Artist Features
Rooted is proud to showcase the work of local Artists and Makers. You can find art and other handmade items in store. Check out featured artist and maker profiles below and be sure to give your favorites a follow on their social media as features only last 6 months!
Haley Ellis
My name is Haley Ellis and I paint what attracts me. I am 26 years old and have been painting for as long as I can remember.
While the novelty of everyday life wears mundane like clockwork, I do realize I am constantly surrounded by modern relics which deserve recognition.
Historic artists have granted you and I the privelege of viewing humankinds interactions with its environment over large spans of time. We have seen ancient plants and animals, people, architecture, and the many diverse worlds they lived in.
Today I live in a world of big bright advertisements, cardboard houses, and plastic cars; of bugs and birds that will one day cease to exist. Although I sometimes have trouble finding beauty in it, it is a world that deserves to be recorded and reflected upon in the future.
Erin Reese
Country Roads Flower Farm
Charlene Osborne
I am a self taught artist. I started selling my art on Ebay 3 years ago and sold around thirty paintings online. I started painting approximately 10 years ago and just fell in love with it.
I paint from my memories growing up in a small rural area in Virginia. I grew up on a farm and I paint from all the places, people and scenery that I remember as a child and sometimes I just paint whatever pops in my head. My art inspires me to achieve my goal to become an artist that will be remembered through my work.
My paintings have been displayed and sold through Crossroads Art Center in Richmond Virginia and The Franklin Shops in Fort Meyers Florida. I’ve shipped paintings to 14 states and would love to have one of my paintings in all the states.
I hope that you enjoy my art as much as I do creating it.
Linda Watkins
Gourds are planted in April, harvested in November, and put on the back porch to dry until March or April.
No two gourds are exactly alike; each one has a different shape or size. The hard part is deciding what to turn them into.
From birdhouses to masks, it is always a challenge to come up with new ideas using various mediums and recycled items. That's what keeps it exciting.
Steve leach
Steve Leach is a retired ironworker by trade and has lived in this area his whole life.
His interest in working with horseshoes started when a friend asked him to create a table using horseshoes. So many people loved it he started experimenting more with horseshoes & scrap metals.
He creates everything from small figures, plantstands, wreaths, signs, to the large Love Arch on Main Street in Chase City. He also takes custom orders.
Fran McKenzie
In the late 1980's I started painting digital portraits for our company newsletter for the "Employee of the Month" article. I used a simple software called "Paint". I accomplished painting 45 portraits. The reception for these was so positive that I decided to try portraits in oil. My first one was of my mother and I knew I had made her happy when she hung it in the living room. Since then I've painted over 200 portraits.
Last year I joined the Lake Country Artisans Guild and broadened my skill into still life, animals, local historical buildings, celebrity portraits and more, all in oil.
Sarah Bolduc
Creativity is what Sarah is best known for and art is her passion. As a mixed media artist she creates modern art utilizing varied mediums and techniques plus multiple color palettes, textures and forms. With lifelong training in the arts, Sarah incorporates thought, observation and emotion throughout her portfolio. The art is created intuitively relying on her many unique processes, thus the portfolio is diverse. Appealing: mixing reality with abstraction, her art pleases her collectors.
Sarah has won many awards for her art work. She has been jury selected for exhibits on local, regional and national platforms. Some of her awards include: several Best of Show and other award categories for multiple pieces in a variety of mediums in which she creates. 2023 found her winning two honorable mentions in juried competition, as well as Juror's Recognition Award for Nature's Garden a stunning 45x36 hand dyed fiber work exhibited in The BowerCenter for the Arts Nationa Biennial Fiber Exhibit.
In addition, Sarah's Art has been selected for publication: Fresh Fish: Textile Artists and Poets explore underwater life (2021) and most recently Artemis-volume XXIX-2022 and Volume XXX-2023.
Sara has served as President of Lake Country Artisans Guild from 2016-2023 and currently holds the position of Exhibit Chair uniting artisans with community in both Virginia and North Carolina.
Sarah works from her multiple home studios on Lake Gaston in North Carolina.
She exhibits and sells her work throughout the eastern United States.
Shelby Talbott
Kindred Spirits Pottery
Brigitte Bombardier & Dale Willingham are the ceramic artists of Kindred Spirits Pottery. We enjoy creating functional one-of-a-kind pottery using stoneware and porcelain clays.
We work on the wheel and hand-build, fire to ^6 using lead-free glazes & enjoy Raku firing as well. We are inspired by beautiful Lake Gaston and have our Kindred Spirits Pottery Studio surrounded by water and facing the stunning sunrises.
We implement multiple techniques and processes including sgraffito, hand painting, slip trailing, screen printing, glaze layering, and original photographs fired permanently onto the pot to create all original works.
We participate in local art festivals including LCAG’s Art at the Flea and the annual Rosemont Wine & Art Festival, to name a couple. Our art has been showcased at the Grand Opening of the Lakeland Cultural Arts Center, MacCallum More Museum & Gardens, the Prizery, Granville Museum in Oxford, Boydton Tavern, Clarksville Fine Arts Center, and The Rooted Cafe in Clarksville.
We belong to and have exhibited with Lake Country Artisans Guild, Warren County Arts Council, and Halifax County Arts Council.
As husband & wife, our life together is a journey, as is our pottery. Hope you enjoy!
Brenda Fariss
James Willis Sanders
J. Willis Sanders lives in southern Virginia with his wife, three banjos, three resonator guitars, and one acoustic guitar.
With ten novels completed and more on the way, he enjoys crafting intriguing characters with equally intriguing conflicts to overcome. He also loves the natural world and, more often than not, his stories include those settings. Most also utilize intense love relationships and layered themes.
His first novel is a ghostly World War II era historical that takes place mostly in the mid-western United States, which utilizes some little-known facts about German POW camps there at the time. It's the first of a three-book series, in which characters from the first continue their lives.
Although he loves history, James has written several contemporary novels as well, and some include interesting paranormal twists, both with and without religious themes.
He also loves the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and he has written three novels within different time frames based on the area, what he calls his Outer Banks of North Carolina Series.
Other hobbies include reading (of course), vegetable gardening, playing music with friends, and songwriting, some of which are in a few of his novels.