Edna Tyron, 86, marvels at the hand-painted dishes and bowls on her kitchen table.

The personalized pieces mark events like the birth of a baby, a wedding or an anniversary, and they’re all the work of her daughter, artist Melissa Grinter.

“When I draw something, it’s always stick people,” said Tyron, a Liberty resident. “I tell her she didn’t get it from me, except for the

appreciation.”

Grinter has painted, made jewelry, stenciled and created handmade Christmas ornaments since graduating from North Kansas City High School in 1971.

But it wasn’t until she and artist Kathy Reising began talking in 2000 that the idea for Nature’s Angels was born.

The women, then neighbors in Liberty, walked together and enjoyed the nature along Canterbury Park’s trails.

The idea was to use their art to make extra money. They settled on hand-painted ceramic pieces.

“I’d never done any art like that, so I went to the library to find out how to do it,” Grinter said.

She’d always liked learning new things and went online to find a supplier of ceramic dishes and tiles.

But Grinter and Reising found that dish decorating wasn’t unique enough to suit their tastes.

“What we found was that anyone can paint plates,” Grinter said. “So we

wondered what we could do to personalize our things.”

Marcia Capps helped them get started by displaying their wares at With a French Accent, a store in Liberty’s historic Corbin Mill.

In time, their baby dishes — personalized with the child’s name and birth date — were joined by Christmas dishes and more complex bowls decorated to mark a wedding, anniversary or other milestone.

“People could come in and see them and then come up with their own ideas,” Capps said. “It was fun. They would come with three pages of ideas, and Melissa and Kathy would somehow get all their ideas on the bowl.”

The women were commissioned to create bowls for events as varied as the retirement of a Winnetonka High School band director to a memorial for a mother whose daughter had recently passed away.

Grinter said that

Christmas and baby plates could be completed in three to four hours, but that the more detailed memory bowls might take 30.

“The most unique thing about it, the thing I love most about it, is that I meet with the people and get a complete history of their courtship,” said Grinter, who began working on her own in 2003.

The inside rim of Chris and Teresa Winders’

wedding bowl tells the story of where they met — at

Jalapeno’s restaurant — their first date (Halloween) and when Chris proposed (on Easter, with an engagement ring hidden inside a plastic egg in an Easter basket).

Even the music he played while proposing (“My Endless Love”) is noted for posterity.

If it’s an anniversary bowl, the images and names of the couple’s children can be included, along with a

honeymoon destination, their favorite coffee shop and a prized vacation

getaway.

Grinter works with unfinished bisque-ware, a ceramic with a coarse surface, and sketches images, words and other embellishments in pencil. She paints over them with a clay-based ceramic paint and uses a potter’s kiln to cover the pieces with a smooth, protective glaze.

The personalized pieces cost anywhere from $40 for a baby plate to $250 and up for ornate memory bowls.

Grinter showed her work at Liberty Fall Festival in 2007, but she no longer needs to attract

customers by displaying at With a French Accent.

“Everything I do now is just word of mouth,” she said.

Capps and her husband Tom each ordered

anniversary bowls for their parents.

Marcia remains a big fan of Grinter’s, even though Nature’s Angels no longer needs retail exposure.

“I’d take her back in a minute, but she doesn’t need a middle man,” Capps said. “She’s so creative.”

The Details:

Artist Melissa Grinter, the owner of Nature’s Angels, makes personalized commemorative dishes and bowls. She can be reached at magrinter@yahoo.com.

David Knopf can be reached at dknopf@kc.rr.com.

 

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