Phil Berry and Jo Merkle for Athens: Glimpses of Home

My beaded valentine: one couple’s story
By Jenaye Antonuccio (photo by Sherry DiBari)


Jo Merkle and Phil Berry just left their homestead to head west, seeking treasure.

This isn’t the first time. The couple plans such trips each year.

Leaving behind their off-the-grid, self-built, country cabin and in-town business in an older home situated near the ghost of railroad tracks (which once brought bustling activity to the west side of Athens), the good-natured duo will return with a temporarily-satiated travel bug. The round trip to warm, sunny Tucson, Arizona and the 2009 Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Showcase provides Merkle and Berry with necessary revitalization and stock, readying them for the beginning of a busy season at their co-owned 8 N. Shafer Street shop, Beads and Things.

But, as their travels have taken them all over the world, they say they always happily gravitate back to Athens, a place that, for them, suits who they are best: as a couple, business partners, and individuals.

For Merkle, the reason is simple: “The magic of Athens and living here is that when you are doing something that you are meant to be doing, it just comes together.”

The result of that “magic” is revealed in gained respect as a business, highlighted by earning Ohio Magazine’s vote as the best bead store in Ohio in 2006 and 2007.

Watching her own mother’s lifelong talent as a beader, Merkle picked up the trait herself in childhood. “I love beads. They are little treasures, beautiful pieces. Each bead is a little piece of art from everywhere in the world,” she says.

In 1990, after years of traveling to acquire beads and lamenting the lack of nearby vendors, Merkle opened Beads and Things with an agreeable Berry.

The store is lined with row after row of such treasure: colorful variations of beads – seed beads, Rudraksha tree prayer beads, Czech glass, Japanese delicas, lampwork, bone, wood, and metal beads - fill glass cups, racks, and shelving alongside tools, decorative rocks, and beaded wall-hangings and accessories.

After filling a tray with beads and supplies, the customer is urged to sit at one of the ready antique wooden tables to test the depths of his or her learned creative genes. With genuine mirth, the couple says their patient instruction is aimed to put a customer at ease.

Berry comments, “It’s a place where people come and will often spend a lot of time - they might spend hours here. We tend to make relationships with our customers.” He continues, “The best part is seeing what kind of creative things they are doing. Many people get in here say, ‘Oh, I’m not that creative, I can’t do that.’” He jokes, “So, we kind of bully them into being creative, ‘Yes! You can! Sit down!’”

Merkle, laughing, explains further, “No, we help to facilitate the creative process, because everybody is creative. They get to imbibe it with their energy. It’s not really expensive - under five dollars. To provide the space and having the supplies here is a good thing to be able to do, and let them be creative.”

But it is the final product that brings the most satisfaction. Says Merkle, “As they try it on looking in the mirror, you watch their eyes and their face and they are illuminated!”

The current economic recession has slowed spending worldwide, but Berry says it hasn’t affected their business. “When money is tight, people can make things for a lot less and get a lot more value,” he notes.

As if the couple’s life and pursuits together could be explained as coming together one bead at a time on a string, Berry says, smiling, “It’s just evolved into what it is.” Merkle agrees, saying, “Everything just fell together.”

Berry began visiting Athens in the early 1970’s, and he “fell in love with the place.” Merkle, separately arriving in 1971 as a student, then felt the urge to move to the country, and began to farm organically. Though they had met, they would not start dating until years later, in the mid-eighties. “We both take things pretty much a day at a time; we don’t make long term plans,” she says.

They had only been dating for a short time before Merkle was offered to purchase nearby property. Because she was familiar with the land and adored the location, she felt she couldn’t pass up the opportunity. She asked Berry if he’d like to go in on it with her. He agreed. “We didn’t know it would manifest into being a long-term relationship,” says Merkle.

Though they have often had to live hand to mouth, and for much of the time slept in evolving-sized tents on their property, it is a lifestyle they have chosen. They have built their cabin – complete with a shower that pumps water from their pond – by periodically affording one board at a time for nearly ten years. “People who say they have to wait until they have money to do something,” says Merkle, “will be waiting forever. You never end up having enough. You don’t wait.”

They consider themselves to have everything they need, especially each other.

“I love working with Phil.” Merkle says. “I always wanted a partner that I could work with, build with and have a lot of fun with.”

He agrees, “I couldn’t imagine not working together in some fashion or other.”

