The University of Toledo’s Centennial Mall burgeoned Sunday for the 31st year with small tents — each one providing a shady refuge and intimate insight into a unique artistic world.
Michelle Opaczewski, a Toledo native, started crocheting over 40 years ago when she was just 12 years old.
“It’s my sanity,” she said, a smile sprouting from her lips.
Her tent was one of 121 featured at Art on the Mall, the annual Toledo art show. The event featured artists from across the country and showed off artworks including photography, jewelry, painting, metallurgy, ceramics, and more — all for sale at individual artists’ booths.
Ms. Opaczewski realized her hobby could become both a serious art form and a business during the pandemic.
“I was looking for something to do and started with this wonderful little cat pattern,” she said. “It’s evolved to all kinds of different animals.”
Ms. Opaczewski’s tent was stocked with crochet mice, kittens, and pigs ranging from keychain size to large stuffed animals. She also had reusable crochet water balloons, aimed toward preventing plastic pollution.
As the temperature rose into the low 90s, patrons walked from Ms. Opaczewski’s tent down a long winding path lined with different artists’ collections. Parents pushing strollers, couples, and even family pets meandered the expansive display of craftsmanship and creativity.
Free and open to the public, Art on the Mall was hosted by the University of Toledo Alumni Association. Activities and entertainment throughout the day included music and a young artist tent for children looking to create.
Veronica Bialecki, a local artist, has a special tie to UT: she studied painting as an undergraduate there.
While she considers her professional painting career to have begun in 2017, she said she never really stopped from when she was a crayon-drawing child.
“My big inspiration is definitely wildlife: birds, bugs, flowers,” Ms. Bialecki said. “It’s a lot of things I’m seeing in my backyard, so it kind of goes into my passion for gardening and birdwatching.”
Daily life, she said, is worth paying attention to: even something mundane, like a chickadee or a sparrow, has beautiful details we can recognize and appreciate.
Michelle Maddux, a local jeweler, also draws inspiration from nature. She likes to find her colorways from different plants.
“I actually have been doing jewelry since I was knee-high to a grasshopper — it's a skill that my mom taught me — but I started doing it professionally in 2011,” Ms. Maddux said.
A friend’s visit to Ms. Maddux’s home with a bag full of rings and pliers that the friend emptied onto a table started her learning how to make chainmail. Ms. Maddux soon “deep-dove” into the world of ancient chainmail, originally a form of armor knights used in battle, while her passion later transitioned toward more jewelry-focused applications.
For Ms. Maddux, making jewelry is both a hobby and a soothing escape. It allows her to get her “creative juices” out and flowing, she said.
Art on the Mall reports having nearly 10,000 annual visitors, and their number of participating artists has risen back to what it was before the pandemic, said William Pierce, UT’s associate vice president of alumni engagement and annual giving.
The event has gotten so big over the past three decades that it has sprawled beyond Centennial Mall into the area across from Memorial Field House, where this year’s food and drink vendors were set up.
Attendees walked by sipping flavored lemonade out of oversized cups. Even artists snuck away from their tents around noon to grab a barbecue sandwich or funnel cake.
“It’s my favorite art show, but I have not been in years because of COVID,” said Jody Sohnly, an attendee. “My son and his wife are in from out of town, and we decided to make an afternoon of it.”
Ms. Sohnly held a piece of metal garden art adorned with glass butterflies by Larry Mack, a Holland glass artist. She looks forward to adding it to her collection.
For artist Steven Wipfli, the artistic medium of choice isn’t glass, metal, or yarn, but paper.
After working as an art teacher, leaving his love of art behind was an impossibility. One summer, during a teachers’ workshop, his group visited a contemporary quilting exhibition and he was hooked.
“I had never seen anything like this before — these were not your grandmother’s quilts. These were very forward-looking, brightly colored fabric works, and there was just something that stayed with me about that kind of work.”
Because Mr. Wipfli wasn’t interested in sewing, he decided to pursue the medium in a different way. He began collecting paper from all over the world.
“Kind of one thing led to another and all of a sudden I was working like a quilter but with paper instead,” he said.
His tent was lined with paper collages of natural scenes — birds and birch forests — as well as floral vase arrangements and colorful housing complexes.
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