Barbara Johnson
Another excellent artisan you will want to visit at the SaddleBrooke Arts and Crafts Fair is Sue Hedrick. Sue is known for her beautiful and unique pottery, which many SaddleBrooke residents can verify. I’m always curious about what led artisans into their various fields and Sue told me that for her it all started in 1965. She was a student at Illinois Wesleyan College where she was pursuing a Fine Arts Degree. As an art major, she needed to take sculpture and pottery in order to graduate, so in her last semester she took pottery – and her love for this field was born.
After graduation, Sue taught art in both elementary and high school. During that time she wanted to learn more about her craft, so she took adult education classes in a high school in Wheaton, Illinois. Surprisingly enough, the equipment in high school was much better than what she had learned on in college, so she kept pursuing it and eventually began teaching adult education classes. She continued this for the next 11 years, which was only the beginning of her teaching the skill of pottery.
She currently sells her pieces in the SaddleBrooke Gift Shop and she became a catalyst for expanding the workspace for the SaddleBrooke Pottery Studio. There she continues to teach classes and I know from talking to several of my friends who have been her students there that her passion is definitely spreading! Stop by and see her at the Fall Arts and Crafts Fair and if you can’t be there you can see her work in the Gift Shop. Who knows – you might become hooked, too! If you do catch the crafting bug then you can always think about designing your own amazing pieces of art for people to see, go to vinylcuttingmachineguide.com and see what you can find on there to create your own amazing designs.