Merkle relates a story of when she first knew Berry was “the one”. On a trip out west, she had seen a strand of black tourmalated quartz and debated purchasing it. As they drove away, she kept musing out loud that she would like to have it, but resisted when he offered to drive back. Finally, at least one hundred miles away, she announced she’d decided: she wanted the beads. With no hesitation, he turned round. “He didn’t skip a beat,” she remembers. “I knew how much I liked him before, but then I knew.”

In all the years together, the duration of the 18 they have been able to keep their store open surprises them. They attribute it to the community. “The community support is just fabulous,” Berry says.

Merkle agrees, “That’s why we are in business.”

Sandy Plunkett for Athens: Glimpses of Home

Local comic artist sketches a life outside of the box
By Jenaye Antonuccio (photo by Sherry DiBari)

ON A QUIET ATHENS STREET, BETWEEN MODEST HOUSES AND FRIENDLY NEIGHBORS, A MAN SITS ALONE AT HIS TIDY DESK, WORKING. IT IS EARLY MORNING. THE LARGE WINDOW COVERING SHIELDS HIM FROM THE COMING DAY’S OVER-ABUNDANT LIGHT AND INEVITABLE DISTRACTION. THOUGH OCCASIONALLY RISING, STRETCHING, AND FEEDING THE WOOD STOVE WITH SELF-HEWN KINDLING, HE IS FOCUSED, TRAINED TO MASTER THE MOMENTS SO THE DEADLINE CANNOT ATTACK!!!
LATER, MOUNTING HIS TRUSTY BIKE (HIS SOLE MODE OF TRANSPORTATION), HE SHAKES OFF CABIN FEVER WHILE TACKLING ERRANDS. BUT HE WILL NOT BE CAUGHT EMPTY-HANDED!!! ALWAYS, ALWAYS, HE CARRIES HIS PACK OF NECESSARY TOOLS. INSIDE THE PACK, A WATER-RESISTANT CASE CLEVERLY SEALS INSIDE ONE SKETCHBOOK AND A ZIPPERED POCKET WITH PENCILS, PENS, ERASERS, SHARPENERS, ETC. HE DEFIES WET WEATHER, THE MORTAL ENEMY OF THIS OUTFITTED AND CRAFTY ARTIST!!!

Born and raised by two artist parents in bustling Manhattan, Sandy Plunkett, well-known comics writer and artist, suggests, “I'm pretty convinced that my artistic inclinations are partly inherited.” As he grew older, he discovered his dyslexia as typical children do, while learning to read. “To try to get me to read,” he remembers, “my mother brought home comics.”

Being introduced to his first superhero comic in the third grade, he was hooked, and began a lifelong tendency to render his own superhero drawings. But pressure in sixth grade about the then-unpopular kid’s medium (“Are you still reading comics?”), he says, led to involuntary repression of comic-character sketching till near-completion of high school. “I don’t think the interest had completely gone away,” he says. “Inspiration kicked in again.”

Of his one year of college studying fine arts, Plunkett remembers, “It was a wonderful year, but what I wanted to be doing was at such odds with what they were offering.” He then pursued a career as a comic book artist, which soon expanded to contracts with Marvel, DC and Gold Key comics.

Throughout the 70s and 80s, as he aged and competition standards stiffened, he says the appeal of living in the city soured. “Growing up in New York, I felt perfectly at home. But as an adult, I was pretty unhappy.” He adds, “I was getting hit both ways: in emotion; and in terms of career and finances, it was starting to affect me.”

The decision to relocate became appealing. “When you are depressed it is hard to create,” he states. “The more you can eliminate that from your inner life, the freer you are to really do your work.” He knew he could continue comic work anywhere due to telephones, Internet, and overnight delivery services, with occasional contact-maintenance trips.

Through a “circuitous turn of events”, the curative destination became Athens, Ohio. The year was 1990.

Plunkett cites the writer David Foster Wallace, who penned in the novel Infinite Jest: “You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution.” Plunkett thinks this summarizes the challenge for growing in his craft. “The drawing I do provides me with the pleasure and satisfaction of making things (hopefully beautiful, interesting things) and that desire could be fulfilled through other artistic expressions,” he explains. “But the drawings I do also provide me with the chance to become completely engaged in an endeavor so huge and so thoroughly consuming that an in entire lifetime, one can never hope to reach it's conclusion. And in the process, what your really grappling with is yourself.”

