Creativity, Rebirth, and Community: Tipp City, Ohio
Creativity, Rebirth, and Community: Tipp City, Ohio
The loss of a sense of community is a common plaint in this digital 21st century, but a married couple in southwest Ohio has found a recipe that mixes the arts, historic preservation, and a firm commitment to create a vital hub of belonging in a small community outside of Dayton. Sally and Steve Watson are the owners of The Hotel Gallery, a retail mecca for the arts that has transformed the downtown area of Tipp City and spurred an interest in creativity among the local community. The Watsons’ contagious enthusiasm and openness continue to inspire a spirit of love that Sally says springs from a solid Christian faith.
Both Sally and Steve are native to the Tipp City area. Steve is the driver of the preservationist projects, while Sally is the artist. Sally’s story begins like so many potters: a family open to creativity, a high school pottery class, and a love affair with clay. “My mother, grandmother, all my aunts were always doing something creative,” she recalls, “and I always enjoyed pottery. After my first child was born, I wanted to do something for me, something to help grow myself. I took a formal class and never looked back.” She set up a home studio, took more classes, and became known locally.
In the late 1980s, Steve began to purchase property in the downtown Tipp City area. The old City Hotel was his first acquisition. Built in the mid-19th century, the hotel served workers on the Miami-Erie canal. Steve envisioned a center for the arts and began to ask around town about local artisans who might be willing to set up storefronts in the large, now renovated, hotel. The local church gave him Sally’s name, and he left her a voice mail.
Sally and a potter friend, Jana Glass, had joined forces and created their own studio that they called The Potter’s House. They sold occasionally at local events and shows but mostly focused on creating. She and Jana had heard the local buzz about preservation efforts and a growing arts and antique movement. When she got Steve’s message, her first response was negative. “I wasn’t interested,” she explains, “in running a retail shop.” But Steve was persuasive and she soon agreed. She took one of the multiple storefronts on the hotel’s front street and set up shop.
Over time, Sally began to open to Steve’s vision. The hotel space filled with other artists and merchants. It became known as The Hotel Gallery and soon was drawing tourists off the major interstates outside of town. Steve began purchasing and restoring other historic buildings in town that already received National Historic Register designation a decade earlier. An old roller mill was converted into a performance space and event venue. Tipp City was transforming in a way that respected its history while creating a new focus on the arts, especially pottery. Sally expresses the movement as “the handshake of history and art.”
As Sally and Steve shared a common vision for their town, a love grew between them and they married in 1990, beginning life together that was committed to Tipp City’s downtown revitalization. The Hotel Gallery became a locus for gathering. Artists were onsite creating. Workshops shared techniques. Musicians presented evening concerts. Relationships formed between the artists and the community members.
Sally’s artistic vision grew. An increasingly productive potter, she explored new markets and developed new lines. “I began going to wholesale trade shows, takings orders, and was shipping all over the country,” she says. Many of her pieces evoked a country/primitive look, consistent with the antique market and the ambiance of The Hotel Gallery. “I soon realized that the production work was weakening our local market,” Sally explains, “and I decided to refocus the selling here at home.”
Sally found a local opportunity in a new brewery in the nearby town of Vandalia. She had made a face mug for a local customer, who liked it so much, he took it to the brewery and asked them to serve his beer in it. It created quite a bit of interest and soon she had many orders. Today, the Hareless Hare Brewery’s popular Mug Club sports over 700 mugs displayed on the bar’s wall. Each is given a three-month run, and a lottery determines whose mug will occupy the new space. Sally says the design features faces, and evokes the historic face jugs common in the southern states. She has made over 1,200 face mugs throughout the years.
Over time, Sally turned her energies to expanding her artistic voice and began to work in batik fabrics. Some of her designs were published by Penny Lane in 2012. Currently, she is exploring encaustic painting, using a technique that uses layers of hot wax to create an image. She says, “It’s similar to batik, but the opposite. Instead of using dye resist to create an image on fabric, the image is the wax itself.” She is working on her largest piece yet, an image of The Baptism of Christ. She has not set aside her pottery work. Currently, she is creating a large urn with a sculptural representation of an iguana, a special order that she says pushes her to new levels. She points out that creativity and the arts are all about re-birthing the human spirit by creating something new from within.
The Watsons have six children who are all grown and live in the area. They work in local businesses, and they all are involved to some degree in the downtown initiative. Steve says, “It’s the whole Watson family that really makes this work.” There are 13 grandchildren, so the future is bright. Steve has recently added an historic buggy whip factory to his Tippecanoe Restoration Campaign, averting an imminent demolition and saving another important historic property.
The Hotel Gallery is a success. The entire first floor
shopfronts are used by Sally to sell her many works. Artists rent spaces on the upper floors and the Watsons’ extensive collection, which includes art, clothing, and jewelry, along with home décor, antiques and oriental rugs is showcased in the building. Sally is in her 38th year at the hotel and is a daily presence known and appreciated by the community. Sally says, “Our family is very committed to the physical and spiritual restoration of our community.”
The Hotel Gallery sums up its work in the slogan, Using the Medium of Art to Uncover the True Source of the Human Spirit. Through the humble process of making something out of clay, a community has been reborn.
Learn more about The Hotel Gallery at https://hotelgallerytippcityohio.com
Learn more about Tipp City, Ohio at https://downtowntippcity.org