With the holiday season in full swing, the newly opened Dartmouth Cultural Center provided vendors and crafters with a place to spread holiday cheer with an Artisan Fair on Dec. 1. 

Michelle T. Lapointe displayed her stained glass and photography work. She has been creating stained glass art for thirty years, beginning with a class at the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School.

“I wanted to create some of my ideas into reality, and I chose that medium,” Lapointe said. She hand cuts each piece of glass before grinding the edges, applying foil, and soldering each piece together for everything from small ornaments and keychains to large panels and necklaces.

She even created stained glass for a trumpet for a special commission — the half-circle design, featuring a music note stemming from a heart, was soldered into the crook of the instrument. The musician calls it his “trumpet tattoo.”

Lapointe can be found on Facebook and Instagram at The Glass Connector. She works in the Hatch Street Studios in New Bedford.

Pat Kellogg is a painter, a printmaker, and a jewelry maker. At the fair, she showed her jewelry which is created from a variety of stones and pearls, along with Swarovski crystals and some glass beads.

One of her specialties is hand-knotting pearl necklaces on silk thread. Each pearl is separated from the next by a tiny knot, which is both beautiful and practical. If the strand breaks, the pearls won’t be scattered across the floor, and the knots keep the pearls from rubbing against each other, which could be damaging over time.

Kellogg said learning to tie the tiny, perfect knots was one of her proudest moments as a jewelry maker — each knot has to be snug to the pearl and push the pearl towards its neighbor, without creating too much pressure or leaving space for uneven gaps.

“Each activity is unique to the visceral thing you get out of it,” Kellogg said. She described the tying the knots as a meditative activity. Kellogg’s work is for sale at the TL6 Gallery at 100 William St. in New Bedford, and she can be reached by email at pjkmwh0626@yahoo.com. Kellogg also teaches at the Cultural Center.

Heather Jo Davis is a ceramics artist, who said she’s loved clay since childhood. Now, she makes functional and sculptural work in clay and also teaches classes through the Cultural Center, which are held at Artscapes New Bedford.

“I really like pinch bowls because you become so intimate with the whole piece,” Davis said. She also builds a lot of her work in layers, so it grows from the ground up — much like the plants that inspire a lot of her work.

For more about Davis and her work, go to www.heatherjodavis.com. For more information about the Dartmouth Cultural Center, including a list of winter classes, go to www.dartmouthculturalcenterinc.org.