Talk about Art

By Carolyn Henderson

Dayton artist Dawn Moriarty goes hunting whenever she can, tracks down her prey, and drags it down to her cave. Only she doesn't go after animals. Or anything alive, actually.

What she does hunt are all sorts of paper products – tags, receipts, stationery, old sewing patterns, diaries, textbooks, ledgers – as well as vintage lace and fabrics. Her hunting grounds are antique stores, junk shops, yard sales, estate sales, secondhand stores, library sales, and anywhere else she finds objects that she can re-purpose and turn into her signature nostalgia journals.

And the cave? It's a finished basement space she's turned into her "woman cave," with three specific areas: one for her paper/journal work, one where she fashions jewelry from beads, gems and polymer clay, and one for doing yoga.

"I spend a lot of time in my cave," Moriarty, who has worked as a geriatric nurse for more than 25 years, says.

"I love nursing," she adds. "It is a rewarding and fulfilling career. It can also be emotionally and psychologically draining. My crafts – jewelry and journal making – are a way of bringing a peaceful balance to my life."

Moriarty is especially drawn to vintage items, incorporating them both in her necklaces and earrings as well as throughout the hard- and soft-backed journals that purchasers use as diaries, places to keep lists, even computer password logs. She still remembers stumbling upon an 1889 almanac at an antique store in La Grande, OR; tucked within the spine was an old, engraved sewing implement, still threaded with brown wool thread.

"The common theme to my creative endeavors is a love of old vintage 'stuff,'" Moriarty explains.

"I love knowing that each piece has a history. I wonder about the lives that it touched.

"I feel a connection to the sentimental value of each item."

Dawn Moriarty's jewelry and nostalgia journals are the featured Art Event at Wenaha Gallery (219 E. Main, Dayton) through May 18, 2019. The gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday.