Nina's Nook opens in Turners Falls

I've rented a tiny slice of Avenue A in Turners Falls, Massachusetts and filled it with my art and craft. Pocketwheel pocket books, fabric bead jewelry, figurines and statues, cool paintings and cards and neat stuff that I continue madly to make! I'm open Friday and Saturday afternoons or make an appointment by calling 413.834.8800. Hopefully I will have time to put more stuff online as well.  

Update on Sunday, July 3, 2011 at 10:17AM by Nina Rossi

Wake Robin Morris dancers blessing the Nook!

Update on Sunday, July 3, 2011 at 10:21AM by Nina Rossi

Kids playing with the wall-mounted marble run on a recent Saturday afternoon

some of my Neenerbeaners necklaces....

Update on Sunday, July 3, 2011 at 10:29AM by Nina Rossi

pocket wheels all in a row
paintings reflected in mirror on "craft" wall

Update on Sunday, July 3, 2011 at 10:32AM by Nina Rossi

Upcoming Exhibit

Update on Friday, May 20, 2011 at 8:52PM by Nina Rossi

file:///Users/nina/Desktop/DSCN2411.JPG

First Performance of the "Wharf Rats"!!

Finally, a working band. Jazz guitar, sax, two violins, bass. To be joined by electric bass guitar and then piano player (playing dollhouse piano). It's changed a bit from the original orchestra pit, but who knows what I will end up with. Check out the sculpture gallery to see pix!

Bass Player and Violinist

Two cold castings are completed in the Mouse Musician series. Next: the saxophone player. Then I will have a jazz trio. I find it rather nerve racking to pour these because it is a new technology for me. Hope I get in the comfort zone before too long.

 Check my sculpture gallery! 

Pocket Wheels are Here!

Pocket Wheels have their own gallery page now, with two different styles available to choose from.

These handbags are are built around re-purposed tires from wheelchairs and bicycles.

Update on Sunday, August 15, 2010 at 2:06PM by Nina Rossi

Pocketwheel debuts in Turners Falls at the "Fabrication Fashion Show", part of Turners Falls Riverculture Block Party, August 14 www.turnersfallsriverculture.org. Model Evelyn Daly in outfit designed by Yoshi Kogo www.yoshikogo.com  and Nina Rossi out of discarded belts dyed with black sharpies, red mesh, and used tires. 

Look in the "fashion gallery" photos to see last year's "Fabrication" creation, our DJ Samurai outfit of used vinyl records. We heated, cut, drilled and shaped used LP's into armor plate laced together with dyed cording. The helmet was made from a hard hat with kids toy train tracks laced together on the sides. We really outdid ourselves in our first collaboration. 

The Fabrication project was the initial inspiration for the pocket wheels, as the method of lacing things together and using recycled materials became part of my visual vocabulary. And wheels have always been a theme in my life. I loved working on my ten speed bicycle when I was a teen and wanted to be a bike mechanic. Unfortunately I never found an apprenticeship. Later I became immersed in the gear head world of restoring cars and ran a parts store specialising in foreign car parts at a time when there weren't many outlets and the suppliers hadn't yet started selling directly to garages www.pelhamautoparts.com. Along came my art project with shopping carts --another set of wheels--after I studied art at Greenfield Community College.

Currently, I work at Eddies Wheels for Pets making wheelchairs for disabled animals--mostly dogs and cats but the occasional rabbit, pig and goat as well www.eddieswheels.com. Making pocket books from discarded cart tires is another extension of this continuum of wheels to the world of art and design as well as connecting to new happenings in the town of Turners Falls.  

Of course I have other obsessions and fetish objects: shoe forms, high heels in size 5 or 6, foundry molds, short long weiner dogs, fractal forms and sacred geometry, blood and tar. Some things are more interesting to me, but there is so much potential in all of the material world around us that I am never at loss for an idea, it is only a question of which direction first?