Art studio offers place for creativity to blossom

Fortin Pottery LLC and Art Studio is an art business located at 219 Wisconsin Ave. Studio A in Medford. The place is owned and run by Jill Fortin. Fortin has been an art teacher for 20 years and has achieved her dream of opening an art studio. Now what is an art studio?

An art studio as described by Fortin, “Is a place for creativity and making art.” In other words, it acts as a working space for artists. It essentially acts as a workshop. It provides the tools, space, and environment to do your best work. This is especially helpful to those who find it difficult to make art at home.

There are those who may confuse an art studio with an art gallery. Where an art studio is where you make art, a gallery is a place to display art. Fortin Pottery LLC and Art Studio will eventually explore displaying and selling art, but the focus is to create art and to act as an educational space.

This art studio provides opportunities to create pottery, paint, draw, and create jewelry. Fortin will be running youth summer art classes, host art events, and individual art lessons. She currently has 3 instructors who are passionate about teaching art.

As for Fortin Fortin, she graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Superior with an art education degree and a studio art emphasis in photography. She currently teaches high school art. She is also teaching online art classes at the Rural Virtual Academy.

Fortin is committed to helping her community by doing events such as “empty bowls feed my people” to raise money for local food pantries. She is also involved with many community learning groups and clubs that teach people of all ages how to create a variety of art. She has advocated for art in her community by “painting the town.”

Through this program she was able to get 6 murals placed throughout the City of Medford, WI. Fortin is an artist who works with many art mediums. She has had her pottery, paintings, photography, jewelry, and sculptures in many galleries across the state.

The reason Fortin wanted to open up an art studio is she wanted to share art opportunities with others, beyond the building. She has wanted to open up an art studio for a long time and is very happy to now be doing so. She had been renting the space for a while before opening the place for others, working on making the space a comfortable art environment for all.

The studio is a non-profit, so Fortin’s goal is to continue working in education for many years. She is going to run the studio along with being a teacher. This is her way of sharing art with others. Fortin’s hopes for the future of the art studio is to have instructors share their artistic skills and talents with others to grow, offer more classes and keep the space filled with learning and art instruction.