One of the owners of Vinegar Hill Studio located in durham Ontario, Kathy Gilbert, comes with a background in education. Kathy taught art, physical education, and music for the Peel and Toronto District School Boards at the senior public and secondary levels for twenty-five years. Kathy is skilled in many crafts and as she puts it, “My interest is wide and my focus short. I want to experience it all. It’s like relating to thirty students in a class with different ideas and ways to approach that idea. My students have helped me more than they could ever imagine.” Kathy went on to promote the arts as an administrator in the Toronto schools before retiring to pursue her dream of being a full-time artist.Kathy is also a professional student in many ways. From her first Singer sewing course at age 11, she has always studied to find new and different ways to express her creative side. She always took educational courses to further enhance her teaching skills and upgrade her qualifications. Among others, she has earned a specialist certificate in Visual Arts. Over the past twenty years she has also taken more than twenty-five courses at Sir Sanford Fleming College, Haliburton School of the Arts. Kathy now spends most of her time working on commissions in stained glass, pottery, chip carving (with the Saugeen Woodcarvers), marquetry, willow furniture and printmaking when she isn’t working at the store in Durham. Kathy’s stained glass windows are installed in churches in Windsor and art pieces are found across Canada and in Europe.For the past few years Kathy has studied the art of lithography in Haliburton under the expert tutelage of Master Printer and artist Otis Tamasauskas. She has found a new means of artistic expression through this most technical of printmaking techniques. Her work is currently at the Gallery de Boer in Owen Sound. “Printing from limestone and using multiple techniques can result in a most complicated piece with deep messages, but it is also a very satisfying way to express my varied artistic interests.” During the past year, Kathy has taken her love of teaching to many new students through classes both at Vinegar Hill and at the Bluewater District School Board at night school classes in Flesherton and Hanover. At Vinegar Hill she teaches adults and children, sharing her love of and knowledge of art in a variety of media and techniques. Some of these have been: stained glass panels, painted floor cloths, stained glass patio stones, stained glass lamps, mosaics, drawing, portraiture, painting with acrylics, and printmaking. A new class in chip carving is coming soon. Kathy is the local fabric distributor for ‘Rugs So Easy’. “You can crochet fabric strips into rugs, chair pads, wreaths, purses, you name it. I spend many evenings crocheting fun creations using only 2 basic stitches. It is so easy!” Kathy has taken this new skill and shared it with many people through workshops and demonstrations in both church groups and sewing clubs through Grey and Bruce Counties as well as at weekly drop in classes at Vinegar Hill in Durham. With her lifelong interest in fabrics and sewing, it is a natural fit that we are expanding our offerings here at Vinegar Hill by bringing in a line of high quality notions. Hopefully we will be able to meet some of the needs of our local sewers and quilters. We will start with such items as thread, needles, scissors, buttons, measuring tapes, rulers, cutting boards and more and will expand our stock if needed. We started this new venture June 1, 2008

Todd Lawson grew up in Southern and Central Florida, surrounded by art deco and Mexican and Cuban folk art. Currently living over a thousand miles north in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with his wife; fellow artist Elesavet, his work has continued to explore the similar visual aesthetics and complex narratives he grew up admiring, while helping him to create paintings and dimensional work that also tends to pull many strong influences from Americana's past, such as; comic books, classic toys and retro paranoid advertising. Todd's work has graced many international commercial projects and has been displayed in art galleries through out North America; including Atlanta, San Diego, Seattle, Utah, New Mexico, Canada and the UK.