Riverside Artisans Welcomes Two New Members

OSWEGO – The Riverside Artisans co-operative welcomes two new members to their gallery and shop in downtown Oswego.

Kathy Hicks, a well-known and accomplished quilter from Sterling, and Cheryl Brown, an established art jeweler from Camillus, now have their works available at the Riverside Artisans.

Cheryl has been creating jewelry since 2005. After retiring from teaching Technology at a local high school, she went to work in a bead store where she taught others the art of beading. She is primarily self-taught, learning new stitches and techniques from beading books and magazines. Her love of bead weaving expanded to include bead embroidery and bead crochet.

More recently, she began to wire weave to set stones and fossils. In 2010, Cheryl began selling her work under the name Windflower Beads. In 2007, Cheryl founded the Bead Society of Central New York to promote the art of jewelry creation. She also joined the Gem and Mineral Club of Syracuse and has been collecting, cutting, and polishing her own cabochons (a stone that is polished to a finished shape, rather than being cut) .

Quilter Kathy Hicks began sewing at a very young age, when her great grandmother taught her to sew doll clothes from leftover rags and worn out clothes. By high school she was sewing her own clothes, but it wasn’t until 1995 when she made her first quilt.

Kathy usually has three or four projects in the works at any one time, which prompted her to invest in a long arm quilting machine. This not only allows her to finish projects much faster, but she can now provide a service to others who love to quilt, but haven’t the capability to finish their own quilts at home.

Riverside Artisans is a cooperative art store and gallery, operated by local artists and craftspeople, located in the Canal Commons at 191 W 1st Street, in downtown Oswego. The store open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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