Kick-off for Habitat for Humanity’s Nativity Festival
Sarah Grant (left), founder and original artist of the internationally-known Sticks art and furniture company of Des Moines, told Chuck Offenburger (right) and about 25 others about her art, her business and her life during at the Gallup House in Jefferson Sunday afternoon.
The “conversation” was an opening event for Habitat for Humanity’s third annual Nativity Festival. A Sticks nativity set will be sold by silent auction as part of the festival. The stable in the 15-piece set is inscribed for the 2014 Nativity Festival. The set was made available to Habitat at a discounted price for the fundraiser. Opening bid was $890 to cover the purchase cost. The bid at the end of the Sunday reception was at $1,200.
Offenburger quoted one source in saying Grant’s work has “homespun charm without being insipid.” Her signature style is a combination of brightly colored, sometimes whimsical characters outlined with wood burning. About 60 percent of Sticks’ production is “stock” pieces sold in 100 galleries across the country. The remaining 40 percent is custom pieces for clients who provide stories and ideas for a wide variety of wall art, ornaments, accessories, and even a totem pole.
A story posted at www.womanaroundtown.com described Grant as “an exceptional artisan with an equally balanced left- and right-brain capabilities and enthusiasms,” Offenburger quoted.
Grant’s comfortable and humorous story telling easily kept the audience’s attention. She holds two graduate degrees in art and hoped to make a mark in the world of abstract art. She was living in her hometown of Ames and teaching as an adjunct professor at Iowa State University, and working as a server at more than one Ames restaurant to make her budget work, when a friend who worked at Meredith Publishing asked her to create a nativity that would “turn the page from ‘country cute’ to something else.” That was in 1985.
She was fumbling for a creative idea when she saw woodburned boxes from the early 1900s. She decided to paint on wood and burn around it, and then have her father (an orthopedic surgeon by profession) cut around the shapes. That evolved into the Sticks style.
Grant told of the evolution of her business. She said that even as a youngster, “I’ve always had a thing about business,” she said. “What struck me midpoint in my career is that good business people are as creative as artists. If they aren’t, they aren’t going to have a business that flies and soars and makes the world happy. The business side of this is as interesting to me as the art part.”
Sticks art is created in a “manufacturing facility of handmade American goods that are all based on really tight, smart, production-engineered systems” in southwest Des Moines. Grant characterizes her employees as “incredibly talented.” All who paint or draw have college degrees in art or are journeymen in their craft.
The nativity set will be on display at select locations during the week. The Nativity Festival opens next Sunday, Dec. 14, at 3 pm with the nativity display. A community Christmas concert featuring small groups, instrumentalists and church choirs from across Greene County will begin at 4 pm, followed by a soup supper at 5:15 and a pie auction at 5:35, all at First United Methodist Church in Jefferson. The silent auction will feature other nativity sets, not only the Sticks set. Bidding in the silent auction will conclude at the end of the pie auction.
The Nativity Festival is the primary Greene County fundraiser of Habitat for Humanity of Boone and Greene County.
Habitat for Humanity is a community-driven Christian housing ministry that develops working partnerships with local churches, businesses, governments, organizations and individuals to build and repair simple, decent and affordable housing for families in need.
