We can’t believe it is already November and we are ramping up for the first Friday festivities with featured artist: Matty Tesch! Matty was born and raised in Findlay, Ohio, and later attended Bowling Green State University (BGSU) to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design. Between being a freelance designer and marketing executive Tesch spends her free time painting natural subjects and experimenting with color interaction. She enjoys exploring the relationship between opposite tones and blending, pulling inspiration from light interactions on skin.
Most of her artwork focuses on ridiculous-looking animals and their relationship to color and pattern. Her peculiar subject matter branches directly from the pandemic- as the world became tenser she pursued lighthearted inspiration. “My paintings have no purpose other than my own amusement, I paint for myself and it has worked out well so far.” Her love of detail also plays a part in her work – throughout school she focused most of her energy on subject details disregarding the container itself, she solved this problem by just working on smaller “mini” pieces.
You can check out more of Matty’s colorful creations through the month of November at theCW Depot! Or check out her Instagram for her newest pieces! You can also learn more or RSVP to this event here.
Andrew Stronge was born in Sunderland, England, but moved to the states when he was young. He always had an interest in art and illustration, and he had creative parents who allowed him to express himself all over his bedroom walls. At the encouragement of extended family, Andrew went to school for web design and computer programming, but after a few years working in Charlottesville on different UVA department websites, he realized that he was moving too far away from his passion in illustration. He decided to pursue a job at a local screen printing company where he could use his artistic skills. He started off doing grunt work around the shop, but quickly moved up in the industry, eventually becoming lead designer and operations manager at one of the larger local screen printing companies.
While working full time, Andrew continued to pursue his own art, doing the occasional freelance illustration job or small craft fair, and even illustrated a children’s book called Mathematical Mischief. A charity event called Screens ‘n’ Suds in Richmond, VA inspired Andrew to combine his skills in illustration and screen printing to create his own screen-printed posters. His art has always had a strong pop-art inspired style of bright colors and bold lines, and his work in the screen printing industry had perfected his technique. This medium allowed Andrew to create unique hand made prints of his work that were much more affordable than the hand-painted canvases he had been selling, allowing him to reach a larger audience.
In 2016, Andrew decided to make the leap to leave his job to pursue Stronge Designs full time. Andrew now travels all over the east coast to show and sell his work at comic cons, craft shows, and punk rock flea markets. He occasionally sets up live screen printing events where he can educate people on the process of printing t-shirts and his posters. When he’s not traveling to a show, he is a stay-at-home dad to his 1-year-old son, Alister, and has turned a passion for collecting vintage toys into a small business called Time Capsule. Through Time Capsule, Andrew and his wife, Adrienne, sell vintage toys online and in a shop called Oddballs Collectibles in Richmond. Andrew lives at Lake Monticello with Adrienne, Alister, their two old pugs, and a very large robot and vintage space toy collection, a passion of his that you can see reflected in a lot of his sci-fi inspired work.
This month the Gaines Group had the opportunity to sponsor an event very near and dear to our hearts, Noche de Salsa 2021. This event was held by the Scholars Latino Initiative (SLI) featured a drive-through Latin dinner with margaritas along with a park and watch a salsa dance performance. SLI strives to create college opportunities for local Latinx students currently in high school through leadership coaching and academic mentorship. Scholars Latino Initiative also assists students financially by assisting in scholarship searches and dual enrollment programs through high school.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY1UYo2zDNQ&t=1s
Since its founding in 2012 SLI has found that donation amounts have tripled allowing the program to grow and incorporate even more families into their organization. As of now, SLI has a grand total of 118 alumni that have moved through the program and continued on to higher education, their alumni have attended 21 universities such as Harvard, James Madison, Virginia Tech, and many more.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY1UYo2zDNQ
Those who attended discussed the feeling of community involvement as everyone gathered in a way that was not only safe but allowed us to feel a little bit of normalcy again. We could not be more proud of our community for coming out, having fun, and supporting SLI.
This past weekend we had the pleasure of sponsoring the 2021 Virginia Mennonite Relief Sale. This all-volunteer event attracts around 10,000 people a year and raises money for the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) which works to ease a variety of issues such as oppression and poverty. The MCC also heads natural disaster response efforts and works with local organizations to distribute supplies and encourage peace throughout affected communities. Aside from sponsoring this event hundreds of people supported this effort through purchasing food, crafts, running a 5k, and participating in the auction! Did you see those quilts? Talk about beautiful!!!
Our very own architect, Deborah Smith, volunteered her time at the breakfast booth serving up omelets, Hannah and Sophie Hendricks (Charles’ girls) also volunteered, and our marketing executive, Matty Tesch supported the event by stocking up on (the world’s greatest) donuts.
We were thrilled to not only support this amazing event this year but three years prior as well!
Our very own Deborah Smith has begun her leadership training through LHR here in Harrisonburg Virginia! Founded in 1979 this program strives to encourage aspiring leaders to grow in communication skills and encourage community involvement through monthly sessions. We are incredibly proud that our introverted architect survived a full day of team-building activities, and learned and retained more names than ever before thanks to the help of those games!
The first session of the program was held at Horizon’s Edge and focused on team building within the cohort and identifying qualities of good leaders and teams. The day was filled with group activities that helped everyone get to know each other and also taught lessons on communication, working in large and small groups and leadership. The activities ranged from rock, paper, scissors tournaments where everyone that lost had to cheer on the winners (Deborah won a round!), to building towers out of spaghetti and marshmallows (she also won!).
Throughout the duration of these activities, it was important to listen and understand the leadership style of every single person involved. While some were more naturally inclined to step forward to lead the group, others held back while still offering helpful advice on how to improve strategy. Overall these exercises proved just how important it is to make your entire team feel heard and appreciated, especially through group challenges. Afterwards, the teams sat down and reflected on their core values and discussed how vital small and large decisions can be to the end goal at hand.
