OTL Art Up!

Join us at OTL for our FREE series focused on local artists and their inspiring works! Come join us for our upcoming OTL ART UP! event on Saturday, November 7th from 1:30PM - 3:30PM at the Ottawa Tool Library! Our next featured artist will be Mona Rutenberg. Here is her artist statement: "My professional career has been about art therapy but now, frontline and center is my world of art and specifically is about sculpture. It’s how I see the world, whether coming up with ideas, brainstorming with a collaborator or client, then the discovery of the making of the piece by building, assembling, reassembling, removing parts, trying to find parts, and then incorporating one or more media to complete each piece. I wake up in the middle of the night, designing, thinking about ideas, problem solving. I am tickled by the clarity that surfaces which then in the waking world, needs to be reworked, refined, maybe scrapped or begun again. I have opened myself to acknowledge that I have accepted my job to play seriously! By working in the round implies that a sculpture “works” when it has a flow of energy that assures every part and element relates to one another from all viewpoints. All my found and collected pieces of metal must inspire me otherwise … why keep it? I chose the item because it has potential. Do I know exactly what I will use the part for? No. Each sculpture is unplanned and begins with the selection of one or two parts that seem to speak to one another. Positioning the parts means looking for the best angle, the best place to weld them together which can change as my hand slips or the part shifts as I hold it. I may add another or remove another element. I’ve learned to remain open to the moment. The conversation is between the pieces. And then, I walk away and return later to discover how I am impacted or if it reads well. Mostly, I just know and other times, it takes me hours or days to decide. " Note: This is a FREE event, but please register so we know how much coffee to brew and cookies to get. ;)