WELLSVILLE — A kaleidoscope of colorful hot air balloons floating in a summer sky over green fields, azure rivers, forests, and past barns is a natural subject for artistic impression whether through the lens of a camera or eye of the painter.
In the early years of the Great Wellsville Balloon Rally, local artist A. Thomas O’Grady, who already had an international reputation for his Americana artworks, was tapped to produce a poster to attract people to the Rally. His first posters were mostly informative, but before long O’Grady couldn’t resist his natural style and began creating posters that doubled as works of art.
To this day many of his posters decorate the walls of Wellsville businesses and homes and beyond.
O’Grady started the tradition of featuring the Balloonmeister’s balloon in his depictions as well as local points of interest, such as the Pink House, depot, library, well-known barns, local wildlife and more. After creating more than three dozen Rally artworks, O’Grady retired.
After that, the rally committee held a series of contests for several years, to attract another artist who could uphold the O’Grady style and popularity. Finally in 2016 an artist came forward — local woman Tracy Hetzel.
Hetzel is a 1987 graduate of Wellsville High. She readily admits that O’Grady was one of her greatest art influencers as she grew up in Wellsville and appreciated the artworks he created for the Rally.
She attended art school at Alfred University before receiving her bachelor’s degree in art history from the University at Buffalo.
She is a well-known illustrator. Her watercolors consist mostly of fashion illustrations and portraits. Her illustrations have been featured in monthly publications; the New York Coffee Festival, Paris Fashion Week, the United Nations, Times Square, and for America’s Promise, Colon and Alma Powell Foundation.
She has written and illustrated a children’s book about her hometown called W(Ella’s)ville. She also makes and sells hand-bound journals and is the Creative Director at Graphic Essentials, a marketing and design firm in Baltimore, Maryland. Links are available on her blog: LongBlueStraw.com.
Tracy currently lives in Baltimore with her husband and their two children. Her parents, Barb and Rich Hetzel still reside in Wellsville. Tracy visits her beloved hometown as often as she can.
In 2017, Hetzel became the official Great Wellsvillle Balloon Rally artist. Following in O’Grady’s footsteps she has created posters for the Rally that depict local points of interest, most often focusing on Main Street landscapes. Her first poster for the Rally was a depiction of the Pink House. Her most recent creation features the entire village.
Hetzel’s posters are available in two sizes, wherever Rally merchandise is sold locally.
“Karin and her two dogs. Don’t they all look almost the same?” Afghan windhounds and their owner are seen in Landstuhl, Germany. (Klaus-Peter Selzer/Comedy Pets)
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The annual Comedy Pet Photography Awards have arrived with some delightful pictures guaranteed to brighten any animal lover’s day. We’re not surprised that of the 25 photos on the final shortlist, many of them take place in the great outdoors. From a poodle frolicking in the grass to a turtle munching on some dandelions, the contestants really captured pets in their element.
The competition was created by professional photographers Paul Joynson-Hicks and Tom Sullam to build awareness around animal welfare and celebrate the essential roles pets play in our lives. Sullam said he appreciated the wide range of animals that entered the competition this year, and encouraged everyone to vote for the People’s Choice Award winner.
The winner, which will be announced on Aug. 11, will get a cool £500 U.K. (about $652 U.S. dollars) and a fancy camera bag.
Senior producer Niki Budnick writes about breaking news, pets, home and garden, wellness and more for weather.com.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
BUTTE — Model Shayne Hall of the Blackfeet Tribe walked across the stage in a red dress with white hand prints, a symbol for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in the state, and put her fist up in the air to applause from the crowd.
“It was a spiritual experience,” Hall said following the fashion show.
Hall was one of more than a dozen models walking in the First Peoples’ Fashion Show at the Montana Folk Festival in Butte on Saturday. Four Native American designers, — who have shown around the world — all said their work was rooted and inspired by their heritage or traditional techniques, with their own twist.
The fashion show was brought to life in part by Rep. Donavon Hawk, D-Butte, who first had the idea years ago and helped orchestrate the first Indigenous Fashion Show at the festival last year. On Saturday, Hawk shuttled models and designers from the staging area at the Hotel Finlen up the hill to the stage on Copper Street.
Hawk said he was emotional when he saw all the designers’ work. The show took place on a raised platform in a large tent with an estimated hundred people in attendance.
“It’s amazing to bring this to my hometown and show Butte and all of Montana our tribes, all our tribes and our culture has to offer,” he said.
Yolanda Old Dwarf, owner of Sweet Sage Woman and of the Crow Tribe, designed the dress Hall wore, along with other designs in collections titled “I am fearless,” “Centered” and the latest, “Patience.” Old Dwarf told the crowd she started her business after going through postpartum depression after having her son, who was on stage with her.
