?”

Torey, 75, of Worcester, Mass., was one of at least 40 artists who showcased their individual styles Sunday at the annual event.

Torey, a longtime artist, explained the origins of her newest style ― eggshell art.

She explained that prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, she had spent 25 years primarily making glass wind chimes. But when she developed asthma, she could no longer cut and drill the stained glass pieces needed to make them, because it created glass dust that was bad for her lungs.

“In the meantime, I started saving eggshells ― for no particular reason. I’d wash them and put them back in their container and just stack them in my workshop,” she said. “I was making eggs one day and I cracked it and I looked at it and I said, wow, that looks like a tulip. So from that day one, I washed them out, put them in their container, and saved them. You know, I don’t know why I think the way I think.”

Once the pandemic began and provided an abundance of time and no more obligation to sell at art shows, Torey said that’s when she decided it was time to put down stained glass for good and pick up dimensional painting with the eggshells.

Two years of pandemic time allowed her to build up an inventory of eggshell paintings, she said.

“That was the end of my chimes, and I’ve been going forward with this. And it’s quite successful, ‘cause I’m the only one doing it,” she said.

To make the paintings, Torey said she first paints the background, then puts some pencilmarks in the area she wants to paint and then, using acrylic paint and the eggshells, which can be crushed up or left in big pieces, begins to build what she sees in her mind. Eggshells are thin, she said, so they often have to be layered. If you take the eggshell and crush it and squeeze it, as Torey did for many of the pieces, it reduces down to about the size of a quarter, she said.

The paintings range in subject matter from mostly flowers, to landscapes and buildings, to marine life, and require different amounts of eggshells. A large painting of a lobster, with pieces of shell delicately arranged into the shape of the crustacean, took about three dozen eggs, Torey said. Pricewise, her smaller pieces were about $30, while larger, more intricate ones, like a painting of an orchid in a bowl, was about $895.

Dave Vieira, who lives close to Boston, but was in Mystic on vacation with his family, came up to the booth and said he’d never seen eggshell art before.

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

Nearby, Nicole Kohut-Lynch, of Seymour, was oil painting a picture of a rock formation in Sedona, Ariz.

She said she was using it to demonstrate her process, how she begins with under painting, then sketches, then layers on oil paint. This was the case for most of the works that hung from the wall of her booth, which ranged from photographic realism, to more impressionist pieces.

“I like different styles,” she said.

Kohut-Lynch went to let down the back wall of the tent to protect the her oil paintings from the rain. Back there, and in the front, her paintings’ subject matter consisted mostly of landscapes and wildlife, much of it in Arizona, where her father lives.

Many of the works featured interesting-looking frames, like wood with holes in them. Kohut-Lynch explained that they were made by her father, out of Cholla and Saguaro cacti, and Joshua tree, a kind of Yucca plant.

“He just started making them about two years ago,” she said, adding her father had large collections of the plants and needed something to do with them.

Her pieces ranged from $50 up to $2,400. The most expensive was an impressionist painting of the Grand Canyon.

The booth of artist Carrie Wagner, who runs Cranston, R.I.-based SepiaLepus Illustration, displayed whimsical, multi-colored illustrations, along with painstakingly detailed maps of states or cities that highlighted their unique landmarks and cultural touchstones. She said the maps require a lot of research, and involves her trying to look for unusual or unique things about those places.

The style of them she likened to the work of the old mapmakers who used to draw dragons or sea monsters in unexplored territories where they though they’d exist.

As she explained her work, a few people came up to purchase prints. She said the art show is nice for being able to show off her work to a lot of new faces.

Meanwhile, Arnab Chakvaborty, of Montville, N.J., said his family was visiting Mystic and came by the show to explore. Though he was not sure if they’d buy anything, he said the family had been wowed by the variety of artwork, both in their uses of color and subject matter.

d.drainville@theday.com