When he arrived in Athens, ready to begin afresh, his plan was to continue along the path of his already-successful career. But the excited buzz about his move here had rapidly spread from ear to ear, as mysteriously happens only in small towns. “Other opportunities presented themselves, and none of them were things that I had anticipated,” says Plunkett. “It has been wonderful.”

Drawing for political cartoons, CD covers, posters, business logos, tee-shirts, or commissions gained from fans who contacted him through his website (www.plunkettart.com) – such endeavors began taking up his time. Soon, comic book work was less needed for a source of income -- perfect timing for avoiding the comic book industry’s crash in the mid-90s. Today, he works only occasionally for the slow-recovering field.

Finding work as an artist is a constant worry. But even in today’s shipwrecked market, by comparison, Athens’ smaller competition pool and alternative-embracing nature supports Plunkett’s efforts, signified in the fact that currently he has more commissioned work than before.

“I know some artists who begin with a very clear mental image of what they're about to draw,” says Plunkett, about his approach to drawing. “That rarely happens with me. Most often I start out with a feeling I want to convey, but only the vaguest visualization. That develops on the paper (if I'm lucky).”

He approaches assignments with understanding of his personal capabilities, he says, and paces the time he knows he will need. Wanting to avoid the notorious stigma that artists always miss deadlines, in the end, whether he is personally satisfied or not, he strives for one thing: “What I’m looking for most of the time is not to embarrass myself.” He adds, “I give myself a little pat on the back, not because the work itself is great, (but) because I did it efficiently.”

His biggest investment of self and time went into a graphic novel of his own initiative. Through his self-created guidelines and focus for a number of years, the project is now complete.

But it is the publication process that tires him. “It is one of the most masochistic things I’ve ever gone through,” he says.

Three different publishing companies have expressed interest, but have backed out at the point of contract-signing.

The difficulty, he explains, is in taking the chance. “If you are writing a novel, imagine you can show an early draft, then you rewrite it. In one comic book page, no one will really understand the impact you are going for. When it is all together, if someone says, ‘I think your pacing is wrong,’ and you have twenty pages, then you really can’t do anything at that point.”

Though discouraged by what seemed like a job in itself to get the publication wheels turning, he says, “For the time being I’m tired of it, but I don’t know if I’ve given up on it.”

Other projects keep him busy. As does exercising his craft. One of the three running sketchbooks he keeps (he calls it his exercise book) has been the most enjoyable as of late. “When I sketch, its all just a big flurry of lines at first. Often those extraneous lines are gestural lines, though they are kind of abstract. Working in this notebook allowed me to say, ‘Okay, those lines aren’t right, but I like what they look like. Just don’t erase, don’t keep revising, don’t have an absolute idea in your mind on what it should be - that type of space where initial gestural lines can be explored.’” In other mediums, he feels he has gained facility with watercolor painting, and would especially enjoy more experimentation with oils.

Plunkett also tries different perspectives, like turning his piece upside down, or looking at it in half-light: “Sometimes,” he says, “when you are seeing less precisely, you are seeing more truly. Like a hidden structure behind the visual world which we are distracted from. Because we see so clearly, if you see it in the half light, I think you can be more sensitive to the underlying structures.”

Plunkett is not invulnerable to life’s banalities. Plumbing problems, appointments, and housework are not sensitive to artist’s deadlines, just like in everyone’s life. He states, “If you have too many things going on, its hard to get that sense of quiet.” His solution? “I think I’m always trying to return to that place of stillness where everything else seems like it is distant, so I can just focus on what is there.”


THE SINGLE-MINDED AND MEDITATIVE ARTIST ALWAYS CARRIES IN HIS MIND AN IMAGINARY AUDIENCE FOR HIS WORK. HE CAN BE FOUND BASKING IN THE ENERGY OF A SUMMER NIGHT, COLLECTING INSPIRATION IN THE NEW WARMTH OF SPRING WHEN BIKING OUT ON COUNTRY ROADS, OR DILIGENTLY WORKING SNUG INSIDE ON A WINTER’S DAY. HE EXPLORES INSIDE, OUTSIDE, AND IN BETWEEN THE LINES. IT IS ALL IN A DAY’S WORK IN THE PLACE HE CALLS HOME.