Sculptor,Ceramicist, Founding Artist

Yvonne is an artist and retired secondary school art teacher, who received her BA degree from Indiana University at South Bend and her MA from Ball State University. Her dedication to art blossomed during her years as a high school student and continues through the present. She has always divided her areas of interest between sculpture and pottery.

Yvonne feels a strong connection with the natural world and this inspiration is translated in her sculptural forms and in her affinity for the tactile and organic nature of clay. Her interpretations can be serious or humorous. Yvonne’s work can be found on display in Michigan, Illinois, Colorado, Florida, Texas, Indiana and England. This includes public commissions for bronze abstractions and her functional and sculptural pottery forms.

Website: Talisman Art Studio and Productions.

Sculptor, Ceramicist, Founding Artist

Beau Bilenki, originally from London, Ontario, studied sculpture with Tuck Langland at Indiana University.

His work has been exhibited at South Bend Museum of Art, South Bend Regional Airport, Indiana University Gallery, Saugatuck and Marshall Michigan, Wisconsin, New York and Chicago at the Vance Galleries on Michigan Avenue.

Beau has studied pottery with Paul Soldner (the American father of Raku and inventor of the Soldner Wheel) well known potter, Dick Lehman, and Aldelphia Martinez (New Mexican potter Maria Martinez’s granddaughter).

“I strive for classical form with contemporary interpretation. Whatever medium I work in, I create each work to be balanced either, in symmetry or asymmetry. I have been compelled to achieve a quiet beauty.”

“A new direction of cement on steel gives me the challenge of sculpting the surface with color and texture. My form now is simple and basic. I see more involved, complicated volumes emerging in my drawings. In my search for artistic fulfillment, I study history and antiquity. My current work consists of welded steel rebar geometric forms covered with a galvanized steel lath covered with concrete. With this concept, I can be a sculptor in the mechanics of welding the frames and a painter in the application of the surface.”

“An artist is one who can tolerate a great amount of disorder” Lawrence Bilenki 1967

Beau is one of our founding artists. Fire Arts continues to be grateful for his investments of courage, time, ideas, money, and energy.