“I know I’m not the only one,” she said, to applause from the crowd. “Part of my purpose in life and in my businesses is to encourage and help people.”
Old Dwarf’s mother, Julie Kreitzberg, was emotional as she said it was “beyond words” seeing her daughter keep traditions alive “so they don’t get lost.”
“It makes me well up with so much pride,” Kreitzberg said.
Della BigHair-Stump of the Crow Tribe has shown her work at Paris Fashion Week, with one of the dresses in the show Saturday recently returned from being displayed in the Smithsonian Museum, but BigHair-Stump said she loved showing her work in Montana.
“Montana’s home,” she said.
BigHair-Stump, of Designs by Della, said she went from watching her grandparents beading as she was growing up to incorporating those techniques into her work today, with ribbon work and beading predominantly featured in the designs in the collection shown Saturday.
Rebekah Jarvey, a Chippewa Cree designer fresh off of a collaboration with Nike, showed designs in Saturday’s show that were recently featured at a fashion show at the Cannes Indigenous Fashion Festival earlier this year.
Jarvey described the “Love and Fashion” collection shown Saturday as fun and vibrant, saying her color palette is neon, with the clothes predominantly featuring neon green and pink.
“I think everyone should wear neon at least once in their life,” she said. “Get brave!”
The collection is also more price-friendly and ready-to-wear as opposed to her more pricey luxury lines.
“I’m happy that the Butte Folk Festival was able to give us Indigenous designers this platform to show and share our culture,” Jarvey told the Daily Montanan. “The Indigenous fashion industry is really brand new, and it’s just beginning, and we’re building it.”
She said there was no Indigenous fashion industry when she was growing up in Rocky Boy’s Reservation, with the industry focused on Euro-centric standards, but things are starting to change. She said this will be her seventh year running an Indigenous fashion show in Rocky Boy’s Reservation. Jarvey was also featured by Vogue as one of “15 Indigenous Artists to Know” from the annual Santa Fe Indian Market, something Jarvey said was a career highlight.
Jarvey said something she wanted to communicate was not to compare Indigenous designers.
“Every designer is unique with their own brand and their own aesthetic,” she said.
A model in Carrie Moran McCleary’s show wore a cobalt blue top hat featuring a beaded design, a piece that caught many eyes at her vendor tent at the First Peoples’ Market.
Sitting at McCleary’s vendor booth for her brand Plains Soul Designs prior to the show, multiple festival goers oohed and aahed at that piece in particular.
McCleary, who is Little Shell and Chippewa Cree but lives on the Crow Reservation, said her work is centered around the theme, “We’re still here.”
“Our tribes are still here. We’re still functioning. We’re still honoring our traditions and our value systems,” McCleary said. “And fashion shows are a really great way for us to be visibly seen by the larger Montana community, or wherever we’re showing.”
“We’re showing modern clothing because we’re modern people, and that’s what we wear,” she said. “We still know how to make clothing that honors our original designs – how we sewed, how we beaded, (and) that includes the colors and shapes and the authenticity.”
While some former NFL players struggle to find meaningful work after their playing days, former NFL cornerback Travis Daniels is juggling two businesses.On a hot July day in Lake Worth, Daniels looked good and felt good playing golf, after all, he was wearing his own clothing line.”JusBogey is my new baby,” said the Boynton Beach resident. The latest: Sports coverage from WPBF 25 NewsThe name was born when Daniels first started playing and admittedly wasn’t very good.”I kept saying to myself that if I could just bogey I would be so happy with that because it’s just plus-one. As I started learning about golf I realized only 10% of people will break 100, only 1% will break 72, so I have a huge community of plus ones to market it to,” the Hollywood, Florida native said.Daniels you could say is a Renaissance Man. In fact, Jus Bogey is his side hustle. His real job is as a professional photographer.Daniels’ first foray with the camera came while still a player in Kansas City, meeting with the Chiefs team photographer.”After practice, I would meet with him for like an hour and he would teach me about shutter speed and ISO and that turned into me taking pictures of my teammates,” Daniels said.Stay up-to-date: The latest headlines and weather from WPBF 25 Soon he built a business and now travels the country shooting events and weddings, many of his NFL brethren.”Signing the scholarship for LSU that was huge, winning the National Championship, now I can be part of those kinds of moments for someone else,” he said.The lessons he learned on the football field, many from his college and NFL coach Nick Saban, helped him in both his businesses.”Knowing how to lead, knowing how to listen and take constructive criticism–if you can just apply those in any industry you get into, you will eventually have success at it,” he said.
While some former NFL players struggle to find meaningful work after their playing days, former NFL cornerback Travis Daniels is juggling two businesses.
