Battle Mountain resident Charlyn Pittman is the Cookhouse Museum’s featured artist and now has some of her favorite work on display for the next three months.
Pittman said she is self-taught and works in mixed media, mainly with paper – a combination of origami and other paper products – and recreates many ideas she sees online.
“I just go after things that I find really pretty that I see online or in real life, and I just try to replicate it. I like to go home and create art,” said Pittman.
Brightly colored flowers and exquisitely shaped roses sit among folk-art stars, and a giant white three-dimensional snowflake hangs in one window.
Of the Finnish star, Pittman stated, “I’m of Finnish heritage, and the Finnish people make a lot of these during the winter and around Christmas, as they believe if you hang a star like this in your house, you will be prosperous throughout the coming year.
People in Finland go through a long, dark winter, so they do paper cutting and paper art to keep themselves busy.”
Pittman said the modern-looking Polish star is made of many folded paper circles, and she uses plates of different sizes to trace around, then cuts them out.
For her large autumn wreaths, Pittman uses about 14 autumn-colored scrapbook papers curled, fluted, rolled and shaped to create each one.
Pittman, who has worked at Mills Pharmacy for five years, helps create the designs there, and works on the front window displays.
Pittman stated she has always been a creative person, and before she moved to Battle Mountain, was a professional clown. “I did balloon art, and transferred to paper art,” Pittman said, “I went into parties dressed as myself, in normal clothes, and then put on my clown outfit, wig and makeup – after the children saw me – in order to build trust. I started clowning in 1992 and did that until 2011. When I lived over in Germany, I did pantomime, which is very popular there, and we performed for the Department of Defense dependents.”
Pittman has a deep interest in genealogy and stated she is happy to provide private sessions in family history research as well as paper art, and can be contacted at 775-340-3614 or charlynpittmannv@gmail.com.
The Cookhouse Museum is open Tuesday – Saturday from noon – 4 p.m. Admission is free.
