Artwork of Addy Mucklestone now on display at Ozark County Library

The artwork of Gainesville resident Addy Mucklestone is now displayed at the Ozark County Volunteer Library as part of the organization’s visiting artist exhibits. The exhibit runs through September.

Her artist’s statement says: “Addy Mucklestone has gravitated toward art since she first picked up a crayon at age 2 and instead of scribbling, started drawing tiny circles. She quickly developed an affinity for faces and particularly facial expressions.  Even her original stick figures feature nuanced expressions. It is no surprise that her favorite things to draw are now faces and figures of people.  She has done much study on underlying skeleton and muscle structure to offer as much realism as possible and continues her fascination with the wisdom of God in His design for humans.”

Addy recently completed a year as an art student at Evangel University. Some of her student work is on display there, for which she gained positive attention from her professors. She has fun playing around with a variety of both traditional and digital media, but her current favorite medium is watercolor. She says she loves to display beauty through the use of color palettes and lighting and enjoys incorporating humans as well. She has become known for her drawings of puns and her series of “foods as people.”

After winning a contest in 2021, her design was featured in a logo and merchandise for the musical “Heartless,” based on the book “Heartless” by Marisa Meyer.

Addy is passionate in her opposition to “art” produced through Artificial Intelligence (AI), as “art is quintessentially a human expression that no computer or machine could match or replace,” she says.  

She recently took her art down off Instagram page, where she had over 3,000 followers. She said it was due to Instagram’s  lack of protection for real artists having their art “scraped” and reproduced by AI. She is working on setting up an Etsy store, called Paintstained Bones, instead.

The work on display at the library is for sale. Contact Addy at starpreserves@gmail.com with any questions about purchasing or commissioning art.

The Ozark County Volunteer Library, located at the corner of Second and Elm Streets in Gainesville, is run by volunteers and operates completely on donations. It is not tax funded in any way. The current open hours are Monday from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.; Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.; and Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon. The library is closed on Sunday. 

For more information on the visiting artist program and how to participate, contact Lisa Atkinson at lisacatkinson@ gmail.com or call the Ozark County Volunteer Library at 417-679-4442.