On a hot July day in Lake Worth, Daniels looked good and felt good playing golf, after all, he was wearing his own clothing line.
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“JusBogey is my new baby,” said the Boynton Beach resident.
The latest: Sports coverage from WPBF 25 News
The name was born when Daniels first started playing and admittedly wasn’t very good.
“I kept saying to myself that if I could just bogey I would be so happy with that because it’s just plus-one. As I started learning about golf I realized only 10% of people will break 100, only 1% will break 72, so I have a huge community of plus ones to market it to,” the Hollywood, Florida native said.
Daniels you could say is a Renaissance Man. In fact, Jus Bogey is his side hustle. His real job is as a professional photographer.
Daniels’ first foray with the camera came while still a player in Kansas City, meeting with the Chiefs team photographer.
“After practice, I would meet with him for like an hour and he would teach me about shutter speed and ISO and that turned into me taking pictures of my teammates,” Daniels said.
Stay up-to-date: The latest headlines and weather from WPBF 25
Soon he built a business and now travels the country shooting events and weddings, many of his NFL brethren.
“Signing the scholarship for LSU that was huge, winning the National Championship, now I can be part of those kinds of moments for someone else,” he said.
The lessons he learned on the football field, many from his college and NFL coach Nick Saban, helped him in both his businesses.
“Knowing how to lead, knowing how to listen and take constructive criticism–if you can just apply those in any industry you get into, you will eventually have success at it,” he said.
Moving to Chicago, for this native New Yorker, was confusing at times. How come the trains stop running at 1am? Why is the pizza so thick? Must we call them speed “humps”? But when the warm weather finally came along, these vexing questions promptly disappeared. Chicago, I would argue, is the best American city during summer. A cool plunge in the lake is never far away and people put trash in alleyways instead of piling it on steamy sidewalks. Best of all, the galleries stay open throughout August, and the museums and nonprofit art spaces deliver some of their best exhibitions of the year. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the galvanizing shows below.
Squint your eyes in the gloaming and the world begins to shapeshift. Solid slabs of concrete metamorphose into languorous folds of flesh. Or maybe that’s just what happens in the latest show from Lucas Simões, who must practice some kind of alchemical seduction to make steel and cement bend into lush folds recalling body parts, petals, and waves. The show, titled “Twilight” in Portuguese, would be stunning in any season, but the sensuality of these works best suits the steamy days and long nights of summer.
Patron Gallery (patrongallery.com)
1612 West Chicago Avenue, Chicago
Through August 19
Don’t let the glitter and day-glo palette of the works on display fool you, this exhibition is spiked with sterner stuff. The eight artists on view — members of Rupture, a database of Chicago-based artists of color founded by the exhibition’s curator, Roland Santana — give form to experiences of loss as well as joy. “If I grind my teeth every night for 22 years, how much longer will I have them? How many things can I explain to you before they’re gone?” reads the text in a beaded work by Sophia Karina English. The silhouette of a hanging human body composed of shattered CDs appears on a household door in a sculptural piece by Derek Holland. A longing to communicate, as well as the transcendent pleasures of true connection, pervade the motley works.
Public Works (publicworksgallery.com)
2141 West North Avenue, Chicago
Through August 19
Like a perfect summer picnic, this exhibition will leave you feeling energized and lighter than before. The five ceramics artists featured here expertly pair dashes of humor with more serious food for thought. Nadira Husain paints intricate orgies and leafy gardens on vessels that double as jaunty bodies with arms and breasts. Irreverent details, like the poofs of acrylic hair on Leena Similu’s diminutive abstract works, ground more sober reflections on identity that pervade the show. Zizipho Poswa draws from her Xhosa heritage and experiences in the Eastern Cape Town province of South Africa to create works with allusions to Bantu knots and the bundles women in rural areas bear on their heads. The works range in style, but all these artists understand the power of being thoughtful without slipping into self-seriousness. Even rarer, they know how to be funny without being flippant.
Mariane Ibrahim (marianeibrahim.com)
437 North Paulina Street, Chicago
Through August 26
For Georges Seurat, painting was a scientific endeavor, and from 1882 to 1890, the northwestern suburbs of Paris became his laboratory. There, Seurat experimented with placing dabs of complementary colors side by side to create optical dazzle in the eyes of viewers, a technique known as Pointillism. These semi-industrial villages on the banks of the Seine also attracted Vincent van Gogh, Paul Signac, Émile Bernard, and Charles Angrand, who produced luminous views of factories and gas containers, as well as more bucolic subjects like fields in full bloom and sailboats gliding on the river. After soaking in the show, go for a sun-drenched stroll along the harbor behind the museum for a seamless transition between art and life.
