Charleston Crafts Gallery is spotlighting artists making functional and decorative fine craft in wood, glass, and fiber, perfect for adding expression to your home. Enriching lives with well designed, beautifully crafted, and extraordinary originality, these artists’ offerings are being featured in the front gallery October 1 - 31. The gallery is open 7 days a week from 10am-6pm.

Robb Helmkamp is a maker who was raised all over the U.S. by a career Navy father and a clay artist mother, growing up surrounded by both arts and crafts & military history and design. By juxtaposing wood and metal, light and dark tones, smooth and rough textures, his furniture and woodwork is a canvas for expression. Robb enjoys creating unique furniture and sculpture which ask questions, tell stories and make statements about our culture and the never-ending social avalanche we all live in.  Robb currently lives in North Charleston, SC where he works on commissions and makes a variety of projects and products in his home studio. He shows his work in galleries and exhibitions throughout the Southeast.

John Schumacher was born in Covington, KY, and graduated from Northern Kentucky University with a Major in Business and a Minor in Fine Arts. Many of the Civil War era houses in that area included stained glass windows in their architectural design, which he always admired, but could not afford. He decided to build a window himself, and thus began a continuing education, now lasting over 50 years. Moving to Aiken, SC in 1980, John pursued his professional career as a manufacturing manager, and also continued to study the masters of stained glass while refining his skills in lead, zinc and copper foil techniques. His large windows contain hundreds of individual cuts of glass. John's works have earned winning ribbons in regional competitions, encouraging him to continue his efforts.

After retirement, about 10 years ago, with children and grandchildren living in the Lowcountry, John and his wife Jane have moved once again, to Mount Pleasant. He has converted his garage into a studio and spends many hours creating traditional and contemporary stained-glass pieces.

Bonnie Younginer is a fiber artist working in wool, silk and cotton. She retired from a 30-year career in Interior Design and now weaves and needle and wet felts the scenery she studies in her beautiful Lowcountry environment. Her weaving methods are plain weave and tapestry style weaving using colorful wool yarns. She draws her own patterns for the weavings referred to as “cartoons” in the weaving world.

Her felting uses dyed fleece, either Merino or New Zealand Corriedale wool that has been carded and pulled into long strips of wool fiber. Handmade embellishments are added for texture and interest. Wet felting calls for the wool roving to be pulled apart and laid out in a way to depict the desired pattern she has designed. The loose fibers are placed on bubble wrap, covered with a nylon mesh and a warm water soap solution is spread over the wool design, the wet fiber is rolled up onto a tube and rolled back and forth until the fibers entangle and form a piece of felt “cloth.” Before drying, the “cloth” is hand manipulated into the desired form. After it is dry it is embellished and framed. Producing needle felted art she uses thin barbed needles. Following the pattern, she slowly pushes the wool yarns (and sometimes silk) with barbed needles into a pre-felt cloth, bonding the yarn to the felt pre-felt. It is then framed.

While these talented artists will be featured, the work of all Gallery members will also be on display at 140 East Bay Street and all art is available for purchase, including jewelry, wood puzzles, encaustic paints, fiber art, mixed media collage, apparel and accessories, plus functional and decorative objects in wood, ceramic, and glass. Our new location has also afforded us the opportunity to jury-in additional new talented artisans to our growing Fine Crafts Cooperative.