The Bellville Street Fair offers more than rides and fair foods; there’s also art. Some of the art is on display at the Bellville branch of the public library—paintings, three dimensional art and photography. More art can be found steps away from the Main Street activity at the Bellville-Jefferson Historical Society Museum.
The museum will be open during the fair and needlework will be displayed in the community room. But on the first floor of the museum there is a display of paintings by local artist Joyce Fenton.
Fenton was most recently recognized for painting the front door of the Wishmaker House Bed & Breakfast, owned by Brad and Karen Smith, of Bellville. The Smiths also own Smith’s Hardware. Her front door painting, including a detailed peacock and apple blossoms, is but one example of her work. The door took her 18 hours a day, seven days a week, for three and a half weeks to complete.
There are academically trained artists; and then, there are artist who train themselves. Fenton, a Bellville resident, is one of those artists. She did well in art classes in high school.
“I was the top art student for four years of art during the worst time to be in art. Macrame and pottery were popular, and my art teacher’s second job was as a bartender. He never taught us the fundamentals of art, nothing but macramé and pottery. So I’m completely self-taught,” said Fenton.
“I can tell you the date I saw the first thing that was colorful. I was two years old. I saw red tulips in the neighbor’s yard. They were red, with black inside and yellow stamens. I was mesmerized. It was the first time I remembered colors, so quite young I started painting and drawing. When I was six years old we had a farmhouse that had a big blackboard and I started drawing and by nine years old I was painting,” she said.
Fenton also remembers looking through her family’s Funk & Wagnall’s Encyclopedia, looking for artists and their works and trying to copy them.
Fenton grew up near Newton Falls, OH but attended nearby Southeast High School, graduating in 1973. Her husband, Jeff Fenton, also attended Southeast. He was the captain of the football team and Joyce was a cheerleader.
Of her industrial-area upbringing, she said, “We were factory people. When you got out of school you got a job in a factory.”
Their school was in a very industrial neighborhood and she said most of the graduates took factory jobs. Few went to college. Jeff Fenton began training as a pattern maker; but Joyce couldn’t find a factory job, noting that she looked much younger than her age. One day she saw an ad for HIckson’s floral design school in one of her mother’s magazines, and she attended classes, walking many blocks to get to the intensive training. Afterward she gained a position as a floral designer and eventually managed a shop.
She and Jeff married and he transferred to tool and die work for General Motors. That work brought the young couple to Bellville, where they raised five children: Jeff, Jarrod, Jenessa, Josh, and Jayne.
Throughout it all, Joyce Fenton just wanted to paint. She also took up photography and did wedding and graduation photos. Today most of her photography is of landscapes because she uses the photos in the winter for images to paint from. And Jeff Fenton noted she constantly asks him to make sudden stops when they are driving so she can take a picture.
And Joyce Fenton said she and her husband are partners in everything. Jeff Fenton has his own talents and when she decides to design an new feature for their home, Jeff implements it. The evidence is seen throughtout their home, like in the dental molding and corbels that hold up shelves in their sunroom.
But she hangs very few of her own paintings in their antique and art decorated home.
“I can’t hang them because five years later, I think, ‘Oh, I can do better than that,'” she stated. “I paint what I see on a daily basis–a tree, a barn, whatever I see. I have a vision of what I want it to be.”
Raising five children restricted her time to paint, yet she has produced close to 100 pieces over the years. She originally painted in oils, but when the children were young she switched to acrylics to facilitate clean-up during her busy days as a young mother.
“She always put the kids before anything,” said Jeff Fenton.
“But painting was my dream. I want to paint every day and you have to paint every day to get better,” she added.
Her dream was to hold an exhibition. When that prospect looked bleak, she offered her paintings to her children and they all own several. She collected some of those for display at the Bellville-Jefferson Historical Society Museum at the request of museum curator Ruthie Shinabarker. With Bellville Street Fair visitors to the museum numbering as high as 700 in recent years, Joyce has an exhibition. The works on display feature local scenes and structures.
The museum is located at 167 Main Street and fairgoers will find it in a brick building east of the tractor displays. Her exhibit comes with the challenge to find two elements in each painting. When daughter Jenessa was young, she told her mother she wanted her to paint a spider and a cat in her painting. That request launched a tradition and all of Fenton’s painting have a cat (at least its face) and a spider subtly included.
“I can tell you the date I saw the first thing that was colorful. I was two years old. I saw red tulips in the neighbor’s yard. They were red, with black inside and yellow stamens. I was mesmerized,” stated Joyce Fenton.