Art Institute of Chicago (artic.edu)
111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago
Through September 4
The COVID-19 pandemic threw structural injustices into stark relief in countless contexts across the country, but the experiences of incarcerated people provided some of the most devastating evidence that our system does not value all lives equally. Social distancing was impossible in overcrowded facilities and personal protective gear was rarely available, resulting in rampant infection. Michelle Daniel Jones — a scholar, activist, and artist focused on the carceral system who campaigned in Indiana for the emergency release of sick and elderly inmates, as well as those serving brief sentences — has gathered 61 works by 50 presently or formerly incarcerated artists who created art about or during the pandemic. Hanging from the ceiling are compelling quilted portraits of incarcerated survivors of police violence by artist and “quiltivist” Dorothy Burge, as well as textile memorials to Albert Woodfox, who endured more than four decades of solitary confinement and torture, and two Black trans women killed in Chicago last year.
Logan Center Gallery (uchicago.edu)
Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts
915 East 60th Street, Chicago
Through September 10
A member of the Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nation, Marie Watt laces abstract sculptures with Indigenous meanings. The musical works in this exhibition — pendulous, many-lobed forms that hang from the ceiling — are festooned with conical curls of tin called “jingles.” These works reference a Seneca creation myth, in which a woman falls from the sky (the artist calls them “jingle clouds”), as well as Indigenous medicine traditions, in which healers wearing dresses adorned with jingles dance to cure patients with the silvery, rain-like sound. Visitors become participants simply by stepping inside the exhibition — we pass through a waterfall of jingle cones, bringing the work melodiously to life with our movement.
Kavi Gupta Gallery (kavigupta.com)
835 West Washington Boulevard, Floor 1, Chicago
Through September 30
“I’ve always had quite a rebellious and contrary attitude,” Mona Hatoum once said. “The more I feel I am being pushed into a mold, the more I feel like going in the opposite direction.” As a Palestinian woman who found herself stranded in London when the 1975 civil war broke out in Lebanon, where she was born and raised, Hatoum refused to produce the tidy reflections on exile and Arab womanhood expected of her. Instead, she spent the 1980s crafting the raw, defiantly messy performances and videos in this bracing exhibition. Some pieces, like “Roadworks” (1985), in which Hatoum walks barefoot through Brixton dragging boots tied to her ankles, are cryptic. Others, like “The Negotiating Table” (1983), in which the artist lies bound, drenched in animal blood and viscera inside a plastic bag while recordings of Western leaders discussing peace in the Middle East play overhead, are more stridently political. For fans more familiar with Hatoum’s recent sculptures — elegant and disquieting distortions of everyday objects — these fierce and urgent early works will be a revelation.
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (mcachicago.org)
220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago
Through October 22
For more than a decade, the Chicago-based printmaker William Estrada has pushed a cart through the city and its suburbs with a simple goal: to get strangers to make art with him. The cart, inspired partly by those of Mexican ice cream vendors, unfolds into an impressive sidewalk studio where passersby can join free screen-printing workshops, discuss community issues, and make political posters expressing their concerns. Estrada’s commitment to grassroots organizing, increasing public access to art, and questioning the status quo through creative work fuels his wide-ranging practice. This solo exhibition, the artist’s first, brings together prints, photography, and documentation of public projects, as well as works by students and collaborators.
Hyde Park Art Center (hydeparkart.org)
5020 South Cornell Avenue, Chicago
July 22–October 29
The ancient Greeks were onto something when they assigned different terms to different types of love. How is it that, in English, we have just one word for such a mercurial, unruly force that shapeshifts every time it’s felt? The photographers assembled here capture some of love’s many guises: Jorian Charlton seeks out moments of everyday tenderness, private and profound, while Mous Lamrabat stages a theatrical search for love in a desert landscape. Others hint at the inevitable loss waiting in the wings of any relationship. A photo of two candles burning side by side by Jess T. Dugan reminds us that even the longest and happiest flames are necessarily fleeting.
Museum of Contemporary Photography (mocp.org)
600 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago
August 17–December 22
Bodies appear in pieces and surreal states of limbo in the five-dozen paintings, photographs, prints, sculptures, works on paper, and videos comprising this eclectic and enigmatic show. There’s an oversized pair of legs made of scented wax by Iris Bernblum that appear to emerge, upside-down, from the floor; headless figures that parade across a piece of embroidery by Elnaz Javani; and the artificial eye staring at a length of barbed wire in a photograph by Nathan Lerner. The show, which aims to examine “the processes and materials that structure and subtend life,” offers an eerie cabinet of curiosities in which established artists including Michael Rakowitz, Laurel Nakadate, and Charles Gaines, appear alongside more obscure talent.
DePaul Art Museum (depaul.edu)
935 West Fullerton Avenue, Chicago
September 7–February 11, 2024
