By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Artist Jean Gidich grew up in Lorain, and now lives in Ottawa County.
An art teacher at Genoa High School, she creates finely detailed pen and ink portraits of people and wildlife.
Those drawings, though, mostly sell elsewhere. “I would say I sell 80% of my work out West,” Gidich said.
She is represented by galleries in Lake Tahoe, California, and Fort Worth Texas. She also sells work through Instagram and Facebook.
On Saturday, she got local recognition for her work. Gidich placed first in both the Juried and the People’s Choice categories of the Art Walk in downtown Bowling Green.
Other prize winners were:
Randy Bennett, painting, second place in the Juried Art
Yuemin Xin, traditional Chinese watercolor, third place, in Juried art
Ian Dawson, glass and metal, second place People’s Choice
Jill Allport, painting, third place People’s Choice
Art Walk, now in its 34th year, is presented by Downtown Bowling Green and the Bowling Green Arts Council. The event features art displays in shops throughout the downtown.
Since early this year, Gidich’s drawings have been on display at Myla Marcus Winery.
On Saturday the artist set up her easel and worked in the front window of the winery. “I love to work,” she said.
Gidich juggles a full-time teaching job with a full-time art practice. As a teacher she works along with her students.
Art Walk gave her a concentrated time at the easel. “Normally I wouldn’t be drawing so many hours on a Saturday.”
Gidich also had the chance to talk with viewers in the shop who stopped to watch her apply tiny marks to her portrait of a long-horn ram.
Gidich said that Kevin Madaras, owner of the winery, reached out to ask her to exhibit her work. “It’s nicer here than in my storage unit,” the artist said.
If a gallery wants a piece on display, she travels to the winery, picks it up, and replaces it with another drawing. She always has something new ready. “I’m a drawing machine.”
Bowling Green has been a good venue for her. In 2022, she won the Best 2-D award at the Northwest Ohio Community Art show at BGSU.
Gidich, who has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art from Ohio State, started out as a zoology major. She switched to art. She also completed a minor in animal science.
She went into teaching after receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts, thinking she’d be in the classroom a few years before pursuing art. That was 34 years ago. Now she’s a few years from retirement.
She was active as an artist throughout that time. She didn’t start drawing until 2017. A graduating student gifted her with some drawing pens he had found in his locker, and said he wondered what she could do with them.
She stuck them in her desk drawer, and forgot about them, before discovering them in fall. At first , she drew animals and people together. Her portrait of singer Miko Marks with an eagle perched on her shoulder won the NowOH award and is on display at Myla Marcus.
Now she focuses on the details of animals – wolves, bison, and bears are favorites. She selected an image of a wolf to display in the library where the juror, Amy Beeler, viewed the work.
The event also raised money for the flowers along Main Street in downtown by conducting a decorated chair raffle. Participants picked up an old restaurant chair from Downtown BG to imaginatively transform. Mary Dawson’s “Van Gogh Garden” garnered the most votes.
